When we think of inventors and innovators and their creative processes, we often picture in our heads the lone person who suddenly has a Eureka! moment to come up with a unique idea.
You may be familiar with the story about Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree.
When an apple fell on his head, Newton came up with an idea he formulated into his famous Law of Gravity. Or the story about Archimedes who took a bath and figured out how to precisely calculate volume and density while enjoying sitting in the warm water.
These are the stories we grew up with, the “light bulb moment” stories of lone geniuses who suddenly came up with amazing theories, new and unique understandings of how our world works, all on their own.
They all had a Eureka! moment.
We love these stories about great minds who stumble onto something new and innovative without any hard work. It’s like listening to a fairy tale, and who doesn’t like a good fairy tale?
But the truth is that innovation and coming up with new ideas is never a single event.
Rather, it is a long process. Even though these moments of inspiration and epiphany happen suddenly, they result from a lot of hard work done by many people. Much knowledge that already existed had to be studied, ideas from other people understood, experimentation done, many failures happened, and much time passed in contemplation.
New ideas don’t come out of nothing. All new ideas lean heavily on what is already known and on other peoples’ ideas and theories.
Instead of occurring as sudden moments, new ideas are the result of what we can formulate in something called the creative process.
And the great news is, you can learn this process, develop your creative thinking and become a creative genius.
Do you want to learn more about it?
Comments