Successful ideas, contrary to belief, are hardly ever based on original thoughts. They come to one as the result of some outside impulse nudging one’s attention: talking to someone, listening to a speaker, reading, hearing something on the radio, looking into a shop window, passing something on the street.
Genius itself depends upon the information within its reach. Even Archimedes, great thinker that he was, around 200 B.C., could not have devised Edison’s inventions because scientific knowledge had not developed to the necessary point.
It is obvious that the more we know about a subject, the more abundant and the more effective will be our ideas concerning it. Sometimes this seems to be contradicted by the fact that many innovations come from inexperienced outsiders. But their apparent lack of specialized knowledge is counteracted by their interest and enthusiasm. They find the information. They get the experience.
Recently*, for example, an advertising company had the assignment of promoting a cigarette lighter—a typical man’s product. Newspapers always have columns for women’s and household topics, but there seemed no appropriate section for this man’s novelty. The idea that solved the problem was to design a lighter that could be used as part of a handsome table setting to go with the silverware at dinner. This lighter, when designed, was avidly seized upon by the editors of women’s pages and the new product got enormous publicity. No lighter expert or technician worked up this solution. It came from an enthusiastic outsider. (*Editors Note: Remember that “recently” is relative to the 1961 Copyright date of the original manuscript.)
And right here I get the idea, or rather the impulse, of why similar newspaper columns devoted to men’s products could not be promoted.
Ideas are either abstract or concrete. The abstract idea is primarily important to the writer of stories, novels or plays and the author of books of contemporary or other non-fiction nature. On the other hand, concrete or specific ideas are of interest to the writer of movies, to painters and artists and engineers, and other workers in pictorial media or graphic presentation, as well as to business people and advertising writers.
Usually the abstract idea is a vague thing in origin. Your mind is in the state known as wandering over miscellaneous odd situations or conditions. All at once one of these subjects attracts you more than others. It “clicks” with something in your mind. It seems to fit in, to belong.
Such an idea is vital to a writer. If you have already mastered the art of writing what you mean, your ability to come up with fresh ideas is important to your continued success. Other factors being equal, your output will vary in quality and vitality, with the force and appeal of your ideas.
The abstract idea seems to come from nowhere, or to bubble up from the depths of your imagination, and usually without reference to preliminary facts. But we shall see later how to expedite such ideas and produce them almost on an assembly line basis. Such casually obtained ideas are all right when there is no time factor involved. A Nobel Prize winner in literature does not have to worry if he gets another idea in a hurry or not. When he gets it, it may be any idea on any subject, just so it’s an idea.
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