What Are Effective Methods for Brainstorming a Million-Dollar Idea? — mashable.com

This question originally appeared on Quora. How did you get a million-dollar idea? What were you doing when you had the illumination? What did you do next? Answer by Jeff Nelson, Internet entrepreneur, former Google employee. My preferred terms for the process of ideation are synthesis and reduction. During synthesis, a large number of ideas are created based on the problem at hand — without consideration for practicality, costs, risks, timeline and other factors. During reduction, some ideas are slowly and progressively eliminated; ideas that are impossible, impractical or undesirable are discarded first. The ideas worth pursuing are then prioritized and pursued. Next, those which aren't working are also discarded.

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