Product Design advice - Get a bigger net

I have recently been responding to a series of questions about my design process with Maren Fiorelli,
a design student at Columbia College, Chicago.  One of my responses was the idea that at any one time at least 7 people in the world are working on or having the same ideas as you.  I have also heard said that 'Ideas are out there floating in the ether, they are not your ideas, you just have to pick them up'. 

This interests me.  I picture a field full of ideas butterflies with people with nets running around trying to catch them.  How do you maximise your chances of being able to catch as many good ideas as possible?  Get a bigger net.  If nothing is new and everything a progression, the easiest way to catch ideas is by observing something in one area and applying its function to another.  As an example, someone using a surform to shape wood wonders how it would work on a lemon and so designs a better zester.  There are hundreds of examples of this happening (how Dyson designed his bagless vacuum cleaner), so you have to look at as many different areas as possible and then store that knowledge and apply it to a current project.  Do not just rest in your comfort zone, absorb ideas, take things apart and question everything.