We all have those fleeting creative ideas and flashes of inspiration that come to us throughout the day. Maybe it’s an idea for a new business, invention, piece of art, or writing. Or perhaps it’s just a creative approach to tackling a problem or doing a task more efficiently. But how many of those ideas do we actually write down, let alone develop and implement?
Most of us are missing out on cultivating and harnessing the full potential of our creativity. We let those seedling ideas come and go without nurturing them into something bigger. The research paper “Curating collections of ideas: Museum as metaphor in the management of creativity” draws an insightful parallel between how museums curate collections of art and artifacts – and how we can take a similar “curator” mindset to organizing and building on our own personal collections of ideas.
Just like museum curators meticulously acquire, develop, maintain, and promote pieces for their exhibitions and collections, we, too, can be curators of our own creative thoughts and concepts. The researchers propose that by taking a curatorial approach to manage our ideas, we can maximize their relevance, usefulness, and innovative potential over time rather than letting them dissipate into the ether of our overcrowded minds.
So, what exactly would it mean to curate your ideas like a museum curator? Here are some key takeaways and tips:
Acquire Ideas Relentlessly
Whether it’s your own notebook jottings or notes app, make a practice of studiously recording every creative thought and burst of inspiration as soon as it occurs to you. Don’t dismiss anything as too small, silly or insignificant – capture it first, then curate and develop it later. Museum curators don’t discard interesting pieces before considering how they may fit into a future collection or exhibit.
Keep an “ideas” journal with you at all times to quickly write down or record any flashes of creativity as they come to you throughout the day. Set phone reminders to prompt journaling regularly. Microsoft’s OneNote can take typed and handwritten notes. There are even apps that use AI to automatically capture your handwritten notes, drawings, etc., as digital records.
Develop Ideas Over Time
Just as curators develop exhibits around specific themes and ideas, look for connections, patterns, and areas of overlap between the various ideas you’ve captured. What common threads or more significant concepts begin to emerge? Use mind mapping, outlines, and other techniques to expand individual thoughts into more fleshed-out storylines, frameworks, or project plans.
Think about how multiple ideas could interconnect or build on each other into a larger endeavor—maybe combining 3 seemingly separate ideas for businesses into a visionary new platform or service offering. Regularly review and iterate on your ideas journal to let new perspectives and approaches percolate.
Maintain and Organize Your Collection
Museum curators maintain detailed records and archives about the provenance of the pieces in their collections. They carefully track, categorize, and store artifacts in optimal environments to preserve them over time.
Similarly, we should be disciplined about maintaining our personal “collections” of ideas in easily accessible and organized ways. Use a digital notes app or project management system like Notion, Evernote or Trello to house and structure all your written ideas, mindmaps, sketches and other related files.
Tag and categorize ideas based on topic areas or types (e.g., new businesses, writing concepts, product ideas, etc). Develop an intuitive taxonomy for yourself so you can easily browse and locate ideas when inspiration strikes again in a certain domain.
Revisit older ideas periodically to look at them through a fresh lens. Our perspectives and interests naturally evolve over time, so recycling past concepts could reveal new applications or mashup opportunities we didn’t initially envision.
Find the Right Ideas for the Audience and Occasion
Successful museum curators put tremendous thought into which specific artworks or artifacts will resonate most with their target audiences for a given exhibition. They look for the right blend of familiarity and surprise, as well as popular and niche appeal. They know when to pull out their permanent collection of “greatest hits” and when to spotlight more unconventional pieces.
In the same way, we should be informed about pushing each idea to the most suitable “audiences” and real-world applications to increase resonance and impact. Some ideas from our personal collection may be better suited for hobbies or personal interest projects. While others could have professional or entrepreneurial potential if appropriately positioned.
Get feedback from different friends, mentors, and peers to validate which of your ideas have the most mainstream relevance versus which ones may be too niche or ahead of their time for the current environment.
Look for creative ways to integrate many of your smaller, raw ideas into a larger passion project, side business, or even professional pivot that ties it all together into an audience-friendly concept or framework. Just like a well-curated museum exhibit!
Balance Incremental and Radical Ideas
The paper discusses how a key challenge for both museum curators and managers of creativity is maintaining a balance between incremental (or more evolutionary) ideas/works, and radical (or revolutionary) ones that really push boundaries and conventional thinking.
Take stock of your ideas collection and assess which ones feel more like refinements or variations on the status quo and which represent more paradigm-shifting breakthroughs or leaps of creative thinking. Ensure you don’t neglect or discard those wild, “fringe” ideas simply because they feel more out-of-the-box. Radical ideas are more challenging to cultivate and require more audacity, but they can be the seeds for groundbreaking innovations.
On the flip side, don’t dismiss more incremental or iterative concepts as uninspired or boring. Some of your best, most elegant, and most useful ideas could simply be creative optimizations or remixes of things already out there.
Create separate placeholders or staging areas for housing your purely incremental ideas and moonshot “concept exhibit” ideas, respectively. This will make the differences more visible and allow you to maintain balance. Then, get feedback on which portfolio makes the most sense to operationalize or develop first based on your current bandwidth and goals.
Make Room for New Exhibits
No museum can endlessly add to its permanent collections without periodically rotating older items out and bringing in fresh material, keeping things dynamic and interesting. Similarly, we shouldn’t allow our personal idea inventories to become bloated and stagnant without some judicious pruning.
Look at your oldest ideas through a new lens – do any of those concepts feel tired or like they’ve become obsolete? Have certain interests and ambitions faded away where some ideas are no longer relevant?
Don’t be too precious about past ideas that have run their course. Retire them to create space for new explorations. Add ideas to a “dormant” backlog area where they can be easily resurfaced later if inspiration strikes for dusting them off. But clear the decks for unfettered new concept development.
Promote Your Best Ideas Out Into the World
So many people’s brilliant ideas sadly never make it out of their notebooks or mind vaults and into reality. But the museum curator’s role doesn’t stop at simply acquiring and preserving collections behind the scenes. Their entire purpose is elevating and showcasing the very best works to be experienced by the public in ways that capture interest and delight audiences.
Once you’ve meticulously curated and cultivated your most promising ideas, put together a plan for promoting them out into the world through actual execution. Bring your prototypes and pitches to networking events, post them online, and share them with friends to get constructive feedback. Collaborate with others to bring your ideas to life as products or services. Apply for competitions, accelerators, and funding opportunities.
Go through your collection periodically and pick your “greatest hits” and passion projects to prioritize and mobilize resources behind actively. Finally, turn those creative sparks into tangible results that can impact others beyond your own mind.
Your Mind is a Living, Breathing Museum
The goal of this curatorial mindset is to reimagine the rich creative potential within your own consciousness as a living, breathing museum of ideas. Some pieces will be completed, refined works you want to put on permanent public display (ideas brought into existence.) Others may be works-in-progress benefitting from iterations before a grand unveiling. And some will remain irreverent, fringe concepts to simply savor from the comforting resonance they bring.
But by applying the discipline and sensibilities of a museum curator, you’ll elevate your ability to honor and maximize the value of your unique creative energies and flashes of inspiration over a lifetime. Don’t let those ideas dissipate into the ephemeral ether—meticulously catalog and cultivate them to bring your personal best works to the world.