[syndicatedjelly]

It sounds like you're looking for a structured approach to creating new ideas.

There's no need to do that. Turning innovation into a process is exactly what happens at big, stodgy companies. They all are marching to the same drumbeat, innovating in exactly the same ways. It's all bland and boring - the really unique interesting ideas are an exception to the norm.

All those papers in the Stanford CS syllabus, guess who else has read them? Every other CS student that has ever went to Stanford. There are thousands of people who have had the exact same ideas you will have when you read those papers.

Just let your interests drive you. Let yourself fall down Wikipedia and reading holes. Traverse ancient web 1.0 sites with terrible design and a lack of meaning. Find a totally out of date computer science book and read it cover to cover. It's weird how the most dull, ancient history ends up being a wealth of ideas - just because no one has thought to look there yet.

[Eric_BB]

More than anything, I’m trying to expose myself to the current technological front because it’s likely that some ideas there haven’t been implemented yet. I totally agree that there are ideas to be found in past situations, and every now and then, an incredible leap forward emerges thanks to some ancient theorem. In fact, I believe it makes sense to combine both approaches. As for the competition of ideas, I don’t see it as much of a problem. Ideas can be combined with others, and even if the exact same idea comes up, there are still numerous fields where it can be implemented