Overcome the stepping stone problem with ideation.

Yesterday, two things unexpectedly came together. Two weeks ago I was training a group in the Design Thinking process. They were having trouble coming up with ideas. We got there in the end after they accepted their "bad" or "crazy" ideas. Then, yesterday, I read a review on open-endedness in synthetic biology (see reference below). It was the first time I read about the "stepping stone problem".

Stepping stone problem - intermediate but necessary steps only make sense in hindsight. In foresight these intermediate steps may seem inferior or useless.

The stepping stone problem means that intermediate steps only make sense in hindsight. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? These intermediate steps seem useless at first, but are necessary to reach a new functionality, a new product. That can prevent new things to emerge. If intermediate steps require a lot of resources to build or maintain, they are easily discarded. It is different when those costs are close to nothing. Then they are often tolerated. This is where the power of ideas lies. They can help you overcome the stepping stone problem.

Ideas cost nothing - use them as stepping stones!

Ideas cost almost nothing. Thinking about stepping stones, it is okay to have a lot of "bad" or "crazy" ideas. They are indeed bad or crazy, but they can be stepping stones to a breakthrough idea. Perhaps this is what Linus Pauling meant when he said, "The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw away the bad ones.

When to throw out bad ideas? Not too quickly. The moment you judge a bad idea, it becomes hard to see it as a possible stepping stone to a breakthrough. You do not know beforehand whether an idea is a stepping stone or not. Suspending judgment matters.

Dissect, combine, and expand ideas

Steven Johnson, in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, said, "An idea is not a single thing. It is more like a swarm." Most ideas are combinations. When you realize this, you will notice repetition. Some components seem to be present in almost all ideas. Then you become aware of subtle variations. A small change may be all it takes to make something fit. The greatest opportunity lies in creating new combinations that have never been explored before.

Software subscription models are an example of recombining things that already existed. Subscriptions are not new; the newspaper industry has used them for a long time. Somehow it took the software industry a long time to apply this pricing model to their business. Now, with SAAS (Software as a Service), it is everywhere.

Video calling is another example. The idea has been around for a long time. It took the Internet to get the first viable solutions like video conferencing. The big breakthrough came with smartphones. Now every communication platform offers video calling. We even used them during the COVID pandemic.

Ideation can help solve the stepping stone problem.

When you have trouble finding good ideas next time. Remember that it is a very useful tool to overcome the stepping stone problem. Take one step back and

1. dissect the ideas that you already have. Identify their components.
2. play around and combine these components to generate even more ideas.
3. get novelty from somewhere else. This could be something that exists in other areas or a novel technology (think of AI nowadays).

Reference to that interesting article of Michiel Stock and Thomas Gorochowski :

Michiel Stock, Thomas E. Gorochowski, Open-endedness in synthetic biology: A route to continual innovation for biological design. Sci. Adv. 10, eadi3621 (2024). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adi3621