The idea trigger

I used to attend department seminars on topics when I joined grad school all pertaining to my major industrial engineering. This is how the process goes, you understand what the speaker is going to speak on for the first couple of slides( which accounts for less than the first five minutes) and then for the next hour nothing makes sense.
Turns out it is still of utmost important to attend these seminars. The reason( my favorite professor and a friend explained) is pretty simple: they give you ideas. Research ideas for a new topic. It was eye opening to find out that my professor(with a brilliant intellect) also didn't understand most of the lectures.
Listening to the essence of what people are doing, might make you think of other ways to do it, or make you think about something unrelated.
Ideas are generated when we engage into either a) hardcore thinking b)when are minds are opened by someone else's creativity into unleashing the thought process, and activities which engage you to do that even for sometime are invaluable.