Brainstorming Ideas

People have been successful in extracting the wealth of the earth for their use but they have not learned to seek for the untold wealth which lies hidden in their own hearts and minds. It is in human beings as it is in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold concealed.

To get ideas is a matter of creative thinking. It is a method for those who wish to get results in their own fields of work and in their own lives, for people with ideas live more enjoyably and more profitably than those without. A method of producing ideas is fundamental for any occupation and for life itself. Everything that man produces begins as an idea. From the wrapper on a loaf of bread or the tube of shave cream all the way up to the latest best-seller; from nylon stockings to television; from seedless grapes to a magazine printed in Braille for the blind—all began as an idea.

Most of our ideas come from someone else. Where does the someone else get them? Is there any way we can get an idea, better yet, a succession of ideas, by ourselves? Yes, there is a way, and I don’t mean inspiration which some people would like to meet by appointment in a lunch room.

Developing an idea is much like developing an invention. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter and founder of the Royal Academy, tells us that invention is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory. Despite the ingenious preacher, nothing can come of nothing, at least by man made efforts. He who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations.

Accordingly, the idea searcher explores human experience and thought—history, psychology, science—anything and everything for analogies and stepping stones for the imagination. The more extensive our acquaintance with the work of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be our own ingenuity. Then when an image comes to us, we can use it, juggle with it, be receptive to its possibilities, not simply hold it isolated as an amusing or interesting curiosity, but have it as a basis for experiment. Most of us get ideas that we do not develop in this way, and nothing ever comes of them.

Some people have their heads full of so-called bright ideas all the time, but only too often they are merely half-baked notions. The techniques suggested herein should improve the quality of the ideas so they really become workable and useful. Practicing better methods need not mean getting more ideas when one is prolific already, but it should mean getting better ones. To be receptive to the creative impulse, one must have a certain discontent, a confidence in the potential ideal, a sense that betterment is always possible. This gives birth to constructive curiosity.

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