It has been said that the greatest room in the world is the room for improvement. It is probably this fact that motivates inventors. Not that they are averse to making money from their ideas, but they do seem to go about it the hard way.

The world is full of all kinds of contrivances, big ma­chines and little gadgets which are far from perfect. They simply remain in use because no one bothers to correct their faults. Just because they were once an “improvement” on something, people are prone to accept them as they are, with whatever defects come with them at no extra charge.

Yet the person who is looking for a bright idea can almost always find something to improve.

At this time I am not talking about the emergency busi­ness idea that has to be produced on schedule to fill a specific need. The invention type of idea discussed in this chapter is more of the abstract, indefinite, any-time-will-do affair in which one starts from scratch—and scratches.

Let us take a simple idea that anyone could have had, and see how it developed—into the collar industry. An industrious housewife had the unpleasant chore of washing a continuous number of her husband’s shirts. There seemed no end to the job. She decided to see if she couldn’t improve her lot. She turned an observant eye to the problem and noticed that the collar became soiled faster than the shirt, and that she often had to wash whole shirt when only the collar needed it. Out of that observation came the idea of separating them and washing each as required. And out of the idea, in turn, came the then new industry of separate collars. (Editor’s note: And now of course, the collar industry is “gone”, likely due to the advent of the home washing machine??)

You see here that the inventive process begins with critical attitude that will take a problem of any size and dissect it into its component parts. Instead of getting alone, in the same old way with the day-to-day discomforts, some one looks into the matter, studies it without prejudice, reasons soundly, and comes up with a newer and better method.

You have two ways to go about solving your difficulty, the wrong way or the right way. Here is the too familiar picture of the wrong way:

• You neatly set before you some blank paper
• You sharpen your pencils
• You light a cigarette (if you smoke. Maybe if you don’t!)
• You gape, and then glare at the uncompromising white sheets upon which no idea appears

Your mind wanders, thumping heavily on the flowers that bloom in the spring and other matters that have nothing to with the case. At last, with a sense of horror on par with that of the man in “The Pit and the Pendulum” as your time limit expires, you seize upon some half-baked plan that suits no one. You admit you are beaten. This process is in complete accord with the definition of Kettering, the dynamic wizard of General Motors, “Experts are people paid to tell you it can’t be done.”

The right way is a planned activity devised to avoid mental confusion. It endeavors to keep your mind clear of irrelevant matters and to put your attention on points useful to your purpose. It seeks to place idea production on a practical technique based on fundamental principles. To acquire any art the essentials are to learn principles and then methods. A mental giant differs from the ordinary person in that the giant can put their mind on one thing for hours at a time, and observe all sorts of connections, relationships and associations with other things. The ordinary person becomes mentally tired after a short period of mental activity. They lose the connecting links, associations and relationships which could lead to new ideas, or otherwise solve their problems. The easier, more sure ways of doing this, presently to be described, takes much of the fatigue and defeatism out of it.

Edison said that in working out an invention the most important quality is persistence. Nearly everyone who develops a new idea works it up to a point where it looks impossible and then they get discouraged. That’s the place to interested! Hard work and forever sticking to a thing until it’s done are the main things an inventor needs. And they won’t do a bit of harm to those of us who may be working on lesser ideas.

At the same time, Rev. D. S. Parkes Cadman who favored the old virtue of diligence admitted that it could be overdone or perverted. He cited the example of a bishop who industriously got up every morning at four o’clock. The rest of the day he divided between congratulating himself on his early rising and yawning!

Rather than look for any one particular idea, it is much wiser to train the mind in the method by which all ideas are produced. There are certain principles we shall get to presently. Knowing these, your pencil chewing, pad doodling days are over. You can always help yourself to an idea.

Some persons regard each fact as a separate piece of information. Others realize it is a link in a chain of knowledge, with relationships, similarities and contrasts that can illustrate a general law which applies to all facts. If we had to learn afresh why every apple falls to the ground, we should never get anywhere. The one principle of gravitation covers the situation wherever it occurs. Similarly we have an overall principle that the production of an idea results from the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations. This depends largely on the ability to see relationships. And to see relationships is readily prearranged by means of certain devices which it is the purpose of this book to describe.