A Technique for Producing Ideas

An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements (Quoted from Vilfredo Pareto)

In learning any art the important things to learn are, first, Principles, and second, Method. This is true of the art of producing ideas.

Thus, words being symbols of ideas, we can collect ideas by collecting words. The fellow who said he tried reading the dictionary but couldn't get the hang of the story simply missed the point: namely, that it is a collection of short stories.

We tend to forget that words are, themselves, ideas. They might be called ideas in a state of suspended animation. When the words are mastered the ideas tend to come alive again.

Can words, studied as emotional symbols, yield better advertising education than words studied as parts of rhetoric? What is the one word-symbol which will best arouse the emotion with which I wish this particular advertisement to be charged?

things to learn are, first, Principles; and second, Method.

In advertising an idea, results from a new combination of specific knowledge about. products and people, will general knowledge about life and events.

An idea, I thought, has some of that mysterious quality which romance lends to tales of the sudden appearance of islands in the South Seas.

The cycle of the years does something to fill your reservoir, unless you refuse to live emotionally.

But the principle of constantly expanding your experience, both personally and vicariously, does matter tremendously in any idea-producing job. Make no mistake about it.

I am convinced, however that you gather vicarious experience best, not when you are honing up on it for an immediate purpose, but when you are pursuing it as an end in itself.

First, the gathering of raw materials—both the materials of your immediate problem and the materials which from a constant enrichment of your store of general knowledge. Second, the working over of these materials in your mind. Third, the incubating stage, where you let something beside the conscious mind do the work of synthesis. Fourth, the actual birth of the Idea—the "Eureka! I have it" stage. And fifth, the final shaping and development of this idea to practical usefulness.

I can puzzle over a thing until I am in a state of utter confusion, giving it up, and then suddenly have the answer leap into my mind without an apparent reason.

two general principles in mind—the principle that an idea is a new combination, and the principle that the ability to make new combinations is heightened by an ability to see relationships

when relationships of this kind are seen they lead to the extraction of a general principle This general principle when grasped, suggests the key to a new application, a new combination, and the result is an idea.