A step-by-step technique for sparking breakthrough creativity in advertising--or any field

Since its publication in 1965, A Technique for Producing Ideas has helped thousands of advertising copywriters smash through internal barriers to unleash their creativity. Professionals from poets and painters to scientists and engineers have also used the techniques in this concise, powerful book to generate exciting ideas on demand, at any time, on any subject. Now let James Webb Young's unique insights help you look inside yourself to find that big, elusive idea--and once and for all lift the veil of mystery from the creative process.

It is a challenging task to define how does one get ideas in the first place. And to explain the steps for others to follow in order to produce ideas? It simply sounds outrageous.

But this book a nice job of going through the process and the author describes the creative process in clear and simple steps. And It makes sense!

After reading this book, i felt, deep down i always knew the step of combining old things or connecting different things.

Knowledge is basic to good creative thinking but that is not enough, that this knowledge must be digested and eventually emerge in the form of fresh, new combinations and relationships. Einstein refers to this as intuition, which he considers the only path to new insights

Production of ideas as definite a process as the production of Fords; that the production of ideas, too, runs on an assembly line

• By following an operative technique that can be learnt and controlled, things are produced in a factory. Just like that ideas can also be produced by learning an operative technique.
• The formula or operative technique is so simple to believe and takes hardest kind of intellectual work to follow

• All the people can be divided in to two groups: the speculators and the rentiers

Particular bits of information is nothing because they are made up of “rapidly aging facts”

• In learning any art, first we learn the principles and the methods

• The habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes the highest importance in the production of ideas.

The five step method in which ideas are generated

1. Gather raw material
2. Go through the raw material, look at it in different angles, feel for the meaning. Bring two facts together and see how they fit
3. Make no effort of a direct nature. Drop the whole subject and put the problem out of your mind as completely as you can. Turn to whatever stimulates your imagination and emotions. Listen to music, watch a movie, read poetry or detective story
4. Out of nowhere, the idea will appear
5. When you get the idea, refine it by submitting to criticism and fine tuning

Words are themselves, ideas. They could be called ideas in a state of suspended animation

James Clear

• Theory of Leisure Class http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/LCS/theoryleisureclass.pdf
• The lonely crowd; a study of the changing American character https://archive.org/details/lonelycrowdstudy00ries
• Sard Harker https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/SardHarkerLanguage in Thought and Action https://archive.org/details/languageinthough0000unse_n1k4/page/n7/mode/2up
• The Art of thought https://archive.org/details/theartofthought/page/n3/mode/2up
• Science and Method https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.425327/page/15/mode/2up
• The art of scientific investigation https://archive.org/details/artofscientifici00beve/page/n19/mode/2up

https://archive.org/details/techniqueforprod0000youn