When I was young, I flirted with the idea of a career in journalism on one hand and politics on the other.
This was a really big opportunity. This script was even mediocre. The idea was great, but Jay came on with his guys made it great and very specific. It all came together well.
I tell cold callers I'm very interested but a bit deaf, my hearing aid is not working properly and can they speak up. The idea is to deliberately miss-hear what they say, ask them to repeat, only louder, and see how loud I can get them to shout. After a while I say "I'm not really deaf" and was just wasting their time, as they were doing with me.
Who are we to be so arrogant as to say 'now WE know what's best, THAT era was full of daft ideas' etc. There will be plenty things we take as normal and good now that future generations will look back at in horror or amusement.
It's the same as saying, you know, "I'll smoke, but that's up to me." Doctors don't recommend it. I don't recommend smoking. It's a bad idea. Smoking or spanking. Bad ideas.
Where did you get that idea for a nose? - Frizz Mizuno
The very idea of making shoes by hand boggled her mind.
Plot idea: 97% of the world's scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.
Luckily for writers - and unluckily for history - every scientific idea creates human conflict.
The reason I have managed to get so many shows on television is because I've tried to be authentic. When you're gonna spend millions of dollars to see that come to life, they better believe it's a good idea, A. B, they better believe that the person who's telling the idea is gonna put themselves into this.
My mother never criticized any idea I had. She thought anybody could have anything. Even if I was in a poor family that worked at Ford Motor Company and lived in Dagenham. I could have told my mother that I wanted to work in pantomime. And she'd have said, "Great. I can help you."
The idea that comics stores, distributors and publishers simply 'give the customers what they want' is nonsense. What the customers wanted they didn't get - and they left.
Roughly 1 in 6 Americans have Irish blood. I'd say it's probably safe to assume that the average Irish-American who only comes out on St. Patrick's Day has no idea of the sort of economic powerhouse Ireland has become.
Maxilan, darling." Locke raised one eyebrow and smiled. "I knew you were driven, but I had no idea you could smoulder. Come, take me now! Jean won't mind; he'll avert his eyes like a gentleman.
When you then establish the law that says you can't discriminate against people who are homosexual, what you're really saying is you're putting the power of law behind the idea that these are people who cannot change and therefore we must protect them from other people who disagree with them.
I have a couple ideas that I'm banging on for a film. It's strange, you make a movie and, all of a sudden, your agents are calling you and saying, "Hey, I know these guys with some money who are looking to finance something." You're like, "Oh, god, now I've gotta come up with something really amazing."
At the end of the day, a "jump scare" scares the audience for the moment. Slow burn horror ideas scare people forever.
Data about an innovative idea is rarely crystal clear.
Good innovators are careful observers, network extensively, run experiments, ask lots of questions, and find ways to bring diverse ideas together. Overarching all of this is an intrinsic interest in working through puzzles.
First you document your idea. You should be comprehensive, but that doesn't mean you have to produce a doctoral thesis length plan. Rather you want to make sure you have touched all the different things that have to happen to succeed. Then, you evaluate your approach. The goal here isn't to figure out if your idea is good or bad, but rather to begin to figure out what are some of its weakest elements.
It's very easy to skip steps when documenting an idea.
I'm suggesting that principles meant to deal with uncertainty that occurs naturally can be useful to manage the uncertainty that characterizes any new idea.
You have to chip away at it and shape it to let the winning idea emerge.
A spreadsheet for an innovative idea reports the mathematical relationship between made up numbers. You can't cash a spreadsheet.
Make sure that you take the time to think about how other companies might respond to your idea, both those companies already in the market you plan to target as well as others that might imagine targeting that market.
