One of the primary ways we seek to build a competitive edge isto come up with great ideas – ideas that give us an advantage overcompetitors.  But there seems to be more competitors everyday, so the pressure to create a more unique value proposition isamplified daily. So where do ideas come from? Let's start withmoments of inspiration.

Some good ideas come from a eureka moment. Classical scholarswill recall the story of the Greek philosopher Archimedes ofSyracuse, who coined the term. He was pondering a problem — how todetermine whether a gold crown given to his patron was real solidgold or a worthless substitute.

As he was thinking of the problem, he went to take his dailybath, got into a full bathtub, observed that the more his body sankinto it, the more water ran out of the tub, and realized he hadfound a method for measuring the volume of irregularly-shapedobjects, meaning he could find out whether or not the crown waspure gold. When he figured this out Archimedes shouted, “Eureka!”(roughly meaning “I've got it”).