A Technique for Producing Ideas: Look into the Crystal Ball

The ability to generate ideas is a skill that any professional can use in work and life. Many of the creativity and problem-solving models involve generating ideas. Creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making are related skills. Oftentimes, when you read a book on creativity, you will discover that it includes information on the other related skills.

The summary of A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young is part of a series to teach professionals some of the key workplace skills needed to succeed in an ever-changing environment. Although A Technique for Producing Ideas outlines a creative process to teach you how to generate ideas, the method is good for learning creativity, problem solving and decision making. One book teaches three of the key skills needed for future jobs.

Have you read?

Summary: The MacGyver Secret by Lee David Zlotoff
Summary: How to Get Ideas by Jack Foster

A Technique for Producing Ideas in a Nutshell

Is there a formula to generate ideas when you need them? And can anyone generate ideas on demand, so to speak? A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young presents a formula that describes the creative process. An advertising executive, the author posed the question, “Is an idea the final result of a long series of unseen idea-building processes which go on beneath the surface of the conscious mind?” This book is the result of answering the question.

To answer the question can anyone generate ideas, Young refers to the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto’s work. Pareto believed that there are two types of people – speculators and rentiers.

Two Types of People

Speculators

• Pre-occupied with the possibilities of new combinations.
• Deal with financial and business schemes.
• Engaged with all kinds of inventions.
• Political and diplomatic reconstructor.

The speculative type of person is one who is always stirring the pot and cannot leave things alone. They always want to change things. To thrive, you want to be a speculator.

Rentiers

• Like routine
• Steady-going
• Unimaginative
• Conserving people

Rentiers like the status quo. Speculators love rentiers because they can easily manipulate them. To master the creative process, generating new ideas, depends on if you are a speculator or a rentier. Which are you? The implication for you is that there are some people in the world, who are unwilling to try anything new. Therefore, no technique for Producing ideas will help them.

As an aside, according to Marty Neumeier the people who are likely to lose their jobs are one who produce creative work. This kind of work is unique, imaginative, non-routine, and autonomous. Neumeier is the author of the book, The 46 Rules of Genius. Does this sound like a speculator?

A Technique for Producing Ideas: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

A Technique for Producing Ideas is not groundbreaking work. In fact, James Webb Young builds on the work of Graham Wallas. And Graham Wallas and Henri Poincare built on the work of Herman von Helmholtz. This is a classic case of standing on the shoulders of giants. To understand and learn the creative process outlined in A Technique for Producing Ideas, I have to take you back in time.

• 1896, Herman von Helmholtz, a German physician and physicist, first described the three stages of generating ideas- saturation, incubation, and illumination.
• 1908, Henri Poincare added a fourth stage verification.
• 1926, psychologist Graham Wallas formally described the creative process – preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. The result is The Art of Thought.
• 1940, James Webb Young publishes A Technique for Producing Ideas, a book that presents the creative process.
• Since then, others like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention) and Jack Foster (How to Get Ideas) the creative process.

Five Core Ideas from A Technique for Producing Ideas

1. An idea is a combination of two or more old elements. A combination of specific and general knowledge.
2. The capacity to combine elements into something new depends on the ability to see relationships between and among them, then make the connections.
3. Build a reservoir of knowledge throughout your life, which is filled with life experiences, facts and other information.
4. To master the art of anything you have to understand the principles and fundamental methods by which it works.
5. Anyone can train the mind in the method to produce ideas and how to grasp the principles which are at the source of all ideas. There are two principles to produce ideas and a 5-step method.

Summary of A Technique for Producing Ideas

Train your mind so that it is idea prone. This also means that you have to understand the principles of idea generation and how it works. After reading A Technique for Producing Ideas, I noticed some information that is critical to learning any skill.

“In learning any art, the important things to learn are, first, Principles, and second, Method. This is true of the art of producing ideas. Particular bits of knowledge are nothing, because they are made up of what Dr. Robert Hutchins once called rapidly aging facts. Principles and method are everything.”

The Importance of Principle and Method

Principles: A basic idea or rule that explains or controls how something happens or works. Cambridge Dictionary.

Method: A particular form of procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one.

To master the skill of creativity, how do you grasp the principle which is at the source of all ideas? You can do this by following the creative process outlined later in this summary of A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young. When you think about the creative process and producing ideas, you are probably visualizing Archimedes, the Greek scientist and polymath, running home from the public bath, in his birthday suit, shouting, “Eureka, Eureka!” But idea generation is not like that. Ideas are new combinations of old elements.

Combining Old Elements and Producing Something New

• An idea is a combination of two or more old elements.
• Combining old elements to create something new depends on the ability to see relationships between the elements.
• The habit of searching to find relationship between elements is critical to producing ideas.

Two Principles You Must Understand to Produce Ideas

1. An idea is a combination of old elements.
2. Ability to make combinations is heightened by an ability to see relationships.

