A young man walked into a store to buy a necktie. The blank bare wall behind the tie counter depressed him. What would fill it attractively and increase sales? He experimented with his camera and a darkroom, produced an enlargement more than ten feet long and sold it to the clothing store. He had started an entirely new business idea, now called photo murals that paid him handsomely.

One single observation or interpretation of a sensation has been the turning point of a person’s life in thousands of cases. One single observation has built fortunes, won wars and achieved in any number of cases, which confront us all the time.

The higher mental processes: reasoning, reflection, memory, imagination and so on, are of no value unless the material composing them, sensations, are accurate. Interpretations of the sensation can be no more accurate than the observation thereof. So spare no effort to be a competent observer.

Imagination is not the same as fancy, though they are different exercises of the same plastic or creative faculty. Fancy employs the laws of association capriciously and without purpose. Imagination aims at definite and useful results. Fancy is a passive, drifting affair, while imagination is active and guided. It is subject to control and the more intelligent and planned its control, the more effective its results in creative achievement. “I never thought of it,” is a common remark in many a postmortem analysis of a situation when someone asks, “Why didn’t you do so and so?” In such a case the creative intelligence did not work. The failure was one of imagination, for it is the imagination which looks ahead, supplies, plans, solves, and originates ideas.

Ordinarily when a person is confronted with some disagreeable task which could be made easy by an improved method, they grumble, “Why doesn’t somebody do something about this?” Rarely the victim of such a condition happens to be a person who asks themselves, “Why don’t I do something about this?” The substitution of “I” for somebody makes all the difference in stimulating the imagination. It gives you an open minded, active approach, in which you may strike something that will be effective and rewarding. At least this cannot happen just by doing nothing and waiting for someone else to find a solution.

Do something. Look around where you are, at home, at work, at meal time, while traveling. Select any object, or method. Consider it carefully and see if it can be changed or improved. Stop taking everything for granted as final. Start analyzing in view of today’s different needs and new techniques: lightweight luggage for airplanes; vitamin enriched foods; remote control for TV [Obviously, again, these items were "cutting edge" in 1961. Don't allow this to dissuade you now, however from the same concepts. Looking around you will see any number of things that can use updating, re-engineering to perform a specific function better, or the occasional situation where there simply still isn't something that exists to "get the job done"!]

The constructive imagination does not merely recall images from the memory of experiences in their original form. It rearranges, recombines and re-adapts the factors into a different form. It associates things or ideas in new ways. This is the basis for invention, for artistic creativeness. It is essential for improvement of any kind, for the discovery of new relationships, for adapting old things to new uses. It is the foundation of the idea producing process.

Observation is perception with a purpose. You can be responsive to sensations without either perceiving or observing. This is usually called thoughtlessness, wool gathering, or mind wandering. As has been well said, “Every normal creature has seen the lightning flash, but Benjamin Franklin observed it.” Extend your eyes and your ears into unfamiliar matters and consider continually how some idea gleaned from one of these fields can be put to use by you in your own project. Listening, too, which is much more than keeping your mouth shut, should be cultivated observantly with a view to accuracy and precision.

Observation depends on 2 things: first, trained senses, and second, organized information on the subject of the observation. There is some question whether a keen judge of human nature with indifferent senses can judge a person better than a keen-sensed person who has indifferent knowledge of human nature. The only lesson to take from this debate is to realized that the ideal is to combine keen senses with expansive knowledge of a subject. With limited sense training you’d lack accurate material to combine with your past experience. With limited knowledge you might be so engulfed in details of observation that you couldn’t stand back and view the situation as a whole and give the detail meaning.

Many of the traits we discuss herein, if cultivated, have values beyond helping you to get ideas. Observation is surely one of these. It is to your interest in every way to cultivate your power of observation. The sense of observation may be defined as attention applied not only to your usual occupation but also to every circumstance of life. Far too common is it for us to go on living, year after year, without learning anything from what happens all around us. It is wise, when you look at a thing, to see it. Train yourself to observe not only accurately but quickly. This is at the foundation of making contrasts, similarities, additions, eliminations and proceeding with all the processes involved in the search for ideas.

