Good students wrestle with their sentences because they care about finding the right expression. It takes them longer to find a good idea to write about because they know from experience that the first idea is rarely that great and good questions do not fall into their laps.

They spend more time in the library to get a better overview of the literature, which leads to more reading, which means that they have to juggle more information.

Having read more does not automatically mean having more ideas.

Especially in the beginning, it means having fewer ideas to work with, because you know that others have already thought of most of them.

Good students also look beyond the obvious. They peek over the fences of their own disciplines – and once you have done that, you cannot go back and do what everyone else is doing, even if you now must deal with heterogeneous ideas that come without a manual on how they might fit together.

All that means is that a system is needed to keep track of the ever-increasing pool of information, which allows one to combine different ideas in an intelligent way with the aim of generating new ideas.