By Joshua Hodge So where do new ideas come from? I hate to disappoint you, but there are NO NEW IDEAS. Before you burn me at the stake for this overt falsity I reassure you I do not mean there are no new ideas in this monumentally stupid sense: "Everything that can be invented has been invented." -Charles H. Duell, 1899, U.S. Commissioner of Patents There are no new ideas, BUT, there are splendid combinations of old ideas. Things that look new will be coming and going for the rest of time but truly they are a dynamic new combination of OLD things. So how do you do it? Come up with 'new' ideas, those precious combinations of old things made to be new. Most people I talk to say oh, but Im not creative!. "Not Creative?" I say What a load of...wrongness! Human beings are all inherently creative, YOU ARE CREATIVE! I then go on to tell them their problem isnt that they are creatively disabled but rather that they are mentally disabled (at which point I either really have their attention or I get a smack in the mouth). Then I meet some people who are wildly creative, tremendous creative geniuses who can come up with all kinds of dynamic ideas at the drop of a hat. But when I ask them how they go about it they grin mysteriously and proudly say 'the ideas just come to me' as if they have a special gift that only a lucky few receive if they are in the right place at the right time when God is distributing his magical creativity dust. Well my dear friend whether you like it or not this article will allow even the most addle-minded of us to be a creative genius (no magical dust required!). The process is simple and based on the principle that ALL new ideas are merely combinations of old ideas. If you take the childrens game noughts and crosses and replace the noughts and crosses with a number from 1 to 9 the total number of potential combinations is 362,880. Imagine how many ideas must be available to you! The process of getting ideas is not dissimilar to stories of the sudden appearance of islands in the South Seas. There, according to ancient mariners, in spots where the charts showed only deep blue sea-there would suddenly appear a lovely atoll above the surface of the waters. An air of magic hung about it. And so it is with ideas. They appear just as suddenly above the surface of the mind; and with that same air of magic and unaccountability. But the scientist knows that the South Sea atoll is the work of countless, unseen coral builders, working below the surface of the sea. So how do we set our minds 'builders' to work? ------------ 1. Purpose ------------ State what you are trying to achieve, are you trying to come up with a new marketing angle, a great game for a kids party or a new and dynamic way to feed the worlds poor? Write down what your purpose is. Really, write it down, with a pen and paper. I repeat this because it makes a BIG difference having a written objective for idea generation. It ensures that you have a clearly stated objective and it articulates it in a manner where you can return to it again and again to get it bedded down in your subconscious mind. After you have your purpose written down then make a guess as to what it is going to 'cost' you to achieve your purpose. Will it cost you a lot of time? Will you need to spend some money? Work out the time costs and dollar costs and then write those down too. Now is a good time to ask yourself Is this what I really want? Is this worth the investment of time and money? If the answer is 'Yes' then go right ahead and set yourself a timeframe in which to achieve your stated objective. We all know that 90% of homework gets done the night before it is due, so give yourself a due date and stick to it. You have decided that this idea generating project is worthy of your time, so it is time to begin to: ------------ 2. Gather Information ------------ If you are dealing with a specific problem or searching for a specific idea then begin to gather the appropriate information. In fact at all times be gathering information, develop a childlike curiosity begin to ask 'why?' ask 'why?' to yourself ask 'why?' to others, search out information with passion. Use your notebook to record interesting ideas facts and tid-bits glue articles into a scrap book, keep a file. Become a veracious new knowledge consumer. You may remember, the famous scrapbooks which appear throughout Sherlock Holmes stories, and how the famous detective spent his spare time indexing and cross-indexing, the odd bits of material he gathered there. Force yourself to learn new things that are outside your usual area of interest. Learn how to paint, learn something about quantum physics or child raising. Pick up a book at your local library that your friends will think it is strange that you are reading. Say it with me now: "I am a naturally curious person." So when we are looking to solve a problem or come up with a new idea we gather all the information on the topic and start to draw and re-draw great whopping mind maps on the topic. This gathers our information and draws other information out of the dark corners of our mind. Then when you think you have all the information gathered together (and depending on the scope of the subject this could be many-many books) gather a little more information. The information gathering process is the most often neglected part of idea generation. I can not stress it enough you need to have the raw materials of ideas (information) before you can start building an amazing new idea. You would never expect a builder to begin construction on your house with no materials. Now that you are confident that you have more information than you need we can move on to step three... ------------ 3. Chew over the topic repeatedly ------------ Assuming that you really did a diligent job of the information gathering stage then you may have already begun this stage inadvertently. This part of the process is the most difficult to explain because it all happens inside your head. What you do is to take the different bits of material which you have gathered and feel them, float them around in your mind. You take one fact, and turn it this way and that, look at it in different lights, and feel for the meaning of it. You bring two facts together and see how they fit. What you are looking for here is the relationship, a synthesis where everything will come together in a neat combination, like