Where ideas come from

Have you experienced cryptomnesia?

It’s where we mistakenly believe a current idea is our own creation when in fact we’ve ‘encountered it previously and then forgotten it,’ (American Psychological Association)

What the heck?!

So some of our blindingly great ideas aren’t that original?

Correct. We’ve gathered them from other places, forgotten about them, woken up one day and thought we’ve had a genius moment!

It's known as 'inadvertent plagiarism' or 'unconscious plagiarism'. And of course there’s outright plagiarism too. 😡

When our ideas have similarity to others, we could be experiencing cryptomnesia, unaware of the sources of our thinking.

We end up replicating existing ideas or we’re influenced by them (unknowingly) when we’re sorting and filtering our thoughts.

The world needs us to be more creative, to solve tricky problems and adapt to changing circumstances.

It’s worth the effort then to be more original ... and it’s also worth the effort to sharpen our own originality so we all diversify the idea pool.