Protected: The Crazy Idea

Have you ever had a crazy idea? An idea that you positively know would never work, but if it DID work, would easily solve your problem? This will teach you how to turn a crazy idea into reality.

First of all - what are the traits of a crazy idea? It is the most extreme example of “out of the box” thinking - an idea that not only challenges the assumptions of the situation at hand, but challenges what we assume about the world itself. Laws of man, nature, and reality are challenged by crazy ideas. Here then are some possible traits of a crazy idea:

Abstract rather than concrete
Cuts to the heart of the problem with a definitive solution
Sounds magical, illegal, impossible or supernatural - no practical way to make it happen

With this in mind, let’s say you were in a scientific organization faced with a messy problem - the world around you has changed in ways that require your professionals to collaborate with those outside their disciplines. To older scientists this can be very painful, as scientists value professional credentials and credibility more than just about anything. You are faced with the following problem: “How do we make our organization more collaborative?”

Instead of coming up with the same ideas that everyone else does, come up with a Crazy Idea - “Kill the non-collaborators.” Does this meet the definition we fashioned above?

Abstract - it’s not as specific as it could be, doesn’t answer enough of the ‘how,’ and on its face there’s no way of determining how it would work.
Cuts to the heart of the problem - yes, this would probably solve the problem. Either the non-collaborators would be dead, or they’d learn to collaborate in a hurry.
No practical way to make it happen - murder is illegal.

The abstract nature of a crazy idea is the key to making it work. Taken literally, there’s no way this idea would be feasible. But when you consider it as a metaphor, you capture the essence that makes the idea effective.

What is the essence of the idea? In other words, what is the practical end result of the idea? In this case, killing the non-collaborators removes them from the organization and leaves you with only the people who will collaborate. So can we restate the crazy idea in ways that will achieve the same result but are more practical?

“Remove the non-collaborators from the organization.”
“Kill the careers of the non-collaborators.”
“Create an environment that would coerce the non-collaborators to leave.”

These restated ideas are interrelated. Perhaps a solution would be to create a new requirement that all published papers coming out of the organization must be co-authored by at least six collaborators of different disciplines. In the scientific community if you don’t publish you lose credibility, so not being able to publish would effectively achieve Idea 2. This alone may cause the non-collaborators to seek greener pastures (Idea 3) where collaboration isn’t required, or degrade their performance reviews such that they could lose their jobs (Idea 1). Then you could focus on better ways to help the willing people collaborate more effectively.

In summary, to turn a crazy idea into reality do the following: