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

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

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