Good ideas don’t care where they came from

Dec 11, 2019

Our old friend Nilofer Merchant has a compelling idea: “Your Employees Have All the Creativity You Need. Let Them Prove It.”

Every company boss is sitting on a big ole pile of unused potential, and the question is always about how one taps into it.

That’s kinda what “creativity” means, at least in this context.

Hmmm… I used to believe that “Everybody is born creative”. I no longer do.

What I do believe, however, is Leo Burnett’s famous line, “Good ideas don’t care where they came from.” In other words, a good idea is a good idea, it doesn’t matter if it came from the grey-haired receptionist or the overpaid, hotshot-ninja-guru wunderkind in the skinny jeans.

The trick with good ideas is first knowing how to recognize them and then knowing how to keep them alive long enough to be useful.

Good ideas are just too easy to kill…

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Jan Dale

4 years ago

Thank you. I needed this today. The world of education is rife with creativity killings, which is why I left the profession early to paint full time. Teachers are almost always creative types. But while creativity is encouraged verbally, in reality teachers are forced to follow neatly boxed programs written by people who are often less creative and certainly less informed about their audience than the teacher. When the expensive new be-all-end-all program fails to produce the expected results, as it almost always does, another shiny new one is purchased and the cycle starts all over again. All the while, there is a wealth of knowledge, know-how, and creativity sitting right there in the staff meeting.

By the way, your description of the “wonderkind” is a hilarious literary gem! I might feel differently if I were the kid.

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