A WORD

ON GENERATING

INITIAL IDEAS

The debate surrounding whether anyone

can ‘be creative’ or have a decent idea rages on.

One thing is clear: random, go mad,

“Give me your most whacky ideas, guys!”

approaches do not work well.

True creativity needs to be disciplined,

highly directed, and capable

of withstanding deep scrutiny.

In the absence of being brilliantly inspired every

moment of the day, most of us can learn from the

manner in which some of the best ideas came about.

We can then try to recreate a facsimile

of those conditions to generate our own more modest

piece of mini-brilliance.

Start with the ideas in this part.