Can you push your mind for an inventive idea?

You just can't tell your mind to add one and two together to get three! At least as far as idea generation is concerned, it does not come easily on demand. People are of the opinion that on a fine day, an inspiration will come from a spark of an idea. But that fine day usually never seems to show up, at least for most of us. Why is it so? Actually, our mind harbors many ideas at any one time. However, these many disparate ideas, or images, keep hovering in our mind but they just don't seem to connect together. We normally don't think much about them as individually, they do not amount to much. So they seems to float about until that fine day when the mind connects it with another idea, and loft and behold, the two combined entities suddenly seems like a 'hell of an idea'. This is what we called the spark of inspiration! You might call out eureka after that. As I see it, the mind beholds many ideas, images, and visions at any one time. All these little ideas reside in the memory bank, and seem to float in and out as they like. These images are the foundation pieces of larger ideas, but by itself do not amount to much. They can have an articulated form factor, various colors, and smell. When combined with other ideas or images, they become a bigger entity and the mind will use its logical thinking power to assess what it amounts to. This is an important process, as the mind will have to use its resources to ascertain whether the combined ideas can be of any use. From here, the person's character will decide whether the idea will proceed further or be dropped. A pessimist mind set will just shrugged it off as something silly and would discard it away. An optimist mind set will get into a great excited mood and will explore it further. Creators, artist, entrepreneurs and inventors are all optimist, and no idea is silly enough that they have to be discarded away. Sometimes, the idea might be put into a gestation stage for further development at a future time. Viable ideas might not seem viable at first, but creative minds always have a knack of twisting and juggling them until the idea take forms. When the mind combines two ideas together, they normally follow a conventional thinking pattern that is ideas that can be associated are not too divergent in nature. That is what an educated mind will normally do. The result is that you will have a plethora of products and services in the market that looks very similar to each other. Each of them is the result of logically combining various smaller ideas together to form a not so newer idea. Only once in a while do you see an idea that is contrarian to the normal pattern, sort of going against the tide type. When the mind is confronted with a problem, it will draw from its memory bank for ideas. In solving problems, it will follow a conventional thinking pattern by putting one and one together to make two. If you put five people to the task, it is very likely that the five solutions that you get have many similarities. Is it surprising? Obviously not! Great mind thinks alike, or so they said. But the greatest mind always differs from the mediocre! It is because of this reason that we do not often see 'creative ideas' or 'inventive ideas' as it belongs to a class of ideas that are different from the norm. Great ideas only come rarely, and it normally also has a surprising element to it. The creative mind has a knack of combining small little ideas that by all reasonable thoughts should not have been associated with each other. Logical thinking says it should not. But illogical thinking do have a place in the world, especially in a globalize economy where everything looks the same. In order to catch the eye of the public, you have to be a bit different from the mainstream thinking. The media people and the marketing guys love to offer something that is different from the normal. Now, combining two little ideas to form a bigger idea can’t happen on demand. The more you want it to happen, the more it evades you. But on a fine day, it might just happen. And when you least expect it, it happens, like when you were occupied with something else that has totally got no association with it. So if you are in need of a great solution, chew over the many ideas that is in your mind, then let it simmer for a while and on a fine day, it will just spark off. Better still, get into the inventing mood and enjoy your creativity. If you are interested to know more about those conditions that are favorable to spark off new invention ideas, read them in my book, ‘Inventing: The moment before the spark came’.