Generate a lot of ideas and model some of them to push your project forward.
Michael Polanyi, the Hungarian polymath said, “To have a great idea, you have to have lots of ideas.” The Dyson vacuum was the culmination of more than 4,000 prototypes. As for vacuums, so for innovation! Imagining lots of different ways to address a problem is called, “populating the solution space.” No problem or situation has a single solution. Great solutions often have hundreds of new ideas in them. Brainstorming and thinking up ideas any time of the day ultimately helps you create a solution that succeeds. And don’t be deceived by verbal descriptions of ideas. Visualize and model them. At first a sketch and then a paper model. Make a prototype to try. At each iteration you’ll better understand your idea and get much more meaningful feedback from others.