As we know, our brain is the center for learning, creativity and the forming of ideas. But how do we develop ideas? Can we create completely original ideas? Can just anyone come up with a truly great idea?
Ideas are complicated. Let’s take Bob Dylan’s music as an example of someone rearranging and building on ideas from the past to create something new. Dylan remixed old folk song tunes, wrote culturally relevant lyrics, and put them together to inspire and move a new generation. And, of course, this brings up the question of whether you can or should own an idea. This idea that there is “basically nothing new under the sun” can lend itself to freedom in creativity. And we see that happening often in our society—the taking of something already existing and transforming it into a new idea. So, how do humans create new ideas or even adapt the old ones to bring something fresh to the table?
Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Learn to think unconventionally. Creative geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical, analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all information that is not related to the problem. They look for ways to eliminate possibilities. Creative geniuses are inclusive thinkers which means they look for ways to include everything—even things that are dissimilar and totally unrelated. Generating associations and connections between unrelated or dissimilar subjects is how they provoke different thinking patterns in their brain. These new patterns lead to new connections which give them a different way to focus on the information and interpret what they are focusing on. This is how original and truly novel ideas are created.
Novel ideas are created by your thinking, and how you think defines you. We hope this blog piqued your interest and gave you some fresh ideas about, well, ideas. If you want to learn more, check out our list of courses here.
