A Technique for Producing Ideas

James Webb Young (1886-1973) was an advertising executive who became the first chairman of the Advertising Council. The basic argument of A Technique for Producing Ideas is quite simple: Ideas emerge from new combinations of old elements; a creative person is someone who can discern relationships between such elements and find new ways of combining them. So, one learns as much as you can about the specific thing you are working on, then switch off and do something else. When an idea emerges, one refines, revises, and develops the idea until it works for the intended purpose. Another important principle involved in creativity is that the ability to bring old elements into new combinations depends to a large extent on the capacity to see relationships between facts. Every fact has relationships and similarities to others and forms a link in a chain of knowledge.