In science, we try to disconfirm our assumptions. We can actually short circuit the effect by focusing on quality instead of quantity. The goal isn't for us to have a lot of ideas; it's to have good ones. What I love is that your executive function is about making an executive decision here and not going with all this automaticity of human cognition.
In this episode we sit down with Jeremy Utley of the Stanford d.school to discuss his new book, Ideaflow, which is all about how to create a practice for producing and trading ideas in massive quantities – whether in an organization or as an individual entrepreneur or content-creator – along with a system for sorting the garbage from the gold. We discuss, among many other things, why it is important to focus on input more than output, how to stop obsessing over quality while generating quantity, and peanut butter pumps.