“Great ideas explain the world and one another to us.”

We’re now in the age of information, with anything we want to know readily at our fingertips. The problem with that is that as much as we consume information we don’t take the time to comprehend it, in it’s entirety, in connection with other data. We prefer knowing to thinking because knowing has more immediate value. Big ideas are too much work with little return.  

With the rise of social media, and it seeming to replace print and news, people are becoming more informed in a different way. No longer are lofty ideas and dividing conversation topics the norm. Knowing things is the new cool. Whether that be this celebrity is pregnant, or that internet meme, or this athlete is injured…. By widening our social circles we are diluting our conversations and limiting our intellectual universe. 

Knowing is not the same thing as thinking. Thinking creates big ideas. 

Something to ponder when finding insights for strategy… how much do we use what we know as a crutch to sell instead of adding thought and creating some new meaning? That seems to be the difference between mediocre “ideas” and actual ideas.