Observation is necessary to anyone who wishes to progress at all in the field of ideas. It forms the basis of success in art, literature, science, business, government, personal relations and any endeavor. An artist is able to put life into their work because they have observed the subject they wish to represent on the canvas. Playwrights or novelists succeed according to the accuracy of their psychological observations. Knowledge of the human heart requires a sum of experience which can only be gained through extensive observation. The business person must be a keen observer to evaluate the people with whom they deal the goods or services with which they are involved. First hand knowledge based on personal observation makes for confidence, originality, leadership, memory, imagination, purpose, achievement. The basis of all detective work is keen observation and accurate interpretation. Will anyone say a good detective is not an idea producer? Observation and accurate interpretation are the basis of all hidden opportunities.

photo credit: freeparking

We think in pictures, not words. It is important to form clear mental pictures. As you progress in your idea development, see every phase sharply in mind. This specific quality, this accuracy, will be of immense help. The images are the mental reproductions of things previously observed and experienced. They are the raw material of all intellectual work. To have enough of them available, we must have been good observers; more on this presently.

Our sensory powers also enable us to make sharp psychological observations since we can frequently recognize a person’s thoughts from their expressions and realize their state of emotions from their tone of voice. Imagination lets us bring to our minds the pictures of things separated from us by time or space, greatly enlarging the scope of our intellectual activities.

Middle class minds recognize only those relationships that are immediate, obvious and direct. Imagination enables a thinker to discern more inconspicuous analogies as when Newton had his first glimmering of the law of gravitation on noting an apple drop from its twig to the ground. Man, strictly speaking, creates nothing. He can only rearrange and transform elements that already exist. All processes of manufacture presuppose the existence of raw material. Raw material in idea production depends strongly upon imagination, which in turn relies upon observation for its validity.

Before your imagination can produce practically, it is necessary to proceed with a high degree of observation. Otherwise imagination will turn to fantasy and will not jibe with the requirements of reality.

Very few persons know what it is to observe. It isn’t a passive condition of letting your eyes rest upon whatever happens to fall within the limits of your vision. Observation is a highly mental process, requiring intense concentration and exercise of your mental processes. Dr. H. B. Brown has reported in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, for instance, how he experimented by having a plumber come into a classroom while class was being conducted, and tinker with the radiator in plain view of the entire class. A couple of weeks later the hundred and seventeen students in the class were asked to pick this plumber out of a group of six “suspects” who were lined up before them. About one third of the students picked the wrong man. It is fortunate that this was only an experiment and not a criminal trial, or else the wrong identification, based on poor observation, might have convicted the wrong person. But that tragic mistake has happened many times and innocent men and women have been sent up for a term of years, or sacrificed their lives by being wrongly testified against by witnesses who were poor observers.

Man’s imagination enables him to think things out before he does them. Therefore if he perceives an error, he need not actually commit the error. He can discard the process before making the error and use his imagination to avert it and try another method.

The ability to produce ideas relies heavily upon imagination. Imagination is the source from which arise the mental pictures which are essential to the functioning of intelligence. It is the inspiration of all creative production. It has led scientists to all their great discoveries and is the starting point for all new inventions. It is indeed the driving force and guide of all our activity.

Imagination, obviously, is imagining or picturing. It is the power that enables us to record our minds, to remember, to recall at will, pictures of previous experiences, and to recombine these into different forms and impressions. The mind draws the mental pictures it makes from external objects. These pictures can only be created through our own perception and feelings. Each of our senses conveys the picture appropriate to it to the brain. Through the eyes we form visual images composed of line, form, light and color. Our ears provide images of sound in its infinity of combinations. The senses of taste and smell bring us pictures of flavor and perfume while the sense of touch represents to our mind such tactile sensations as heat, cold, damp, rough, sharp, soft, smooth, and so on.

photo credit: Raymond Brown

Everyone has the ability to see pictures in their mind. Imagination is well named a plan making department. There is no limit to your ability to use imagination. People do not generally use it very efficiently but it is there and can be developed. You can take an idea or the memory of an experience and join it with other ideas and memories. You have the power to associate ideas and think through to a logical conclusion, thereby coming up with a new idea.

Other things being equal, the person who has the greatest store of concepts, or mental images concerning the general subject of their definite purpose, and who has that material the most thoroughly classified and indexed, either in their memory or mechanically; that person will manifest the highest degree of success in their work of constructive imagination. “That [person],” says Thomas Carlyle, “is the most original who can adapt from the greatest number of sources.”

Creation generally consists in the shifting of attributes from on thing to another. In other words, we give the thing with which we are working some new quality or characteristic or attribute heretofore applied to something else.

You not only can see such pictures of past memories and experiences in the mind, but you can create pictures, patterns and plans in your mind which were not there. Life, being responsive, flows over these plans and patterns, creating in reality what you have depicted in you mind. Everyone has imagination and everyone uses it, either to make plans for what they want or don’t want. The action is automatic. This is why it is so important to imagine only what you want, not what you fear or don’t want.

You must be the engineer.

