Quality arises from quantity
The ideas of highest quality tend to emerge from a high quantity pool of ideas (most of which are low quality).
One of the biggest surprises for new students at the d.school —whether they are head of a major company or were head of their high school class—is the idea that quantity creates quality. —David M. Kelley
source: Ideaflow – Utley and Klebahn (2022)
It’s widely assumed that there’s a tradeoff between quantity and quality—if you want to do better work, you have to do less of it—but this turns out to be false. In fact, when it comes to idea generation, quantity is the most predictable path to quality. “Original thinkers,” Stanford professor Robert Sutton notes, “will come up with many ideas that are strange mutations, dead ends, and utter failures. The cost is worthwhile because they also generate a larger pool of ideas— especially novel ideas.”
source: Originals – Grant, Sandberg (2016)
Liquid networks create environments where partial ideas can connect:
A metropolis shares one key characteristic with the Web: both environments are dense, liquid networks where information easily flows along multiple unpredictable paths....Liquid networks create an environment where those partial ideas can connect; they provide a kind of dating service for promising hunches. They make it easier to disseminate good ideas, of course, but they also do something more sublime: they help complete ideas.
source: Where Good Ideas Come From – Johnson (2011), (p. 47)
see also: