I stumbled on a post over at adliterate that talks about how to discover insights.
The crux of the argument being that an insight should astound. That all insights need to be revelations.
No revelation or astonishing disclosure, no insight. Simple.
It’s absurd to me to judge the worth of an idea or a fact on its ability to astound. Doesn’t the worth of that insight then also depending on the knowledge of the receiver? If you thought the earth was flat, discovering that is was round is a pretty astounding – but not that insightful in this day and age.
This is a common argument in ad circles. I see the same approach on the general nature of brands and advertising. It’s all about the nature of something in the absence of its context. Like there are ‘first principles’ hidden in the commonalities of specific cases.
Insight generation is not astrophysics. You can’t take all the insights in the world, examine them, and come up with ‘gravity’. Just not going to work.
5 Responses to “What is an insight?”