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4. The Slow Hunch and the Adjacent Possible: Let ideas take their time

Author and innovation thinker Steven Johnson, best known for Where Good Ideas Come From, pushes back on the idea that breakthroughs arrive in a sudden flash. More often, they begin as incomplete hunches that sit for months or years until another idea, field, or technology gives them what they were missing.
 

“What the adjacent possible tells us is that at any moment the world is capable of extraordinary change, but only certain changes can happen.”
 

Darwin’s theory of natural selection is a useful example. He later remembered the idea arriving in 1838 while reading Thomas Malthus, whose writing on population and scarce resources helped him see competition as the mechanism behind evolution. But Darwin had already spent roughly two years filling notebooks with thoughts on how species changed. Historian Howard Gruber later found that those notes contained something close to the full theory months before Darwin’s supposed moment of revelation. The breakthrough was less a sudden discovery than the point at which years of unfinished thinking finally came together. Darwin then waited almost 20 years to publish. In 1858, Alfred Russel Wallace sent him a strikingly similar theory, developed independently through fieldwork and the same encounter with Malthus. Both men had found the missing part of a biological argument in political economy.
 

This is Johnson’s adjacent possible in practice: an idea can only develop when the knowledge around it makes the next step available.
 

A practical starting point: Keep a record of unfinished ideas rather than discarding them because they are not yet useful. When one remains stuck, look sideways instead of digging deeper into the same subject. The missing piece may be sitting in a field you would not normally think to explore.

Stuck on an idea? Here are nine methods to get things moving

Tips, frameworks and advice from some of the world’s leading innovators, thinkers and creators on how to think more creatively, develop better ideas and move them forward.

1. Reason from first principles

Good ideas are rarely the result of natural talent alone. They come from the habits, working conditions, and methods people build around them. Here are nine practical approaches from those who have learned how to turn early thinking into something real.

 
“It’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.”
 
First-principles thinking means stripping a problem back to the facts you know are true, then building from there instead of copying the way something has always been done. The Wright brothers used this approach in 1901, long before it had a fashionable name. Their first glider was based on Otto Lilienthal’s lift tables, then considered the most reliable aerodynamic data available. When the glider produced only about a third of the expected lift, they did not assume the fault was entirely theirs. They questioned the numbers.
 
In their Dayton bicycle shop, they built a six-foot wooden wind tunnel and tested roughly 200 wing shapes themselves. The measurements differed from Lilienthal’s, so they used their own data to design the 1902 glider. It flew as predicted, and the same research later informed the 1903 Wright Flyer.
 
The method is simple:

  1. Find the assumption. What accepted fact is the work resting on?

  2. Test it yourself. If reality does not match the prediction, question the foundation as well as the execution.

  3. Gather your own evidence. Measure what is actually happening rather than relying on precedent.

  4. Build from what you learn. Let the new evidence shape the next version.
     

A practical starting point: Before accepting a number, model or industry standard as ground truth, ask whether it has been verified or merely repeated. When a real result contradicts an authoritative source, do not automatically assume the failure is yours. Test the source too.

2. Oblique Strategies: Break your own patterns on purpose

In 1975, musician and producer Brian Eno, known for his work with Roxy Music and for helping shape ambient music, joined artist and educator Peter Schmidt to create Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards printed with prompts such as:
 
“Honour thy error as a hidden intention.”
“Use an old idea.”
“Emphasise the flaws.”
 
The cards were designed for moments when the work became stuck or predictable. The instruction itself mattered less than the interruption: each prompt forced the person using it to step away from the obvious solution and try a different route. Eno developed the deck partly in response to the pressure of expensive studio time. Musicians would often play safe and repeat what had worked before rather than risk an uncertain idea during a booked session. Oblique Strategies introduced a deliberate disruption before habit could take over.
 
A clear example came during the recording of David Bowie’s 1979 album Lodger. Bowie wanted “Boys Keep Swinging” to have the rough energy of an amateur garage band, rather than the polished sound his musicians could produce almost automatically. Eno drew the “Reverse Roles” card, and the band swapped instruments: guitarist Carlos Alomar moved to drums, while drummer Dennis Davis played bass. Neither musician was fully comfortable in the new role, so the recording came out rougher, less controlled and more urgent. That was exactly the quality the song needed. The card prompted a choice the band was unlikely to make on its own, using temporary incompetence to produce something that greater technical control might have removed.
 
A practical starting point: When a piece of work feels too polished, predictable, or similar to what you have made before, interrupt the usual process. Give one part of it to someone less familiar with the task, reverse two roles, or introduce a constraint that makes the obvious solution impossible. The friction is the point: it can produce something you would not reach by simply trying harder in the same direction.

3. Design Thinking: Everyone is creative

IDEO’s central belief is that creativity is not reserved for people with creative job titles. It is a way of approaching problems that anyone can learn. Design thinking gives that approach a structure: understand the problem and its constraints, generate and test ideas, then work out how the strongest solution can be used. The stages overlap, but the order matters. Good ideas often begin with observation, not brainstorming.
 

