Good Ideas Are Around Us!

After the midterm presentation and a terrible hurricane, we met our new guests today at Poly. This time, the most special thing is that these two guys have close relation to us. Jeremy Pease, who is as old as us, has opened his second company. Jason Williams, who was just graduated from IDM of Poly, also operates his own business. Thus, today’s lecture is special and interesting, because the guests are the people around us, and we can have a closely and deeply communication with them.

First, I want to talk about the SpaceSplitter, which is the second company of Jeremy Pease. I have to say that it is a really cool and convenient idea for us who have roommates. Basically, it is a website to deal with the trifles among roommates, such as sharing daily articles and arranging the cleaning stuff. It solves the common and basic problems among roommates. Although it seems like not worth mentioning, but I want to stress the idea which they have had. It is a really wonderful idea and it happens come from our daily life. A large amount people have roommates, even have problems with their roommates, but why does only Jeremy think about it and solve it?

That is what I want to say, where good ideas come from. Not like the book written by Steven Johnson, Jeremy’s example is easy to understand and is about our daily life. In fact, everybody met these problem more or less, but some of them ignore them, some of them although found them, but they cannot continue doing research. Only a small group of people, like Jeremy, found them and did enough research on them, and finally found a good way to solve them. That’s also the way he makes himself look different.

It reminds me of the EMUSIC, its manager once said why they were different. They have a totally different way to sell music compared with iTunes, so they have a good position in the competition. However, Jeremy also did that. He found something that others may ignore, so I believe that Jeremy and his company must be successful and earn profits. 

A good idea is the most important factor in the way to succeed. No matter to a big company or a small company, it can employ employers have a same ability in using technology. However, why some companies can produce creative and attractive products, while some cannot? I believe that the key is that the different ideas they have.

Just as our mid-term presentation, we had five groups to develop social apps. In fact, the first thing we need to do is to find out what we want to do. That is why we spent a lot of time to think what kind of apps we will develop. However, we can find it in any ways, for example, we can try to find a good idea from our daily life, we can also find a good idea from our field trips. It is the real reason why we have this kind of class. However, that is not enough, we also need to find inspiration from the things around us. That is a simple but really important way to get ideas.

That is what I said, good ideas are around us.