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- The Taxonomy of Ideas
Last week I wrote about whether AI is actually intelligent.
One of the comment things I hear is: “Yeah, but AI can’t come up with real ideas.”
So I asked myself: What is an idea? And what makes one good?
So I tried breaking down the ‘fabric’ of ideas. How can we make a taxonomy of ideas or a break down of what types of ideas exist.
It was trickier than I expected — and I’m 100% open to feedback, rewrites, or complete overhauls. In fact, I’d love to build this with others. But here’s my first stab at it.
I’ve styled them like tarot cards.
A) Why not? GPT-4o can render them in seconds.
B) Persona 3 vibes. If you get the reference, we’re friends now.
So here they are: the Major Arcanas of Ideation.
🧱 I. The Builder
Combine. Reduce. Scale.
The Builder shapes ideas like stone — through tools, structure, and sweat. They don’t wait for inspiration. They tinker. Mash products together. Strip things down to the studs.
Think:
A smart ring that merges 4 health trackers into 1
A productivity app that fuses voice AI + calendar
A shampoo and face wash combo for minimalist travelers
Like Steve Jobs removing every button but one from the iPhone.
Creative Prompt: What are the essential parts? Can they be rearranged, or stripped down to something cleaner?
🌉 II. The Bridge
Borrow. Transfer. Translate.
The Bridge brings wisdom from one domain into another. This is my favorite kind of idea — the ones that jump industries.
I’m constantly saying, “Have you seen what X is doing in Y? That could change Z if we brought it over.”
Breakthroughs happen when two fields touch — AI in healthcare, gaming in education, memes in economics.
Apply game mechanics to tax filing: “TurboTax meets Duolingo”
Use tools from competitive esports to train enterprise teams
Import South Korean skincare principles into a male grooming brand
Swiss engineer George de Mestral noticed burrs clinging to his dog’s fur and thought: what if we could manufacture that cling? Velcro was born. Nature became blueprint.
Prompt: Where else has this problem already been solved?
🔁 III. The Mirror
Reframe. Invert. Reveal.
The Mirror doesn’t invent new parts — it changes how we see them.
It challenges the norm. It asks “what if the opposite were true?”
A startup that pays you to work out, instead of charging a gym fee
Reframe “ghosting” as a premium feature in a dating app
Turn feedback into a social game: “Can you be the best reviewer in the company?”
Superhuman: Email isn’t boring productivity—it’s a premium, high-performance tool. Turned a mundane utility into a status-symbol product.
Prompt: What is being assumed? What if that were flipped?
P.S. — If you like the way I think about ideas, you’ll love this.
I’m a shareholder in a company called Athyna — they help companies find exceptional talent from places like Google, AWS, Uber, Accenture, and more.
Great ideas are nothing without great execution — and that starts with the right people.
From engineering to design to operations, Athyna matches you with top-tier talent, AI-powered and human-vetted.
If you’re building something big (or about to start), check them out.
🌀 IV. The Storm
Emerge. Mutate. Spiral.
The Storm doesn’t obey. It creates through chaos — through randomness, evolution, iteration.
It’s messy, but powerful. Think of memes, mutations, or ideas born from endless prototypes.
A community-led Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) with no roadmap
Pharma researchers run simulations on thousands of small molecules to see which ones bind to a target protein. No grand theory. Just evolutionary screening until something sticks.
An AI artist that learns from noise
James Dyson built 5,127 prototypes over 15 years before finalizing the first bagless vacuum.
Prompt: What would happen if I let this evolve freely?
🚫 V. The Void
Subtract. Observe. Sense absence.
The Void whispers what others ignore. It senses gaps — the silence between the notes.
an bootcamp education system that caters for those earning <$400 a month
AI tools focused on a specific niche that isn’t tech savvy such as building contractors
Transport systems across parts of Africa & Asia
Clearbit saw empty CRM fields not as a nuisance, but as a market — and built a business by filling in the blanks.
Prompt: What isn’t here, but should be? What’s being ignored?
🌙 VI. The Dreamer
Impose. Imagine. Transcend.
The Dreamer doesn’t derive. It declares.
It builds new worlds from raw vision — not to fix a problem, but to create possibility.
Every myth, every sci-fi technology, every paradigm-shifting vision — starts here.
A wearable that lets you record dreams for playback the next morning
A social network built around shared imagination, not photos
An education system powered by a personalized AI mentor for every child
Neuralink didn’t start with an incremental feature. They imagined direct brain-to-computer communication — and built toward it.
Prompt: If I could rewrite reality, what would I make possible?
Every legendary idea started with a lens.
A shift. A perspective.
This framework isn’t for labeling what already exists.
It’s for unlocking what doesn’t.
Not every idea will be great.
But every great idea has a shape.
The only question is — can you see it before everyone else does?
— Ajay