How to generate new and more creative ideas
Let’s talk ideas. What exactly are they? What impact do they have on our daily lives? And most crucially, is there a secret formula for generating them?
The etymology of the word reveals that its current use has lost much of its intellectual depth. Despite Eleanor Roosevelt’s memorable quote that “great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people,” the days of intricate debates about Plato’s dimly lit caves, or French mental imagery, a la Descartes, are long gone.
For our purposes, let’s regard ideas as the necessary ingredient to bridge the gap between a problem and a solution. They can be created consciously; other times they come to us when we least expect them.
Ideas flourish in those who’ve been afforded ample time and space for experiential activities.
Both professionally and privately we value individuals who come up with good ideas swiftly. As most of us have forgotten or overlooked the philosophical evolution of the term, producing a plethora of ideas is now equated with intelligence and innovation.
Our human obsession with finding the next big idea drives societal progress and technological advancement, and fuels competition. But is there a method, or perhaps even an algorithm, that can accelerate our journey to the promised land of infinite answers? Some companies claim that their products and services can deliver exactly that. But marketing gimmicks and competitive positioning aside, there’s genuine value in attempting to standardize the creative process.
One person, who devoted serious attention to this question over the course of his illustrious career as an advertising guru, was James Webb Young. Without any formal higher education to speak of, Young became in 1931 a professor of advertising and business history at the University of Chicago. Ever the consultant, Young also advised J. Walter Thompson – he had previously served as vice president of the ad agency, the Economic Cooperation Administration, and the Ford Foundation, among many other clients.
In 1965, Young published his seminal work, A Technique for Producing Ideas, which, as the latest back cover suggests, has since “helped thousands of advertising copywriters smash through internal barriers to unleash their creativity.”
More than 50 years later, the staying power and crossover appeal of Young’s thinking remain undeniable. For Young an idea “is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.” And this “capacity to bring old elements into new combinations,” he argues, “depends largely on the ability to see relationships.”
While Young was not the only early 20th-century thinker to acknowledge the significance of linking seemingly unrelated pieces of information to drive innovation, it’s easy to see why his work continues to inspire a loyal following today. According to Young, ideation can be broken into five steps:
- Data Collection: In this initial step, Young stresses the importance of gathering not only product-specific materials but also a broad base of general knowledge.
- The Digestive Process: The collected pieces of the puzzle then have to be examined and “felt.” At the end of this stage, Young expects us to feel drained and that “everything is a jumble in your mind.”
- Distraction: In this third and arguably most crucial step, Young implores us to withdraw from the subject entirely, allowing the unconscious mind to guide the creative process.
- The Eureka Moment: If the first three steps were followed correctly, Young expects a new idea to materialize. “It will,” as he puts it, “emerge when you are least expecting it – while shaving, or bathing or most often when you are half awake in the morning.”
- Real-Life Application: In the final step, Young urges us to take the newly conceived idea into the real world and submit it to the “criticism of the judicious.”
The brilliance of Young’s work lies in its simplicity. Anyone who reads it will likely think that they, too, can become more creative and tackle that unsolvable problem in their lives. However, Young’s heuristic for generating ideas offers more than just personal encouragement.
Young inadvertently outlines a vision of what the workplace of the future should look like: one where people and their creative needs – not machines and machine-like behaviour – drive innovation.
Calls for return-to-office mandates and an elimination of flexible work arrangements have grown louder in recent months. Some leaders seem to have disregarded the lessons of the Global Pandemic and the Great Resignation, while others remain oblivious to the cost-of-living crisis affecting their underpaid employees. Additionally, tens of millions of North American workers still lack access to paid time off (PTO), often work during their PTO, or let the very minimal PTO they have, especially when compared to most European countries, go unused.
The case for creative breathing room and regeneration, as Young intimates in steps one and three, is not merely a moral imperative but a business necessity. AI and automation will gradually take over a greater share of routine and repetitive tasks currently performed by humans. This will increase demand for human creativity and its inherent imperfections. Consequently, future productivity will not be measured by hours worked, or the quantity of tasks completed, but by the quality and authenticity of the work produced.
To set the knowledge worker of the future up for success, organizations will need to reconsider their hiring and retention strategies. If we listened to Young, we’d know that ideas flourish in those who’ve been afforded ample time and space for experiential activities, both within and, ideally, outside the workplace.
