Your Creative Power

Alex Osborn

• Publisher: Myers Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781406777550, 9781443731942
• eBook ISBN: 9781446546840
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Creativity

Ten years ago, the editor of a leading magazine invited me to lunch. I had been one of his contributors, but we had never met. He broke the ice by asking, "What is your hobby, Mr. Osborn?" "Imagination," I replied. He paused, then wrote on the back of an envelope, "MY HOBBY IS IMAGINATION." "Mr. Osborn," he said, "you must do a book on that. It's a job that has been waiting to be done all these years. There is no subject of greater importance. You must give it the time and energy and thoroughness it deserves." That remark started this book. Although I earned my master's degree in practical psychology and have devoted most of my life to the psychology of advertising, I cannot claim to be a psychologist. Nor have I tried to write as a psychologist. I have felt free to take figurative liberties with academic concepts. For instance, I realize that imagination is an integral part of man's mind-body function; and yet, for the sake of clarity and readability, I refer to imagination as if it were an entity of itself. My frequent use of the term "brainstorm" may bother the reader at first. Although Chapter 33 will fully explain, an inkling of its meaning may be helpful here: "Brainstorm" is used mainly to label the kind of conference where a few people sit down together for an hour or so solely to use their creative imaginations—solely to suggest ideas on a specific subject, right then and there. During the past ten years, in quest of material and insight, I have interviewed hundreds of people and have read hundreds of books, speeches and articles. I am indebted to all who talked with me and to all whose writings I read. Many of their names will be found in the index.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• About the Author
• About the Book
• Contents
• Halftitle
• I. The Lamp That Lit the World Can Light Your Life
• II. Creative Effort Pays in More Coins Than Cash
• III. All of Us, Especially Women, Possess This Talent
• IV. Educated or Self-Educated—Old or Young
• V. Creative Power Needs No Ivory Tower
• VI. Imagination Takes Many Forms, Including Non-Creative
• VII. Creative Imagination Is Manifold and Inter-Acting
• VIII. The Creative Fuel We Store—Is It Rich or Thin?
• IX. The Power of Association Joins Memory with Imagination
• X. Emotional Drive as a Source of Creative Power
• XI. Where There’s a Will There Are Ways to Think Up
• XII. Judgment May Choke Ideas—Let’s Keep It in Its Place
• XIII. Let’s Try Not to Undermine Our Own Creative Power
• XIV. Others Can Help Make or Mar Our Creativity
• XV. Even Exercise Can Be Fun—Especially in Creative Thinking
• XVI. To Attack a Creative Task We First Get Set
• XVII. Let’s Now Pick Our Target and Set Our Aim
• XVIII. Break Down the Problem—Fill in the Facts
• XIX. Let’s Send Forth Our Imagination in Search of Alternatives
• XX. “To What Other Uses Could This Be Put?”
• XXI. What Can We Borrow and Adapt to Our Need?
• XXII. Let’s Look for a New Twist—Let’s Modify
• XXIII. What If We Add, or Multiply—or Magnify?
• XXIV. Let’s Subtract and Divide—Let’s Minify
• XXV. Let’s Seek “That” Instead of “This”—Let’s Substitute
• XXVI. Let’s Change the Pattern—Let’s Re-arrange
• XXVII. There’s Lots of Good Hunting in Vice Versa
• XXVIII. Your Creative Key May Be a Combination
• XXIX. Ideas Will Fly in Our Windows—If We’ve Opened Them
• XXX. Lady Luck Smiles Upon Those Who Are “A-Hunting”
• XXXI. Most Ideas Are Step-by-Step Children of Other Ideas
• XXXII. “Two Heads Are Better Than One”—But Not Always
• XXXIII. How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas
• XXXIV. Idea-Thinking on Larger Scale—Suggestion Systems
• XXXV. Creative Effort Can Make Life Brighter
• XXXVI. Ideas Are the Keys to Better Employee Relations
• XXXVII. Creative Power’s Place in Leadership
• XXXVIII. The Need of More Creative Thinking in Public Affairs
• XXXIX. The Part Played by Creative Power in Science
• XL. Does America’s Creative Power Face a Decline?
• XLI. Creative Power Needs More Help from Education
• Index