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 this situation wherever it occurs. Similarly we have an over-all 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.

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 into a new, practical or interesting arrangement.


Continued from ....How to Get IDEAS by Estelle H. Ries
Idea People Win