Discovering Amazing Ideas

When inspiration strikes, it doesn't feel like a laborious effort (even if there have been countless of hours of anguish leading up to that discovery), and in OK Go's ideation talk, the band describes a similar situation for themselves. Over the past ten or so years, OK Go has become an internet sensation thanks not as much to their charming indie pop as to their truly mind-boggling music videos. In their TED Talk, the band discusses how they come up with their pie-in-the-sky ideas for each new single.

The typical process for executing an ambitious idea it to come up with plan to achieve that idea and work through the steps. The issue with that system, as far as OK Go sees it, is that it doesn't give people a very high chance of flawless success, especially when there are too many moving parts. Instead, the band looks to gather as many untried ideas as possible and simply play with them, eventually settling on something that they know they can execute and turn into a great product. They essentially skip the planning and go straight from ideation to execution, at least in terms of how they feel throughout; it feels like they found their ideas rather than thinking of them.