Is Novelty Alone the Hallmark of a Monster Idea?

But what if originality isn’t the only thing an idea needs to grow monstrous? What if there’s more to the puzzle, what if novelty alone isn’t enough? Could it be that a truly monstrous idea has to be more than original? Indeed, it does.

Novelty is a wonderful tool, but novelty isn’t an idea, nor is it the most powerful characteristic of an idea. We’ve all experienced amazing ideas that weren’t novel. They were a perfect twist of an existing idea or the betterment of something that’s been around for a while. No one would argue smartphones aren’t a monster idea. But they’ve completely changed our communications culture and they certainly aren’t a novel idea. Cell phones have been around for years, and the internet has been a part of our culture for decades. Novelty didn’t make the idea of the smartphone monstrous. There had to be other factors involved.