In my personal "going out, meet people" was not such an effective strategy. I tried this when I first moved to New York, I went to all kinds of parties, events, galleries, festivals, met lots of new people, etc. But in the end it didn't really help much. I had a great time, but as for ideas not so much, since I'm mostly focused on enjoying when I'm doing these activities. To be fair, these activities <i>do</i> sometimes give you ideas but it's not as effective as I expected.<p>On the other hand, reading lots of books, reading lots of online papers and articles, learning new things, watching videos of people experiencing stuff, etc. have been effective for me. First, these are all "indirect experiences" and they give me inspiration without me having to directly experience them. Second, I do these things not directly in search for ideas but use them as inspiration to come up with new ideas myself. For example, you watch someone do something on a video, you can be like "what if?" => That's an idea.