Idea Explosion!

photo credit: Philo Nordlund

I much like the word “amateur” as we might apply it to the subject of getting ideas. From the French verb, “to love,” its literal English meaning is to have such a fondness for a particular endeavor that one cultivates it eagerly without pursuing it professionally. Many notable discoveries in science have been made by amateurs. Newton’s occupation was that of a government employee. His scientific exploits were the hobbies of an “amateur”. To Einstein, mathematics was a hobby, his work being in the Swiss patent office.
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It is more necessary today than ever to look for the good. There is a great deal of superficiality, triviality, to say noth­ing of evil, in modern life. When the attention is concen­trated upon the continual discovery or development of good, its creative energies will multiply the good.

There is a better side, a superior side, a beautiful side to everyone and everything. By learning to look for the better and higher qualities in persons and things we ally ourselves with these and not only produce better ideas and more constructive ones, but improve ourselves at the same time by more de­sirable and up building attitudes.
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But most business people need ideas to solve particular problems. They are restricted by the specific facts and con­ditions, and they also have a time limit in which to “come across” with something. This puts a very different approach to the problem than that of the more leisurely “creative” thinker. As a matter of fact, it takes considerably more creativeness to be creative on schedule than to amble along at one’s own serene pace. The tempo of modern business is such that it no longer wishes to wait even for time or tide. It seems to be getting even with the long eons in which time or tide refused to wait for man.
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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 some thing 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 be cause scientific knowledge had not developed to the neces sary point.
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What most of us call an idea is merely an impulse. It’s the beginning or germ of an idea, with many possibilities but only if we add to it the factors that give it value.

Merely recognizing a need for an idea is very far from having the idea. Anyone who undertook to handle such an impulse would have had to add ninety-nine percent to make anything of it. Finding the need is not creation, as it does not change anything. After you find the need, then you first go to work to fill it.
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