I just went through a months long conversation, via the Internet, with an old college friend who was in philosophy. Here is the way I came to think of it. We can have rather spontaneous and undisciplined idea. There is nothing wrong with that. "I have an idea that the potential difference between clouds overhead and earth could create enough current to harvest hydrogen to fuel my outdoor pizza oven." That's just an idea. It's half baked at best. So far, my pizzas are not even half baked.

On the other hand, somebody comes to me as says, "It seems like the harder I work, the less ginseng I can find in the forest." "Excuses, excuses...Just dry up, will you?" Only later I have the same kind of experience, and I begin to realize that when there is a limited resource of some kind, say minnows in the farm pond, the first time I go out in the spring I throw a net in once and get all the minnows I want to go fishing on the river that day. But I've taken down the probability of encountering minnows in the pond simply by removing some of them. By the end of the summer I've got a friend helping me by dragging a seine through the whole pond, and I get hardly any minnows. I stop complaining and start thinking, and all of a sudden I say to myself, "I think I know what is going on." Proud of myself, I announce what I call "The concept of diminishing returns."

A concept is any way of expressing the "I know how this works" realization.

The word concept comes to us from Latin and is literally translated - "system of understanding". So, a concept is a set of views on something that are related and form an interrelated system.

The concept answers the question - how to achieve the set goal. In fact, it means a single idea or strategy that you can use to solve a specific problem.

For example, the project concept may consist of the following factors:

• time spent;
• relevance of the project;
• goals and objectives;
• the number of its participants;
• project format;
• expected consequences of its implementation and a number of other factors.

It is worth noting that concepts can belong to different fields: history, philosophy, mathematics, art, technology, etc.

Concept and plan are closely related. The first sets the direction to the goal, the second gradually paves the way to achieve it. The concept consists of specific ideas and principles that should be fundamental to society.