Let your good ideas grow....

Several times during my career I had the good fortune to work with Jeff Jonas; he was a really smart computer guy and he went on to become an IBM Fellow. Our projects involved stuff that was pretty challenging, involving things that hadn’t been tried before. He’d start with a single idea, and keep noodling around in his head as his team developed designed concepts. It seemed to take a long time to get those ideas into focus, but once there, they started to multiply, seemingly faster than the rest of us could think. One was Applicant Tracking: that exploded into algorithms to quickly check EEO statistics and projections to make sure we were on track to achieve expected levels of diversity.  Another was trying to guard against collusion: that morphed into finding ways to connect people and place found in more databases than you could naturally collate.  We first had to get comfortable with each new idea, and after that there was no telling how far and wide they could be applied. That’s when innovation gets really interesting: stand back and watch your good ideas multiply today.

John Steinbeck (1902 – 1968): American author (Grapes of Wrath) and winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature