What is a novel idea?…

How do you know exactly that idea that you have come upon is a novel idea?…

I think it is very difficult to come with a totally novel idea, because everything that you come up with, I am pretty sure about that, is already done before.

Believe me, telling from experience…

But it is not impossible to come up with a novel idea

I think, one can come up with a novel and original idea, if and only if, his basics are very strong. So to come up with a novel idea your basics should be very strong and another thing that I found particularly helpful and I think not alot of people do here is, to skim through alot of papers, believe me it helps. The more papers you read, the more ideas you get.

Another thing is that the more diverse your readings are , the more good ideas you can come upon, so as a student of CS/AI, I should just not read papers about AI, I should also delve into other sciences and take inspiration from other sciences.

Another thing that is much important than a novel idea is a novel problem, I think if you come across a novel problem and work on that, and solve it, that is much more important that a novel idea, even if your solution is not that novel, but because of that novel problem will your solution be novel.

So, novel problem > novel idea