On the whole, people tend to accept things as they are, view them in a non-illuminated, stagnant fashion, and approach nothing with that dynamic improvement urge which is the basis for constructive imagination. As long as we remain fenced in by precedents and afraid of anything unusual or unpredictable, there is little hope for us. Life grows truly interesting, alive and glowing, when we put our construc­tive imaginations into action. Chiefly courage and resistance to inertia are essential to the original creative thinker. Other qualities and conditions outside ones self determine whether our work shall be permitted to be a valuable contribution to society. As Victor Hugo put it, there is nothing quite so powerful in the world as an idea whose time has come.

However, meantime, we live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking. If one is really going to cultivate the development of ideas, would it not be a plus value to strive for ideas that have signifi­cance: ideas that are not merely different for the sake of substituting one foolishness for another?

It should be for the accomplishment of a worth purpose; the power of conceiving and expressing the ideal. Producing ideas is an art. But an art is a waste of effort if it spends itself on the production, no matter how skillful, of something not worth doing. The human mind is not limited to the present by means of perception, or to the past by means of memory, but can anticipate the future by means of imagination.

Man’s imagination enables him to think things out before he does them. Therefore if he perceives an error, he need not actually commit the error. He can discard the process before making the error and use his imagination to avert it and try another method.

The ability to produce ideas relies heavily upon imagination. Imagination is the source from which arise the mental pictures which are essential to the functioning of intelligence. It is the inspiration of all creative production. It has led scientists to all their great discoveries and is the starting point for all new inventions. It is indeed the driving force and guide of all our activity.

Imagination, obviously, is imagining or picturing. It is the power that enables us to record our minds, to remember, to recall at will, pictures of previous experiences, and to recombine these into different forms and impressions. The mind draws the mental pictures it makes from external objects. These pictures can only be created through our own perception and feelings. Each of our senses conveys the picture appropriate to it to the brain. Through the eyes we form visual images composed of line, form, light and color. Our ears provide images of sound in its infinity of combinations. The senses of taste and smell bring us pictures of flavor and perfume while the sense of touch represents to our mind such tactile sensations as heat, cold, damp, rough, sharp, soft, smooth, and so on.

Everyone has the ability to see pictures in their mind. Imagination is well named a plan making department. There is no limit to your ability to use imagination. People do not generally use it very efficiently but it is there and can be developed. You can take an idea or the memory of an experience and join it with other ideas and memories. You have the power to associate ideas and think through to a logical conclusion, thereby coming up with a new idea.

Other things being equal, the person who has the greatest store of concepts, or mental images concerning the general subject of their definite purpose, and who has that material the most thoroughly classified and indexed, either in their memory or mechanically; that person will manifest the highest degree of success in their work of constructive imagination. “That [person],” says Thomas Carlyle, “is the most original who can adapt from the greatest number of sources.”

Creation generally consists in the shifting of attributes from on thing to another. In other words, we give the thing with which we are working some new quality or characteristic or attribute heretofore applied to something else.

You not only can see such pictures of past memories and experiences in the mind, but you can create pictures, patterns and plans in your mind which were not there. Life, being responsive, flows over these plans and patterns, creating in reality what you have depicted in you mind. Everyone has imagination and everyone uses it, either to make plans for what they want or don’t want. The action is automatic. This is why it is so important to imagine only what you want, not what you fear or don’t want.

You must be the engineer.

A young man walked into a store to buy a necktie. The blank bare wall behind the tie counter depressed him. What would fill it attractively and increase sales? He experimented with his camera and a darkroom, produced an enlargement more than ten feet long and sold it to the clothing store. He had started an entirely new business idea, now called photo murals that paid him handsomely.

One single observation or interpretation of a sensation has been the turning point of a person’s life in thousands of cases. One single observation has built fortunes, won wars and achieved in any number of cases, which confront us all the time.

The higher mental processes: reasoning, reflection, memory, imagination and so on, are of no value unless the material composing them, sensations, are accurate. Interpretations of the sensation can be no more accurate than the observation thereof. So spare no effort to be a competent observer.

Imagination is not the same as fancy, though they are different exercises of the same plastic or creative faculty. Fancy employs the laws of association capriciously and without purpose. Imagination aims at definite and useful results. Fancy is a passive, drifting affair, while imagination is active and guided. It is subject to control and the more intelligent and planned its control, the more effective its results in creative achievement. “I never thought of it,” is a common remark in many a postmortem analysis of a situation when someone asks, “Why didn’t you do so and so?” In such a case the creative intelligence did not work. The failure was one of imagination, for it is the imagination which looks ahead, supplies, plans, solves, and originates ideas.

