Bad ideas can spread much more easily than good ones. Why? As Seth Godin has pointed out, an idea truly resonates when it:

Grabs attention: The first impression is intriguing and demands further exploration.

Builds on existing knowledge: It’s easily understood because the audience already grasps the foundational concepts.

This explains why online ideas and memes often go viral. They’re designed to be interesting, simple, and believable – perfect for quick consumption and sharing. But none of that guarantees they’re actually good ideas, which are likely to be more complex and harder to understand.

In a world grappling with big problems, it’s tempting to latch onto seemingly easy solutions. Take, for instance, the UK government’s recent proposal to prescribe weight-loss jabs to unemployed people with obesity. On the surface, it seems like a win-win:  

• Interesting: It’s a radio phone-in type issue that will generate both outrage and serious debate.  It builds on stereotypes that people will understand: fat poor people not working.
• Simple: The solution appears straightforward – give jabs to help people lose weight, improve health, and re-enter the workforce. What could be easier?
• Believable: It’s backed by the government and involves medical professionals, lending it credibility. The UK Prime Minister himself say it’s “very important.” So it must be.

But beneath this seemingly simple solution lies a web of complexities. Obesity is a multifaceted issue influenced by poverty, genetics, mental health, and more. While weight-loss jabs might address a symptom, they don’t tackle the root causes.

Bad ideas always avoid the root cause.

I’m all for testing things out, and Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro may be miracle drugs, but this idea has flaws.

Linking weight loss to employment raises ethical red flags. Is it fair to incentivise weight loss for unemployed people? And who says obesity is why they aren’t working anyway?

Focusing solely on medication might divert attention and resources from addressing the underlying causes of obesity, such as promoting low cost food, healthy eating habits and creating supportive environments for physical activity.  

Questions linger about the long-term sustainability and cost-effectiveness of this approach. What happens when people stop taking the jabs? Will they regain the weight? Will this create a cycle of dependency?

I was listening to the manager of a community centre that provides fitness and exercise classes talk about how, due to funding cuts and energy prices, it would likely soon close for business. His suggestion was that free, or subsidised, access to community facilities would allow people to socialise and improve their physical and mental health.

That sounds a better idea to me than pharmaceutical interventions, but it’s a harder problem to solve, and won’t get you any headlines.

Adam Lent makes a good point too:

Interesting new approach to generating economic growth. Let one set of corporations get rich creating a health problem and then use public money to pay another set of corporations for their “solution” to that problem. (And I guess there’s probably a third set of corporations somewhere ready to take money to ‘solve’ the unforeseen problems created by the solution.) ☹️

The notion that good ideas automatically win out is a myth. Bad ideas, especially those that tap into our desire for quick fixes, can easily gain traction and crowd out more nuanced solutions.

Just like a new Director in a organisation, cash strapped politicians are always on the lookout for quick fixes – which is fertile ground for bad ideas.

Bad ideas can share several features:

They take a complex problem and apply a one-shot solution: the silver bullet that fails to identify the root causes.

They are easy to understand, and don’t require you to know much about the subject.

They worked somewhere else. ‘This company have this best practice and it has worked – so just apply that here.’

They are short term in their scope. ‘If we do this, then that will happen by the end of the year.’

The foundational knowledge they build upon is rooted in stereotypes or even prejudice.

Complex problems are hardly ever solved with easily understandable ideas. As Matt Ridley writes – breakthroughs emerge when we have a “willingness to put in the hours, to experiment and play, to try new things, to take risks— characteristics that for some reason are found in young, newly prosperous societies and no longer in old, tired ones.”

You can’t stop bad ideas – nor should we attempt to. We need mad, bad and dangerous ideas if we are to innovate. But they should be tamed before being unleashed.

To prevent bad ideas gaining traction, we need to foster a culture of thoughtful innovation. This involves clearly defining problems, encouraging diverse perspectives and collaboration, and implementing a structured ideation process with thorough research and prototyping.

This creates an environment where the good ideas flourish and bad ones are quickly identified and refined.