Re: how to judge creative ideas

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 14:28 -0400 6/10/02, Michael Edmiston wrote:
> Who is more correct?  Are practical uses from "lark experiments" rare, or
> are they commonplace.
They are probably rare, but I suspect that the payoff from a few
successful "larks," more than makes up for the large number of larks
for which there is no payoff, or small payoff.

Sometimes we have to look carefully to see where the payoff came from
some "lark" or off-the-wall idea that someone played with at one
time, but didn't pay off until years or decades or even generations
later, and then only after a string of other apparently unrelated
"larks" were put together, sometimes almost haphazardly, to finally
get to the payoff. James Burke has almost made a career out of
tracing these "Connections."

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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