There is an article printed in M.I.T.'s Technology Review written by Isaac Asimov about how people get new ideas. I suggest you go read it. 

"Probably more inhibiting than anything else is a feeling of responsibility. The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren’t paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues."