Why Your Best Ideas Come from Unexpected Places

Harvard Online’s Innovation Strategy: Tools and Frameworks for Business teaches learners how to cultivate those unexpected insights and turn them into better solutions. As course faculty David Ricketts and Shuya Gong demonstrate, innovation grows most powerfully when you deliberately break patterns, explore beyond your expertise, and stay open to what surprises you.

Why Great Ideas Come from Outside Your Comfort Zone

Most professionals rely on their training, industry norms, and familiar methods. But according to Ricketts, that can limit creativity. He shares a pivotal moment early in his career:

“I had an innovation session where I had accountants, HR and attorneys come together to solve a problem…they were able to give me much better ideas because…they weren't bogged down being an expert on the topic, they were able to see the topic from a fresh perspective.”

This is a common pattern. People outside your field see your problem differently. Because they’re not trapped by your assumptions or habits, they often cut straight to simple, powerful insights.

If you’re only sourcing ideas from people who think like you, you’re likely missing perspectives that could unlock your next breakthrough.

In Innovation Strategy: Tools and Frameworks for Business, Ricketts and Gong, along with Harvard Professor David Weitz, show that these unexpected ideas aren’t accidents—you can actively create the conditions for them. Three themes show up again and again in their work with innovators that may surprise you: novelty, curiosity, and prototyping.

Novelty Sparks Better Thinking

“Allowing for randomness matters,” says Shuya Gong, who describes innovation as deeply tied to randomness, curiosity, and a willingness to explore.

She even calls innovation “chaotic good,” a kind of intentional, productive chaos that opens your mind to new concepts:

“Novelty allows you to encounter new things, and then you learn to come up and approach the familiar with a particular new perspective”

Innovation grows through variation. New places, new people, new methods: these experiences give your brain fresh inputs that lead to unexpected connections.

Small choices to vary your routine, talk to someone new, or investigate a seemingly irrelevant detail feed your brain raw material for future breakthroughs.

Novelty expands what you’re able to notice and what you’re able to imagine.

Novelty doesn’t just come from new places, it also comes from new people. Involving collaborators, customers, and external partners in your innovation work exposes you to ideas you’d never arrive at on your own. Our Open Innovation courses walk you through how to design that kind of shared innovation process.

Curiosity Is a Skill, Not a Personality Trait

Gong says she used to see her tendency to notice everything as discouragingly distracting until she realized it was a superpower:

“The things that sparked my attention are worth paying attention to.”

Innovators notice small inconsistencies, surprising behaviors, and seemingly insignificant details. They give those details enough attention to uncover insights others overlook.

In the course, Gong encourages learners to treat curiosity as a practice, not something you either have or don’t. By asking one more question, looking one layer deeper, or watching what people actually do instead of relying on what they say, you uncover opportunities you would have otherwise missed.

Prototyping Creates Breakthroughs You Never Expected

Ricketts shares a personal revelation that reshaped his career:

“Early on I didn't use prototyping as an innovation tool, but as I started to use it, I realized it was one of the most powerful tools for me. I personally create 10x more new ideas by prototyping than with any other method. That’s because as I build the prototype, I have something new in my hands which leads me to think of new ideas, which lead to a new prototype and many more new ideas.”

Prototyping isn’t just a way to refine solutions you’ve already decided on—it’s an idea generator.

When you make ideas tangible, you:

• See flaws and opportunities you couldn’t have spotted in theory
• Invite more concrete feedback from users and stakeholders
• Discover new directions you never would have brainstormed

In other words, building something—anything—can unlock a wave of new possibilities.

Everyone Is Innovative

Shuya Gong shares a powerful reminder:

“Everybody is innovative…problems you are faced with…every single day…you have figured out uniquely how to solve them in your life.”

Ricketts echoes this encouragement:

“Everybody can innovate…you can do this.”

Your best ideas may not appear where you expect them but they are already taking shape in how you solve everyday problems, notice small details, and stay open to change. With the right tools and frameworks, you can learn to recognize those sparks and turn them into solutions with real impact.

If you’re ready to cultivate a mindset of curiosity, iteration, and discovery—and learn how to consistently find innovation in unexpected places—explore Innovation Strategy: Tools and Frameworks for Business from Harvard Online.

Your next great idea may already be around you. This course gives you the tools to see it, shape it, and share it.