Ordinarily when a person is confronted with some disagreeable task which could be made easy by an improved method, they grumble, “Why doesn’t somebody do something about this?” Rarely the victim of such a condition happens to be a person who asks themselves, “Why don’t I do something about this?” The substitution of “I” for somebody makes all the difference in stimulating the imagination. It gives you an open minded, active approach, in which you may strike something that will be effective and rewarding. At least this cannot happen just by doing nothing and waiting for someone else to find a solution.

Do something. Look around where you are, at home, at work, at meal time, while traveling. Select any object, or method. Consider it carefully and see if it can be changed or improved. Stop taking everything for granted as final. Start analyzing in view of today’s different needs and new techniques: lightweight luggage for airplanes; vitamin enriched foods; remote control for TV [Obviously, again, these items were "cutting edge" in 1961. Don't allow this to dissuade you now, however from the same concepts. Looking around you will see any number of things that can use updating, re-engineering to perform a specific function better, or the occasional situation where there simply still isn't something that exists to "get the job done"!]

The constructive imagination does not merely recall images from the memory of experiences in their original form. It rearranges, recombines and re-adapts the factors into a different form. It associates things or ideas in new ways. This is the basis for invention, for artistic creativeness. It is essential for improvement of any kind, for the discovery of new relationships, for adapting old things to new uses. It is the foundation of the idea producing process.

The concrete idea cannot proceed by stretching an arm into the blue sky and drawing down something to do busi­ness with. It depends on specific facts that must be previously gathered, organized and adapted to the purpose in view.

Playing with ideas without knowing the process is some­thing like constructing a television set by using the trial and error method! You may finally get it done but it would surely be simpler if you knew how at the start.

Most of our ideas come to us from outside by way of see­ing, hearing, feeling or some of the other senses. But these ideas are merely raw material for writers. They are shared in that form with all human beings. A creative mind does something to those ideas. He selects, adapts and transforms them.

For example, my mother had a long siege of insomnia which nothing seemed to help. So I decided that there must be some way of getting the better of it, and determined to do a lot of research and write a little book on How to Sleep Soundly. Was that an idea? No, up to that point it was merely an impulse. The idea only appeared after I did the research and knew how I was going to relate the factors. It became a successful idea after it was published and put all the readers to sleep—except my mother!

So, first of all, the writer selects certain impulses that arouse his interest. This determines his basic material, and to a large degree the personality of his writing as well. With other planned methods and skill, these impressions, fleeting glimpses of life and basic facts of human behavior are recombined into work that the writer has every right to call his own.

The same process of gathering raw material, selecting, re­fitting and refining, characterizes all idea development whether abstract or concrete. The chief requisite is imagina­tion. This can be so aided and controlled by devices presently to be explained, that the process of idea-getting be­comes almost automatic.

Ideas result from mental attitudes. They originate in points of view. Hence by seeking true and natural points of view one may secure the best and most superior ideas. The world is governed by ideas—good ones and bad ones. Each nation is ruled by its political policy which is the general expression of the ideas of its leading minds. Each individual is as he is by virtue of the particular ideas which prevail in him.

Unfortunately we are not always so successful when we have to produce an idea out of nothing. It is the people with ideas who win most of the desirable places in the world. The person who can create something new and different is wanted—and rarely by the police! He is in demand for his ability to develop ideas. Those who achieve conspicuous success in business and advertis­ing, in radio, drama, literature, journalism, in politics, so­ciety, and indeed all the professions and walks of life can attribute the large portion of their success to their capacity for getting and using their ideas.

Many large corporations maintain research departments which do nothing but look for and create new ideas. It is the new in automobiles, airplanes and technology in general—the new in government, politics, labor and industrial relations—the new in fashions, entertaining, advertising, books—that people constantly seek. We even say “What’s new?” as a greeting instead of “Hello.”

Many people work long and hard at a piece of work only to discover that their idea was no good to begin with. Why not make your ideas count for something? Do you have difficulty in getting ideas in the first place?

It is interesting to note that your education, race, age or experience have nothing to do with your success as an idea producer. You do not have to be a scientist, a technician, a writer, an artist. If your idea requires skills in these direc­tions you can hire them later if needed. Successful ideas come from persons in all walks of life, all ages and the least experience. No credentials are needed to go in the idea producing business. Even the sick and disabled can participate in this rewarding activity.

Neither do your ideas have to be of long lasting value. As soon as they are utilized they make their contribution in increased production, jobs and sales even if only for a short time. Change and novelty may be useful in themselves and may encourage further ideas. Since every new idea is merely a combination of two or more old ideas or parts of old ideas, every new idea contains parts or material for a still newer one.

The need for new ideas is universal. Nothing in the world is completed to finality and cannot ever be, for the world changes from instant to instant. And nowhere is change so persistent, so quickly taken up, as lively and active as in the United States. We are an active people, quickly bored, restless, and eager for change. Whole books have been written about induced obsolescence, the deliberate creation of changes in things which still possess much utility, wear, or beauty, merely to make them old fashioned or dated, so that new and different things will be purchased. It may be highly uneconomic, but it is profitable, especially to the idea producer.

