Harry Nyquist

In the book "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation" on page 135, there is an interesting nugget. Apparently, the patent lawyers at Bell Labs were trying to figure out why some people churned out way more patents than others. They crunched a ton of data and discovered something super interesting.

Turns out, the one thing these productive geniuses had in common (besides being smart enough to get hired by Bell Labs) was... breakfast and lunch. Specifically, sharing meals with an electrical engineer named Harry Nyquist.

Now, Harry wasn’t out here handing people ideas on a silver platter. But what he did do was get people talking, thinking, and sparking ideas just by being curious and encouraging. One scientist said, “He drew people out, got them thinking.”

Be Harry.Meet people in small groups, discuss ideas (not people or events), stretch the ideas with hypotheticals and exagerrations, and bounce them off each other. This also plays into the Ads 2.0 philosophy.