5 ways to find your next great idea — and figure out if it’s worth your time

As an entrepreneur, you should be intentionally creating the time and space—every day—to open yourself up to new ideas. This means you have to put yourself in situations where your great ideas are likely to strike.

A question I love to ask the people I interviewed for our new book is: “What’s your favorite place to think big?” And what I’ve learned is: There is no one perfect place. Some people do their best thinking in solitude; some need a creative team around them; some need the electricity of a crowded cafe. Some look to nature; some to city streets.

Spanx founder Sara Blakely told me that her best thinking happens in the car. And since she lives really close to the Spanx headquarters, she created what her friends call her “fake commute.” She gets up an hour early and drives aimlessly around Atlanta, so she can let thoughts come to her. In fact: She thought of the name “Spanx” in the car.

That intentionality is critical. By creating the time and space—first thing every day—to open herself up to new ideas, she actively cultivates her best thinking. And every entrepreneur does the same. Netflix’s Reed Hastings thinks best in his own living room in Santa Cruz. For Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, it’s the Walt Disney Family Museum. Bill Gates gets in his car to drive around; Zynga’s Mark Pincus gets on his surfboard; and ClassPass’s Payal Kadakia hits the dance studio.

For me, I do my best thinking when I’m around people who challenge me and who poke holes in my ideas. And my favorite thinking spots are ones that are new to me. I’ve done some of my best thinking in cafés and other places with a little bit of bustle. That’s where I can really focus on a purely blank page. Here are 5 prompts to help you think of new ideas – and then recognize the ones worth pursuing.

1. Chase the bad idea

When everyone is telling you, “That’s a good idea,” it can mean lots of other people are likely already pursuing it. Instead, look for the beautiful idea disguised as a bad one—the idea whose potential value is unseen or misunderstood.

People tend to chase “good ideas”—ideas that seem to make a lot of sense, almost to the point of being obvious. But there’s sometimes less value in the obvious idea. They’re incremental ideas, or they’ve been done, or there’s a sound reason why they can’t be done.

But the so-called bad ideas? That’s where the gold might be hidden. Airbnb? Who would let strangers sleep in their homes? Uber? Who would want to get a ride from a stranger in an unmarked vehicle? Don’t let a “bad” idea pass without looking at it carefully.?

2. If not you, who?

When you look at your history and passions, your destiny idea may be staring right back at you.

As an investment analyst, Sallie Krawcheck became aware of an issue she called “the gender investing gap.” Everyone knows about the gender pay gap, but this was something altogether different, and within it was an opportunity.

A woman making $85,000 typically keeps 71 cents of every salary dollar in cash—which means she is investing far less than her male counterpart. “This can cost a woman a million dollars over her life,” Sallie notes. “That’s ‘start my business’ money, or ‘buy my dream house’ money, ‘take your friggin’ hand off my leg’ money, or ‘leave the job you hate’ money. So I realized there was this gap there that the investing industry simply wasn’t closing.”

Still, she was shocked by the reaction when she proposed her new idea, a financial services company for women. She heard so many variations on the theme: “But don’t their husbands manage their money for them?”

Up to this point, Sallie hadn’t planned to launch a startup—she hoped an existing financial services company might adopt her idea. But the responses she got made it clear: Okay, she thought, if this is going to get done, then I’ve got to do it.

So she began to design something that was fundamentally different: Ellevest, an investment platform designed for and marketed exclusively to any woman, anywhere, who has been overlooked by the financial industry, who has earned her own money and is confident in all areas of her life—except perhaps when it comes to investing.

3. Pay attention to the flashing neon sign: This. Should. Exist.

If you believe that something should exist—and you can imagine many other people nodding in agreement—it may just be an idea worth pursuing.?

One night, Sara Blakely was getting ready to go to a party. “I wanted to wear my cream-colored pants that night, and I had no undergarment to wear under them that wouldn’t show,” she says. So she took matters into her own hands: “I cut the feet out of my own control-top pantyhose so I could wear them under my pants and wear any kind of great strappy heel. And it worked beautifully—except they rolled up my leg all night at the party.

“I came home that night, and was like, ‘This should exist for women.’ ”

Sara uttered the three words that flicker like a neon flashing light over a truly big idea. Those three words: “This. Should. Exist.” They’re your clue that you’ve stumbled onto something with real potential.

To find your own “this should exist” idea, Sara has a suggestion: “Go home and look at fifteen things in your life and write them down on a piece of paper. Then write down how and why they could be better. You’ll probably have a big idea right there on that sheet.”

4. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel

When searching for a big idea, don’t discount the slight twist that can have a major impact. That’s something Whitney Wolfe Herd learned while working on a new kind of dating app.

“All of a sudden,” Whitney says, “I had this hurricane moment in my mind. What if we take the standard dating platform but there is a catch—only the woman can initiate conversation?”?

The resulting app—Bumble—became a sensational success, thanks to that single tweak to the way dating apps worked.

As Whitney puts it, “We weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. We were just trying to reverse it.”

5. The Hail Mary

Never let a crisis go to waste. Desperate times can sharpen focus, strengthen resolve, and yield killer ideas — while also creating the urgency to act on them. The Masters of Scale book is full of stories like this, about well-known companies (like Slack and Instagram) that grew from a single idea someone came up with in a time of crisis, and asked “why not?”

As a final word of advice? Above all, even if you are an introverted inventor, never forget your network. Talk through your idea with challenging people, creative people, skeptical people, and other entrepreneurs. These conversations can accelerate your pace to finding the next big idea in time.

This essay is adapted from Chapter 3 of our new book Masters of Scale: Surprising Truths from the World’s Most Successful Entrepreneurs.