Ideas

A Good Idea?

James Webb Young describes the process from an advertising perspective in ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas’:

What is most valuable to know is not where to look for a particular idea, but how to train the mind in the method by which all ideas are produced and how to grasp the principles which are at the source of all ideas.

An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements. The second important principle involved is that the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships.

1. Gather new material. The materials which must be gathered are of two kinds: they are specific and they are general. In advertising, the specific materials are those relating to the product and the people to whom you propose to sell it. General materials come from being intensely curious about all manner of things. Extensive browsing produces this general data bank.

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

3. Then really work these materials over in your mind. Trying first to fit one way and then looking from another angle, or trying to combine in a different way. Mindset: To be constantly pre-occupied (with its brooding quality) with the possibilities of new combinations.

4. Then incubate, by letting the conscious mind think about something completely different. This…