Most people have considered creativeness an elusive ability that is born, not made. They look upon a new idea as an accident that descends from the ether and just dangles before the eyes of some fortunate person. But as we shall see, there is no mystery or magic involved. The whole problem resolves itself merely into getting the right combinations of old ideas or parts of old ideas int a new, practical or interesting arrangement.

To be sure, information gained from wide experience prepares one to see a particular subject in relation to other things and to have a proper sense of proportion about values and possibilities. With this sense of relationship closer and sounder analysis is achieved. The widely informed person can do a better job of recognizing pertinent and significant factors than one who is not so alert. So, keep exposing yourself to new experiences. Avoid doing things exclusively by force of habit. Habits have many valuable and profound uses, but we can carry this to extreme. The idea seeker must be flexible, not bound by tradition, the same old thing, the habitual reaction. They should go to different restaurants, go to work by a different route, avoid the same vacation every year, read books in different fields, meet people in different groups or classes, expose themselves to new and different situations and experiences.

It may be said, before considering the various sources of material for particular ideas, that there is present in every completed idea the broad general background of your individuality. Often it is this background of individuality that determines whether an idea is to be a success or a failure. The whole person is always present in every sincere effort.

Therefore, try to know yourself and your real interests, for the enthusiasm which interest begets has great carrying power. To develop a fundamental approach to getting ideas, start by listing your own skills, special talents and experiences. You cannot make the most of your assets in the fields you know best, and permit them the opportunity of being useful to you, if you do not know what they are. Decide whether your skills or interests are primarily scientific, artistic, business, social, mechanical, organizational, visual and domestic. Decide whether you prefer details or generalities, whether you think better concretely or abstractly. After you decide in which you are strongest, list the rest in order of their appeal for you.

In addition, there are certain character qualities which are useful, not only in getting ideas, but in any phase of successful living. These include open mindedness which enables you to judge new ideas or things on their merits, avoiding their rejection because they are strange or unfamiliar. Also planning, which helps you to work out in advance the details of what you must do to achieve the results you want. Without planning, you leave things to chance, to hit or miss, trial and error. Likewise carefulness, which permits you to carry out your work with painstaking effort, thoroughness and cautiousness in avoiding mistakes. Overlook this, and you perform your work in a slipshod manner, which surely cannot reach a result in which you can take pride. Very important, of which we shall speak later on, is observation, whereby you can pick out the facts of a situation, the facts that count, enabling you to analyze and form sound judgments. Without this valuable trait, the real facts of a situation are obscured, and inconsequential factors loom more important that the essential mater. In addition, there is resolution to stick to the right decision once you have made it, rather than wavering changing your mind and being unpredictable to yourself, not to speak of being unreliable where others are concerned. A valuable asset is patience which enables you to stay with a task which makes severe demands on your attention particularly if the outcome is in doubt and overdue in coming. Without this, you tend to be restless, irritable, causing the haste that makes waste, and resulting in serious errors. From this brief comment it must be apparent that mental efficiency is important to the creative thinker. Those who realize this and work to develop their mental faculties are the ones who stand the best chance of becoming skillful producers of ideas. Ideas can be produced by a process of combinations and permutations, but they are more fun when the spark of individual fire is added.

You have two ways to go about solving your difficulty, the wrong way or the right way. Here is the too familiar picture of the wrong way:

• You neatly set before you some blank paper
• You sharpen your pencils
• You light a cigarette (if you smoke. Maybe if you don’t!)
• You gape, and then glare at the uncompromising white sheets upon which no idea appears

Your mind wanders, thumping heavily on the flowers that bloom in the spring and other matters that have nothing to with the case. At last, with a sense of horror on par with that of the man in “The Pit and the Pendulum” as your time limit expires, you seize upon some half-baked plan that suits no one. You admit you are beaten. This process is in complete accord with the definition of Kettering, the dynamic wizard of General Motors, “Experts are people paid to tell you it can’t be done.”

photo credit: feathers chapman

The right way is a planned activity devised to avoid mental confusion. It endeavors to keep your mind clear of irrelevant matters and to put your attention on points useful to your purpose. It seeks to place idea production on a practical technique based on fundamental principles. To acquire any art the essentials are to learn principles and then methods. A mental giant differs from the ordinary person in that the giant can put their mind on one thing for hours at a time, and observe all sorts of connections, relationships and associations with other things. The ordinary person becomes mentally tired after a short period of mental activity. They lose the connecting links, associations and relationships which could lead to new ideas, or otherwise solve their problems. The easier, more sure ways of doing this, presently to be described, takes much of the fatigue and defeatism out of it.

