How do people get new ideas?
"......It seems to me then that the purpose of cerebration sessions is
not to think up new ideas but to educate the participants in facts and
fact-combinations, in theories and vagrant thoughts.
But how to persuade creative people to do so? First and foremost, there
must be ease, relaxation, and a general sense of permissiveness. The
world in general disapproves of creativity, and to be creative in public
is particularly bad. Even to speculate in public is rather worrisome.
The individuals must, therefore, have the feeling that the others won’t
object.
If a single individual present is unsympathetic to the
foolishness that would be bound to go on at such a session, the others
would freeze. The unsympathetic individual may be a gold mine of
information, but the harm he does will more than compensate for that. It
seems necessary to me, then, that all people at a session be willing to
sound foolish and listen to others sound foolish.
If a single
individual present has a much greater reputation than the others, or is
more articulate, or has a distinctly more commanding personality, he may
well take over the conference and reduce the rest to little more than
passive obedience. The individual may himself be extremely useful, but
he might as well be put to work solo, for he is neutralizing the rest.
The optimum number of the group would probably not be very high. I
should guess that no more than five would be wanted. A larger group
might have a larger total supply of information, but there would be the
tension of waiting to speak, which can be very frustrating. It would
probably be better to have a number of sessions at which the people
attending would vary, rather than one session including them all. (This
would involve a certain repetition, but even repetition is not in itself
undesirable. It is not what people say at these conferences, but what
they inspire in each other later on.)
For best purposes, there
should be a feeling of informality. Joviality, the use of first names,
joking, relaxed kidding are, I think, of the essence—not in themselves,
but because they encourage a willingness to be involved in the folly of
creativeness......."
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