I used to think of creating ideas as something tinged with considerable mystery. Like many others, I believed that it could not be developed, that it happened or did not happen. Yet I could not reconcile myself to the notion that God was bothering to send inspirations in the form of better mouse traps or fancier perfume bottles. I came to the con­clusion that getting an idea was a process—part of the cause and effect processes that control all of life. Since there must be a reason for what happens, the matter comes down to knowing the reason and applying the method.

What then is the process of creating ideas?

People have been successful in extracting the wealth of the earth for their use but they have not learned to seek for the untold wealth which lies hidden in their own hearts and minds. It is in human beings as it is in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold concealed.
To get ideas is a matter of creative thinking. It is a method for those who wish to get results in their own fields of work and in their own lives, for people with ideas live more enjoyably and more profitably than those without. A method of producing ideas is fundamental for any occupa­tion and for life itself.

Everything that man produces begins as an idea. From the wrapper on a loaf of bread or the tube of shave cream all the way up to the latest best-seller; from nylon stock­ings to television; from seedless grapes to a magazine printed in Braille for the blind—all began as an idea.

Most of our ideas come from someone else. Where does “the someone else” get them? Is there any way we can get an idea, better yet, a succession of ideas, by ourselves? Yes, there is a way, and I don’t mean inspiration which some people would like to meet by appointment in a lunch room.

Developing an idea is much like developing an invention. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter and founder of the Royal Academy, tells us that invention is little more than a new combination of those images which have been pre­viously gathered and deposited in the memory. Despite the ingenious preacher, nothing can come of nothing, at least by manmade efforts. He who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations.

Accordingly, the idea searcher explores human experi­ence and thought—history, psychology, science—anything and everything for analogies and stepping stones for the imagination. The more extensive our acquaintance with the work of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be our own ingenuity. Then when an image comes to us, we can use it, juggle with it, be receptive to its possibilities, not simply hold it isolated as an amusing or interesting curiosity, but have it as a basis for experiment. Most of us get ideas that we do not develop in this way, and nothing ever comes of them.

Some people have their heads full of so-called bright ideas all the time, but only too often they are merely half-baked notions. The techniques suggested herein should im­prove the quality of the ideas so they really become work­able and useful. Practicing better methods need not mean getting more ideas when one is prolific already, but it should mean getting better ones.

To be receptive to the creative impulse, one must have a certain discontent, a confidence in the potential ideal, a sense that betterment is always possible. This gives birth to constructive curiosity.

We are all inventors in minor things. The one who would improve a thing must realize its present qualities and its possibilities; must recognize that the possibility of per­fection outweighs the probability of imperfection. We do not, for example, believe that violin strings have been made to create horrible discord, although the probability of dis­cord is far greater than that of harmony, and for one who can play the violin, there are thousands who cannot.

To get an idea, observation is the first requisite, analysis the second, faith the third. Without observation, the need or opportunity would not be recognized. Without analysis, the method would not be devised. Without faith, the im­pulse would be lacking. The successful effort, then, com­bines a physical, a mental and a spiritual activity—in other words, a union of all our available powers directed toward a single goal.

Perhaps this sounds harder than it is. How does one create in nature? One plants a seed. One allows it to germinate. Surely that is a simple pattern. But it involves the same three points Observation. You see a need or a chance to grow a certain thing. Analysis: You do not plant a grapefruit seed to grow a beet. You consider the condi­tions and other factors. Faith: If you did not expect a grapefruit plant to grow from a grapefruit seed, you wouldn’t bother in the first place. We must keep a sense of direction toward our goal. A traveler in Rome asked some­one, “If I go straight from here, how far is it to the Vati­can?” “Well,” was the reply, “if you keep straight on the way you are going, it is nearly 25,000 miles, but if you turn around and walk the other way, it is about a mile and a half.”

In the production of ideas there is a similarly straight road, a definite method, so clear that it may be called a technique. Whenever an idea is produced, this procedure is followed, knowingly or not. And this technique can be cultivated. It is the purpose of this book to show you both in theory and practical analysis, how to arrive at new ideas, together with specific methods for developing meaningful ideas quickly and at will.

The early portion of the book necessarily deals in part with the theories. But the major part of it concerns actual formulas, techniques and practical examples of how people have used them to produce the ideas that are more or less familiar to us now, and how you may use them to forward your own purposes.

The new frontiers of the coming age will not only be in the form of new worlds to conquer, but in the conquest of the world we know, as well. And this can be accomplished only by ideas. We stand upon the threshold of a new world of ideas. On the other side of the door can be a bright tomorrow.