IDEO’s redesign of the Oral-B children’s toothbrush is a useful example. The industry had assumed that children needed smaller versions of adult toothbrushes because they had smaller hands. IDEO’s team watched children brushing their teeth and found that the assumption was wrong. Young children had not yet developed the fine motor control needed for an adult fingertip grip, so they held the toothbrush in a fist. The team designed a thicker, soft, textured handle around the way children actually used the product. The result, known as the “squish grip”, went on to outsell the other children’s toothbrushes on the market. The same process appeared in IDEO’s 1999 Nightline demonstration, “The Deep Dive”, where a team redesigned a supermarket trolley in five days. Before proposing solutions, they spent time in shops watching how people moved through aisles, handled children and abandoned trolleys in car parks. Those observations revealed problems the original brief had not mentioned, including child safety and theft.
 

A practical starting point: Before generating ideas, spend time watching how people actually behave. Look for the small action that contradicts the brief, the industry assumption, or the way the product was designed to be used. The strongest idea may already be there; the work is noticing it before solving the wrong problem.

5. Treat it as a practice, not a gift

Record producer Rick Rubin, known for his stripped-back approach and work with artists including Johnny Cash, the Beastie Boys and Red Hot Chili Peppers, describes creativity as something you practise, not something you either have or do not.

“Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice, or you’re not.”

Dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp, whose career has spanned ballet, Broadway and film, makes the same point through routine. Each morning, she gets into her workout clothes, leaves her apartment and takes a cab to the gym. The ritual is not the workout itself. It is telling the driver where to go. Once she has done that, the decision has already been made. She uses a similar system for her work. Every new dance begins with a labelled box, which she fills with notes, photographs, books, articles, recordings and anything else that might become useful. The box exists before the idea is fully formed, giving early thoughts somewhere to collect.

“Before you can think out of the box, you have to start with a box.”

Rubin created a different kind of container while recording Johnny Cash’s American Recordings. Rather than beginning with a formal studio, band, and full production, he recorded Cash alone with an acoustic guitar, often in Rubin’s living room or Cash’s cabin. The early sessions felt informal enough that Cash did not always think he was making permanent recordings. “Drive On”, which appeared on the finished album, began as a microphone test. That lack of pressure helped produce the unguarded performances Rubin had heard in Cash. The album later won the 1995 Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album and revived a career much of the industry had already written off. Tharp’s cab and Rubin’s living room solve the same problem in different ways. One removes the decision of whether to begin; the other removes the pressure to get it right.
 
A practical starting point: Make starting either automatic or low stakes. Create a ritual that removes the daily decision, or begin in a setting where the first attempt does not feel final. Inspiration is easier to find once the work is already moving.

6. Make failure structural, not incidental

Ed Catmull, the computer scientist who co-founded Pixar and led the studio as president for more than three decades, argues that failure is not an unfortunate side effect of creative work. It is what happens when people try to make something new.

“Failure isn’t a necessary evil. In fact, it isn’t evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new.”

Pixar’s experience with Toy Story 2 shows why failure needs a place inside the process rather than being dealt with only when a project reaches crisis point. The film began as a lower-stakes, direct-to-video sequel, then was upgraded to a theatrical release without the story being rebuilt to meet that higher standard. By late 1998, with release less than a year away, the team could no longer avoid the fact that the film was not working. In January 1999, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich, Pete Docter and Joe Ranft spent a weekend reviewing the story and concluded that almost the entire film needed to be rebuilt. The team completed work that would normally take several years in just nine months, and the finished film became a critical and commercial success. The cost was much less tidy. Close to a third of the crew developed repetitive strain injuries serious enough to require surgery, while the pressure damaged people’s health and personal lives. Catmull later acknowledged that ambition had been allowed to override the wellbeing of the team. That experience helped turn the Braintrust from an occasional intervention into a recurring part of Pixar’s process. Filmmakers regularly show unfinished work to a group of experienced colleagues, who identify problems without prescribing a solution. The director remains responsible for deciding what to change. The structure matters because it makes difficult feedback routine. Problems can surface while there is still time to solve them properly, rather than during an emergency rebuild close to release. Failure is expected, discussed, and used before it becomes expensive in every possible sense.

A practical starting point: Schedule regular reviews before the work appears to need them. Ask people to identify what is unclear, weak, or not yet working, but leave the team responsible for the solution. Feedback should be part of the process, not an emergency meeting called once the failure is too large to ignore.

7. Use constraints, don’t fight them

Marissa Mayer, the former Yahoo CEO and a longtime Google executive, argues that too much freedom often produces unfocused work. A useful constraint — a file-size limit, a fixed budget or a speed requirement — gives the idea something to work against.
 

“Creativity loves constraint.”
 

