Creative Wizards Through History: How Human’s Great Thinkers had their ideas
We at Ideaflip are not the first to break down the creative process —(though our process is quite good). In a previous post we published our in-depth SIX STEP GUIDE to Idea generation.
So you’ve heard from us, let’s hear from a few of them…
Hermann von Helmholtz (1821 –1894) — German physicist, physician & philosopher of science.
1 — Saturation
2 — Incubation
3 — Illumination
Henri Poincaré (1854 –1912) — French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer & philosopher of science.
1 — Work til reach impasse
2 — Unconscious incubation
3 — Illumination
4 — Verification
Graham Wallas (1858 –1932) — English social psychologist, co-founder of the London School of Economics & author of Art of Thought
1 — Preparation
2 — Incubation
3 — Intimation (feeling it bubble, a sense that the solution is about to reveal itself)
4 — Illumination
5 — Verification
James Webb Young (1886–1973) — American advertising executive & author of A Technique for Producing Ideas
1 — Gather raw materials
2 — Mental digestive process
3 — Leave alone
4 — The thought will come — EUREKA!
5 — Release
Alex Osborn (1888 –1966) — American advertising executive, pioneering creativity theorist & author of Applied Imagination.
1 — Orientation
2 — Preparation (gathering pertinent data)
3 — Analysis (of the data)
4– Ideation
5 — Incubation
6 — Synthesis (putting the pieces together)
7 — Evaluation
And here’s a few of our contemporaries…
R. Keith Sawyer — Author of Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation
1 — Find the problem
2 — Acquire the knowledge
3 — Gather related info
4 — Incubation
5 — Generate ideas
6 — Combine ideas
7 — Select best ideas
8 — Externalise ideas
Rowan Gibson — Author of The 4 Lenses of Innovation
1 — Frame a specific challenge — and focus on solving it.
2 — Research the subject. Learn from the work of others.
3 — Immerse yourself in the problem. Explore possible solutions.
4 — Reach a roadblock. Feel the creative frustration.
5 — Relax. Detach from the problem. Let it incubate in the unconscious mind.
6 — Come to an illuminating insight that fundamentally shifts your perspective.
7 — Build the insight (or insights) into a big idea — a new combination of thoughts.
8 — Test and validate the new idea — try to make it work.
As you can see, it all amounts to variations on a theme. What’s your process? Whose of the above is the closest to yours? Or is there someone we’ve missed off?
However you do it, keep doing it. Always be sowing the seeds for future idea germination.
Ideaflip is an ingenious tool for the remote-working era, providing the perfect, online space for all your team to connect, interact and create — wherever in the world they are.
The Ideaflip Brainstorm PROCESS is also perfect for at-work collaboration. It democratises the workplace, creating a platform for everyone to have their ideas heard — inspiring PEOPLE to participate through PLAY — and helps discover and harness everyone’s latent creativity.
