An old friend asked recently: “I have an idea. Can we chat? I want to know: is it original? is it viable?”
After reviewing almost a thousand applications, the JFDI admissions committee has become hypersensitive to signs of domain expertise.
Every batch there are certain popular ideas that multiple teams apply with. Each of those teams seems to think they’re the only people to have that idea. Anyone familiar with the history of simultaneous invention won’t be surprised. Steven Johnson goes into detail in a bookand a TED talk.
Is the idea original? If you have to ask, the answer is probably “no”. But really it depends.
Is the idea viable? Easy. “Who knows? Let’s find out!”
To be less glib, I drew a couple of graphs, to try to express the complexity of these simple-seeming questions.