Five Steps to Producing Ideas – The Method

Step 1: Gather New Materials – Preparation

You have a problem or issue that you are grappling with. Start to gather materials. James Webb Young was an advertising executive, so some of the information in A Technique for Producing Ideas is skewed that way. There are two types of information that you have to gather – specific and general.

Specific Information: This is information that is relevant to the specific problem or issue that you are trying to resolve.

General Information: This is information from all fields. This is a lifelong activity that you perform.

A new idea is the result of combining general and specific information. Therefore, the more specific and general knowledge you have, the more opportunities to combine ideas. Since the book was first published in 1940, it references writing information on index cards which is dated. Today, writing the information in a notebook or even on your computer is much better. Think about how and where you store general knowledge.

Think about a problem that you are having at work now that you want to invest the time to solve. Using Step 1 of the creative process outlined above, get the process started.

• Write the problem or issue that you are having.
• What specific or other information do you already have that will help you to resolve it? Collect the information and put in one place.
• Which experts can you interview to get information? Make a list, then conduct the interviews.
• Is there someone who has resolved the issue before, even someone in another industry? Conduct some research, and if you find anyone, interview to learn what they did.
• Use other source material such as books, articles, podcasts, and videos to gather information to resolve the problem.
• You now have a useful source of ideas to work with.

Step 2: Look at the Information in Different Ways

• Read through all the information that you collected in Step 1 to resolve your problem.
• Note important pieces of information and facts.
• Look at the information from many different angles.
• Start playing with the information. Bring two or more pieces of facts together to see if they fit.
• Try to get at least some partial ideas.
• When partial ideas come to you, no matter how crazy or incomplete, write them down.
• When you get to the point where you are feeling that enough is enough, like it is pointless to do any additional work, it is time to stop and move on to the next step. 

Step 3: Put the Problem Completely Out of Your Mind – Incubate

This is a necessary step in the creative process.

• It is time to take a break, turn over the problem to your subconscious mind.
• Work on an unrelated task. Or do something that stimulates the imagination and emotions.
  • Listen to music.
  • Go to the theater.
  • Go to the movie.
  • Read poetry.
  • Read a detective story.
  • Do word puzzles.

Step 4: The Idea Appears Out of Nowhere – Illumination

When you least expect it, the idea comes to you. This may sound magical, but the idea comes to you because you have followed the previous steps. You have done the work.

Step 5: Take Your Idea to the World/Shaping and Developing the Idea – Verification

• The idea will unlikely be in a form that you can implement.
• Work with the idea to improve it.
• Subject it to criticism, test it, then refine it.

Insights

1. When you are reading, it is important to note important and interesting information that you may use later. Use a system that allows you to quickly find information.
2. There are no shortcuts to generating ideas, you have to do the work, following the stages in the creative process.
3. You may not understand how the incubation and illumination stages work but think back to a time when your teacher or even a professor told you to sleep on it [problem].

Before you start any project, spend time researching what has been done before. After reading through what you find, you may decide not to use the information, but you are at least aware of it.

What’s Missing from the Book

After reading A Technique for Producing Ideas three times, I decided to take a look at the reviews on Amazon. Many of the one-star reviews are very unfair. We are now living in an age where people like to be spoon fed, and many do not care about thinking for themselves. Perhaps what is missing from this book is a case study to illustrate how to use the creative process outlined in the book.

For me that is not very important. I tend to be a deep thinker, and I love to use models in ways they were never intended. But that is not the case with most people.

Avil Beckford's Musings

Do the Work by Steven Pressfield: In A Technique for Producing Ideas, James Webb Young outlines the creative process. If you want to generate new ideas you have to do the work by moving through the stages of the process. The book, Do the Work by Steven Pressfield, teaches you how to move through any resistance you may face. (Avil's Review of Do the Work)

Wake Up and Live by Dorothea Brande: In Wake Up and Live, Dorothea Brande reveals the secret to success, which is to act as if it was impossible to fail. If you are putting in the time to produce ideas, adopting the proper mindset, and building general knowledge, you are acting as if it’s impossible to fail. (Avil's Review of Wake Up and Live)

Show Your Work by Austin Kleon: In A Technique for Producing Ideas, James Webb Young talks about showing your ideas to the word for critisism. In Show Your Work, Austin Kleon emphasizes the importance of letting others know and see what you are doing.  (Avil's Review of Show Your Work)

The Art of Thought by Graham Wallas: I read the Art of Thought years before I read A Technique for Producing Ideas. While I was reading A Technique for Producing Ideas, I noticed the similarities between the creative process outlined and the one in the Art of Thought.

The MacGyver Secret: This is a more contemporary book on problem solving. It is similar to the Art of Thought and A Technique for Producing Ideas in that it recommends that the problem solver learn to rely on the subconscious mind. This book complements A Technique for Producing Ideas. (Avil's Review of The MacGyver Secret).

Next Steps

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