Mayer compares this to a haiku or sonnet. The form does not prevent creativity; it forces choices. During her time at Google, the constraints she returned to most often were file size, pixels, and speed. One search experiment made the value of speed especially clear. Users said they wanted more than the ten results Google showed by default, so Mayer’s team tested a page with 30. Traffic and revenue among the test group fell by 20%. The problem was not the extra results. It was the extra half-second. The original page loaded in 0.4 seconds, while the longer version took 0.9 seconds. The delay was small enough to go unnoticed, but large enough to change people’s behaviour. A feature users had asked for made the product worse because it broke a constraint they valued more. The same thinking shaped Google’s homepage. While other web portals added navigation, advertising and new modules, Google kept its page to a logo, a search box and two buttons. Every proposed addition had to justify its effect on speed and simplicity, rather than asking those limits to move.
 

A practical starting point: Decide which constraint cannot be compromised before judging the idea. It might be speed, cost, size, or time. Then ask whether the idea still works inside it. If it only succeeds by breaking the limit, it is not yet a better solution; it is a trade-off you have not accounted for.

8. Engineer the conditions, not just the mood

John Cleese, the actor, comedian and writer best known for Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, argues that creativity is not a personality trait. It is a way of thinking that becomes easier when the right conditions are in place.
 

He identifies five:

  • Space: enough distance from everyday pressure to become playful.

  • Time: a defined period set aside for creative work.

  • More time: the willingness to stay with a problem before choosing an answer.

  • Confidence: freedom from the fear of getting something wrong.

  • Humour: a quick way out of precise, anxious thinking and into a more open state.
     

“Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.”
 

Cleese illustrates this with a story about Alfred Hitchcock. When a screenwriting discussion became tense or stuck, Hitchcock would stop and tell an unrelated story. At first, this looked like avoidance. In fact, he was deliberately interrupting the pressure in the room because he did not trust the kind of thinking it produced. The pause gave everyone a chance to return to the problem in a more open state, rather than forcing an answer simply because the discussion had become uncomfortable. Cleese describes a similar habit in his own writing. He believed his work was sometimes more original than that of equally talented colleagues because he was willing to stay with an unresolved problem for longer. Where others settled on the first workable answer to escape the discomfort of not knowing, he would remain with it for another hour or so and wait for a less obvious solution. The point is not that time guarantees a better idea. It is that pressure often makes the first acceptable answer feel better than it is.
 

A practical starting point: When a discussion becomes tense and repetitive, stop pushing on the same problem. Take a short break, change the subject or introduce something unrelated, then return to it. And when an answer arrives, ask whether you believe it is good or whether you are simply relieved to have one.

8. Engineer the conditions, not just the mood

John Cleese, the actor, comedian and writer best known for Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, argues that creativity is not a personality trait. It is a way of thinking that becomes easier when the right conditions are in place.
 

He identifies five:

  • Space: enough distance from everyday pressure to become playful.

  • Time: a defined period set aside for creative work.

  • More time: the willingness to stay with a problem before choosing an answer.

  • Confidence: freedom from the fear of getting something wrong.

  • Humour: a quick way out of precise, anxious thinking and into a more open state.
     

“Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.”
 

Cleese illustrates this with a story about Alfred Hitchcock. When a screenwriting discussion became tense or stuck, Hitchcock would stop and tell an unrelated story. At first, this looked like avoidance. In fact, he was deliberately interrupting the pressure in the room because he did not trust the kind of thinking it produced. The pause gave everyone a chance to return to the problem in a more open state, rather than forcing an answer simply because the discussion had become uncomfortable. Cleese describes a similar habit in his own writing. He believed his work was sometimes more original than that of equally talented colleagues because he was willing to stay with an unresolved problem for longer. Where others settled on the first workable answer to escape the discomfort of not knowing, he would remain with it for another hour or so and wait for a less obvious solution. The point is not that time guarantees a better idea. It is that pressure often makes the first acceptable answer feel better than it is.
 

A practical starting point: When a discussion becomes tense and repetitive, stop pushing on the same problem. Take a short break, change the subject or introduce something unrelated, then return to it. And when an answer arrives, ask whether you believe it is good or whether you are simply relieved to have one.

What Makes These Methods Work

Good ideas rarely arrive fully formed. They tend to emerge from a process that gives them something to push against: a clear constraint, a change of setting, an unfamiliar reference, a rough prototype, or a question asked early enough to alter the work. The useful shift is from treating creativity as a moment of inspiration to treating it as a system of attention. You notice more, record what catches, test before you become protective, and invite criticism while the idea is still cheap to change. That does not guarantee a breakthrough, but it gives promising thoughts a better chance of becoming one.

Creativity is often treated as a talent, but much of it comes down to how well a person manages uncertainty. Early ideas are usually incomplete, awkward, or easy to dismiss, which means the real skill is not simply generating them. It is knowing when to keep developing one, when to expose it to criticism and when to let it go. Strong creative processes create room for all three. They protect ideas long enough to develop, but not so long that taste, habit or pride prevents them from changing.
 

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