a jig-saw puzzle. I know that what I am about to say sounds like a paradox but experience shows that it works. Facts sometimes display their meaning quicker when you do not scan them too directly, too literally. You remember those magic eye pictures where you have to look 'past' the picture to see the 3D illusion? It is like that. In fact, it is almost like listening for the meaning instead of looking for it. When creative people are in this stage of the process they get their reputation for absent-mindedness. As you go through this part of this part of the process two things will happen. First., little tentative or partial ideas will come to you. Scribble these down on paper. It doesnt matter how crazy or incomplete they seem: get them down. These are foreshadowings of the real idea that is to come, and expressing these in words speeds up the process. The second thing that will happen is that you will inevitably get very tired of trying to fit your puzzle together. Dont quit yet! Keep at it! The mind, too, has a second wind. Keep bashing away at the idea even after you are past tired and get this second layer of mental energy in the process. Keep trying to get one or more partial thoughts into your notebook. But after a while you will reach the hopeless stage. Everything is a jumble in your mind, with no clear insight anywhere. When you reach this point, if you have first really persisted in efforts to fit your puzzle together, then the third stage in the whole process is completed, and you are ready for the fourth one. ------------ 4. Incubation ------------ In this third stage you make absolutely no direct effort. You drop the whole subject, and put the problem out of your mind as completely as you can. It is important to realize that this is just as definite and just as necessary a stage in the process as the previous three. What you have to do at this time is to turn the problem over to your subconscious mind, and let it work while you sleep. You have a massive processing powerhouse on the back end of your mind, one that we dont experience consciously but it unquestionably exists. Completely ignoring the task at hand at this stage will force the unconscious mind into action because the problem remains unsolved and the unconscious mind does not sit well with unfinished problems. You may remember the old Sherlock Holmes books, he used to stop right in the middle of a big case, and drag Watson off to a concert. This sent practical and literal-minded Watson round the twist but Conan Doyle (the author) was a creator himself and knew the creative process. So when you reach this third stage in the production of an idea, drop the problem completely, and, turn to whatever stimulates your emotions. Listen to music, go for a walk, read poetry or take a long hot bath. In the first stage you have gathered your food. In the second you have chew it up well. Now the digestive process is on. Leave it alone and let the gastric juices do their work. But be on your guard with pen and paper to... ------------ 5. Catch the Idea ------------ If you have worked hard during the previous four stages then this stage is inevitable. Out of nowhere an idea will appear. It will come to you when you are least expecting it - while shaving, or bathing or most often when you are half awake, in the morning. It may wake you up in the middle of the night. Be ready to catch that idea and make it your prisoner. Always have a pen and paper nearby to scribble it down in your notebook where it will be trapped forever for you to milk it for all it is worth. A friend of mine keeps a little voice recorder by his bedside so that if he has an idea when he is not fully awake he can 'catch' the idea onto tape and then write it in his notebook in the morning. An old friend of Jessies (my wife) had a dream one night that included in it an amazing idea. Knowing that they needed to catch this idea so they wouldnt forget it they got up and wrote it down on a piece of paper. In the morning, however, when they read their late night scrawlings they where disappointed to find that on their precious sheet of paper where the words 'an Amazing Idea', and nothing else. DO NOT be fooled, you will NOT remember your idea if you dont capture it somehow. It doesnt matter how dynamic an idea, if you dont catch it, its gone forever. In fact it seems that the subconscious mind births the most elegant of ideas at the most inconvenient of times (I guess this stands to reason, my wife never went into labor at a 'convenient' time) you MUST catch them, good ideas are slippery little suckers and can pop out of your head just as quickly as they popped in. ------------ 6. Test the idea ------------ The final stage which you must pass through (but definitely NOT before you have completed the other five stages) is to see how your idea stand in the harsh world of reality. When you begin to test an idea you may find that it is not the precious little child that you first expected, but in fact it has some flaws and needs some tweaking to make its place as being truly helpful. But you will be pleasantly surprised that a good idea has self-expanding qualities and possesses the elasticity to be stretched this way and that to apply to your specific needs. Some ideas are 'gateway' ideas, they are in themselves not perfect but simply writing them down and toying with the new idea will allow your unconscious mind space to deliver the real humdinger of an idea that you are looking for. Relax and let it happen, you have an amazing brain and now you know how to use it: State what you want to develop an idea on. Gather the raw materials (facts). Work over these materials in your mind. Let the idea incubate. Catch the idea when it pops in your head. Shape the idea and develop it for practical usefulness. A good dollop of this article was inspired by a very old book entitled 'A Technique for Getting Ideas' by James Webb Young, if you find a copy (its no longer in print) buy it, it's a Gem! Joshua Hodge is the principle consultant for Really Important Marketing For more helpful resources on environmentally sustainable marketing visit http://www.reallyimportant.com.au Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joshua_Hodge http://EzineArticles.com/?Idea-Generation---How-to-Capture-Your-Million-Dollar-Idea&id=464963 licensed payday lenders michigan
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