Edison said that in working out an invention the most important quality is persistence. Nearly everyone who develops a new idea works it up to a point where it looks impossible and then they get discouraged. That’s the place to interested! Hard work and forever sticking to a thing until it’s done are the main things an inventor needs. And they won’t do a bit of harm to those of us who may be working on lesser ideas.

At the same time, Rev. D. S. Parkes Cadman who favored the old virtue of diligence admitted that it could be overdone or perverted. He cited the example of a bishop who industriously got up every morning at four o’clock. The rest of the day he divided between congratulating himself on his early rising and yawning!

Rather than look for any one particular idea, it is much wiser to train the mind in the method by which all ideas are produced. There are certain principles we shall get to presently. Knowing these, your pencil chewing, pad doodling days are over. You can always help yourself to an idea.

Some persons regard each fact as a separate piece of information. Others realize it is a link in a chain of knowledge, with relationships, similarities and contrasts that can illustrate a general law which applies to all facts. If we had to learn afresh why every apple falls to the ground, we should never get anywhere. The one principle of gravitation covers the situation wherever it occurs. Similarly we have an overall principle that the production of an idea results from the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations. This depends largely on the ability to see relationships. And to see relationships is readily prearranged by means of certain devices which it is the purpose of this book to describe.

I much like the word “amateur” as we might apply it to the subject of getting ideas. From the French verb, “to love,” its literal English meaning is to have such a fondness for a particular endeavor that one cultivates it eagerly without pursuing it professionally. Many notable discoveries in science have been made by amateurs. Newton’s occupation was that of a government employee. His scientific exploits were the hobbies of an “amateur”. To Einstein, mathematics was a hobby, his work being in the Swiss patent office.

To do anything with the spirit of love is to add profoundly to its potentiality for success. Everyone knows that love is magnetic. In the field of thought it attracts other thoughts that are needed, in a mysterious way. It removes much of the stress and strain of compulsion and adds the glow of happiness and inspiration.

When your dominant mental attitude is aspiring, harmonious and positive your mental powers will be directed into constructive channels. If the state of mind is discordant, apathetic, negative, then the forces will be misdirected and wasted. Attitudes of harmony and goodwill promote improved conditions of satisfaction and progress. Only trouble and discontent, confusion and discord can result from destructive attitudes. Creative skills enable us to deal ably with every problem of living. They aid us in developing our individual character to an increasingly higher creative level. Since it is creative skill which enables us to advance to economic stability and to enjoy life at the highest level, the development of creative skill is a most important practice for each of us to undertake.

Creativeness in the production of ideas when successful is far more than a financial asset, for it serves in a big way as an emotional outlet as well. Such ills as nervousness, discouragement, the inferiority sense, and general restlessness are due to the feeling that one is not contributing to life to the hilt of their capacities.

A single new idea may reshape your whole future. It is worth trying for. The results of ideas extend far beyond money. They bring one into new business and social contacts. They furnish the priceless opportunity to be of service, and thereby achieve appreciation, so yearningly desired by every human being. They justify one’s existence, for one has no right to consume all the pleasures and benefits and comforts of life without producing some in return. The idea producer also gains in the pleasures and rewards of alertness, interest in surroundings, the conquest of boredom, and the possession of a hobby with many challenging qualities. The successful idea producer also develops their own personality by adding interest, enthusiasm, purpose to their life. They increase their mental stature by becoming more observant, more analytical, and more concentrated. Most people however, do not lack the capacity to be more creative. The difficulty up to now has been that the methods of accomplishing such a purpose have nowhere been imparted to them. As a result, they view the subject with awe and mystery and ineptly allow themselves to be stumped by imaginary obstacles.

One has only to look around at the world to see in the most casual glance that there is untold opportunity for improvement and change. Granting the tremendous need for creative thinking and for new ideas, it is high time to place their production on a more systematic and reliable basis than has hertofore been done.

There is a better side, a superior side, a beautiful side to everyone and everything. By learning to look for the better and higher qualities in persons and things we ally ourselves with these and not only produce better ideas and more constructive ones, but improve ourselves at the same time by more de­sirable and up building attitudes.

A major requirement in getting an idea is to believe that it is possible. In other words, we said something above about faith. Before you can do anything, you have to believe it can be done. This more than anything, sets the mind in motion to find the way. Your mind always takes its cue from your beliefs. If you believe it cannot be done, your mind will produce the reasons why it cannot. If you believe it can, your mind will be equally proficient in showing how it can. That is a necessary step in releasing creative power.

Of course to get an idea you must be receptive. A dog on Fifth Avenue, New York, may be surrounded by all the idea material which the creative thinker sees. Receptiveness is what you as a human being can make of it.

