It also means sticking to fairly simple things that people will accept. It means thinking of something that won’t be too hard to manufacture or too expensive to sell or too hard to use. To be commercially successful an invention should accomplish one or more of the following:

• save time
• lower costs
• sell easier
• do more
• work better

Inventors do some­times gain quick wealth but only provided they have a practical knowledge of the business aspects of manufactur­ing, promoting and selling the invention in addition to the special requisites of making the invention in the first place. This world is a very materialistic, practical and hard one, and it will not go for an inventor’s brainwave unless it fills a want.

For all the technical cleverness of inventors, they do manage to devote their energies to some strange things. One man came out with a motor-driven corkscrew. Another sewed a ring of sponges around a hat brim or umbrella, so the rain would be absorbed there and not drip down on him. So take a warning from these, and when you get a new idea, think up every reason you can think of as to why you should forget it. If you then still think it is good, go ahead. There are enough things in our daily lives which have faults to challenge ingenuity, and which fill the re­quirements of a potentially successful improvement. There are, for example, tea kettles whose handles become too hot, salt shakers that don’t shake salt, egg beaters that are hard to wash, smelly ashtrays. You go on from there.

It is wise to keep to fields which are in the public eye. Direct your work to specific companies by improving their present wares or by providing them with competitive products which they can produce with a minimum of expense. Or at least before you make a heavy investment in time, money, experiments and hard work, take into consideration the difficulties we have enumerated, and outwit them by avoiding the roads they travel on.

Most people have considered creativeness an elusive ability that is born, not made. They look upon a new idea as an accident that descends from the ether and just dangles before the eyes of some fortunate person. But as we shall see, there is no mystery or magic involved. The whole problem resolves itself merely into getting the right combinations of old ideas or parts of old ideas int a new, practical or interesting arrangement.

To be sure, information gained from wide experience prepares one to see a particular subject in relation to other things and to have a proper sense of proportion about values and possibilities. With this sense of relationship closer and sounder analysis is achieved. The widely informed person can do a better job of recognizing pertinent and significant factors than one who is not so alert. So, keep exposing yourself to new experiences. Avoid doing things exclusively by force of habit. Habits have many valuable and profound uses, but we can carry this to extreme. The idea seeker must be flexible, not bound by tradition, the same old thing, the habitual reaction. They should go to different restaurants, go to work by a different route, avoid the same vacation every year, read books in different fields, meet people in different groups or classes, expose themselves to new and different situations and experiences.

It may be said, before considering the various sources of material for particular ideas, that there is present in every completed idea the broad general background of your individuality. Often it is this background of individuality that determines whether an idea is to be a success or a failure. The whole person is always present in every sincere effort.

Therefore, try to know yourself and your real interests, for the enthusiasm which interest begets has great carrying power. To develop a fundamental approach to getting ideas, start by listing your own skills, special talents and experiences. You cannot make the most of your assets in the fields you know best, and permit them the opportunity of being useful to you, if you do not know what they are. Decide whether your skills or interests are primarily scientific, artistic, business, social, mechanical, organizational, visual and domestic. Decide whether you prefer details or generalities, whether you think better concretely or abstractly. After you decide in which you are strongest, list the rest in order of their appeal for you.

In addition, there are certain character qualities which are useful, not only in getting ideas, but in any phase of successful living. These include open mindedness which enables you to judge new ideas or things on their merits, avoiding their rejection because they are strange or unfamiliar. Also planning, which helps you to work out in advance the details of what you must do to achieve the results you want. Without planning, you leave things to chance, to hit or miss, trial and error. Likewise carefulness, which permits you to carry out your work with painstaking effort, thoroughness and cautiousness in avoiding mistakes. Overlook this, and you perform your work in a slipshod manner, which surely cannot reach a result in which you can take pride.

Very important, of which we shall speak later on, is observation, whereby you can pick out the facts of a situation, the facts that count, enabling you to analyze and form sound judgments. Without this valuable trait, the real facts of a situation are obscured, and inconsequential factors loom more important that the essential mater. In addition, there is resolution to stick to the right decision once you have made it, rather than wavering changing your mind and being unpredictable to yourself, not to speak of being unreliable where others are concerned. A valuable asset is patience which enables you to stay with a task which makes severe demands on your attention particularly if the outcome is in doubt and overdue in coming. Without this, you tend to be restless, irritable, causing the haste that makes waste, and resulting in serious errors. From this brief comment it must be apparent that mental efficiency is important to the creative thinker. Those who realize this and work to develop their mental faculties are the ones who stand the best chance of becoming skillful producers of ideas. Ideas can be produced by a process of combinations and permutations, but they are more fun when the spark of individual fire is added.