Where do ideas come from? It’s a question as likely to evoke answers as pregnant with possibilities as that other question children sometimes ask about babies.

Do ideas spring forth in our dreams? Are they more likely to emerge while we’re taking a shower? Or are ideas the result of the connections our minds complete between even disparate things?

I’m no expert. But I suspect it’s all of the above. And then some. 

I can tell you from experience ideas invariably show up when they’re least expected and your brain is seemingly occupied with another task. That’s why the well-worn advice to keep a pencil and slip of paper handy is actually sound. You swear you won’t forget. Then you do. Almost immediately.

I wish my eureka moments involved computer technology or stock market strategies or something more lucrative. What I most often realize is there’s a better word to choose or a better way to write a sentence. It’s useful. I’m grateful. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s less likely to make me rich.

It’s been my good fortune over the past 20 years to observe the origin and subsequent development of lots of ideas. Great ideas. Not my own, mind you. I’m writing, of course, about businesses.

Every business — and business owner, for that matter — is as unique as a snowflake. But they also share some things in common. For example: Many businesses are born from the identification of a problem or need and the realization there’s a better way to solve that problem or fill that need. Perhaps it’s a brand new product or service. Perhaps it’s a method to supply an existing product or service cheaper or more efficiently.

One of my favorite business stories — make that series of stories — involved an inventive entrepreneur who saw the problem with stacking expensive cookware inside kitchen cabinets. He thought, as many entrepreneurs do, there’s got to be a better way. His better way was a sliding wooden rail with hooks from which pots and pans could be hung inside cabinets. He made one as a gift for his wife, but soon realized the commercial potential. He secured a patent and started making them and selling them online. As his enterprise evolved, he developed other products and established relationships with vendors and distributors. His venture attracted considerable attention in the industry. That inventive entrepreneur and his wife ultimately sold their company. I got to write about it nearly from start to finish.

Not every idea leads to a successful business venture, of course. But I’d contend every successful business venture starts with an idea. There’s an important distinction, and that’s what follows realization. The same inventive entrepreneur I wrote so many stories about never considered his experience unusual. Lots of people have ideas, he said. Few ever do anything about them.

Perhaps the better question isn’t where ideas come from, but what we’re willing to do about them.

Phil Castle is editor of the Business Times. Reach him at phil@thebusinesstimes.com or 424-5111.