You cannot harbor in your mind such negative attitudes as fear, worry, resentment, jealousy, anger, anxiety and the like, and at the same time expect to receive any inspiration from the finer portions of your being. The creativeness of a person is of the same substance as universal creativeness. You must ask this creativeness within for what you want, visualizing it as clearly as possible in picture form. Then you must still your mind in an attitude of faith, expectation and confidence that you will get your reply. You can’t pour grain into a sack unless the sack is open to receive, and your subconscious cannot pour ideas into your mind unless your mind is receptive.

The concrete idea cannot proceed by stretching an arm into the blue sky and drawing down something to do busi­ness with. It depends on specific facts that must be previously gathered, organized and adapted to the purpose in view.

Playing with ideas without knowing the process is some­thing like constructing a television set by using the trial and error method! You may finally get it done but it would surely be simpler if you knew how at the start.

Most of our ideas come to us from outside by way of see­ing, hearing, feeling or some of the other senses. But these ideas are merely raw material for writers. They are shared in that form with all human beings. A creative mind does something to those ideas. He selects, adapts and transforms them.

For example, my mother had a long siege of insomnia which nothing seemed to help. So I decided that there must be some way of getting the better of it, and determined to do a lot of research and write a little book on How to Sleep Soundly. Was that an idea? No, up to that point it was merely an impulse. The idea only appeared after I did the research and knew how I was going to relate the factors. It became a successful idea after it was published and put all the readers to sleep—except my mother!

So, first of all, the writer selects certain impulses that arouse his interest. This determines his basic material, and to a large degree the personality of his writing as well. With other planned methods and skill, these impressions, fleeting glimpses of life and basic facts of human behavior are recombined into work that the writer has every right to call his own.

The same process of gathering raw material, selecting, re­fitting and refining, characterizes all idea development whether abstract or concrete. The chief requisite is imagina­tion. This can be so aided and controlled by devices presently to be explained, that the process of idea-getting be­comes almost automatic.

Ideas result from mental attitudes. They originate in points of view. Hence by seeking true and natural points of view one may secure the best and most superior ideas. The world is governed by ideas—good ones and bad ones. Each nation is ruled by its political policy which is the general expression of the ideas of its leading minds. Each individual is as he is by virtue of the particular ideas which prevail in him.

Genius itself depends upon the information within its reach. Even Archimedes, great thinker that he was, around 200 B.C., could not have devised Edison’s inventions be­cause scientific knowledge had not developed to the neces­sary point.

It is obvious that the more we know about a subject, the more abundant and the more effective will be our ideas concerning it. Sometimes this seems to be contradicted by the fact that many innovations come from inexperienced outsiders. But their apparent lack of specialized knowledge is counteracted by their interest and enthusiasm. They find the information. They get the experience.

Recently*, for example, an advertising company had the assignment of promoting a cigarette lighter—a typical man’s product. Newspapers always have columns for women’s and household topics, but there seemed no appropriate section for this man’s novelty. The idea that solved the problem was to design a lighter that could be used as part of a handsome table setting to go with the silverware at dinner. This lighter, when designed, was avidly seized upon by the editors of women’s pages and the new product got enormous publicity. No lighter expert or technician worked up this solution. It came from an enthusiastic outsider. (*Editors Note: Remember that “recently” is relative to the 1961 Copyright date of the original manuscript.)

And right here I get the idea, or rather the impulse, of why similar newspaper columns devoted to men’s products could not be promoted.

Ideas are either abstract or concrete. The abstract idea is primarily important to the writer of stories, novels or plays and the author of books of contemporary or other non-fiction nature. On the other hand, concrete or specific ideas are of inter­est to the writer of movies, to painters and artists and engineers, and other workers in pictorial media or graphic presentation, as well as to business people and advertising writers.

Usually the abstract idea is a vague thing in origin. Your mind is in the state known as wandering over miscellaneous odd situations or conditions. All at once one of these subjects attracts you more than others. It “clicks” with some­thing in your mind. It seems to fit in, to belong.

Such an idea is vital to a writer. If you have already mas­tered the art of writing what you mean, your ability to come up with fresh ideas is important to your continued suc­cess. Other factors being equal, your output will vary in quality and vitality, with the force and appeal of your ideas.

The abstract idea seems to come from nowhere, or to bubble up from the depths of your imagination, and usually without reference to preliminary facts. But we shall see later how to expedite such ideas and produce them almost on an assembly line basis. Such casually obtained ideas are all right when there is no time factor involved. A Nobel Prize winner in literature does not have to worry if he gets another idea in a hurry or not. When he gets it, it may be any idea on any sub­ject, just so it’s an idea.