Every new idea evolves from a pre-existing idea!

Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics (and without whom we wouldn’t have computers, space travel and much else), acknowledged this when he said “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Businesses only survive by growing and changing, and that requires an input of new ideas: ‘what can we give the market that no-one else gives?’, ‘how can we produce twice as much with the same resources?’, ‘what can we do to ensure that our staff are fully engaged?’

It’s highly likely (we might even say certain) that the answers to these questions are already ‘out there’, someone somewhere has already tackled the problem, got the answer, solved the puzzle.

So, if you want to be successful in business, be a sponge! Soak up ideas as if your life depends on it. Make time for reading, watching, visiting, asking questions. The more ideas that go in, the better the quality of the ideas that come out!

When you’ve soaked up lots of ideas, play around with them until you’ve got something that suits your needs – combine ideas, take an idea from one field of activity to another, do the opposite, mix things up, take the relevant bits of an idea and discard the rest, share ideas, give some away and get some new ones back.

Be a sponge, be curious, then be creative, then be successful.

(a warning – don’t pass borrowed ideas off as your own, acknowledge the debt)