Why now is the best time for having an idea

In the 1940’s an advertising exec by the name of James Webb Young published a paper on the techniques used for creating ideas. Young believed that great ideas weren't born from spontaneous eureka moments, but rather a series of exercises that anyone and everyone could follow.

The paper, ‘a technique for producing ideas’ which later went on to be published, is still widely regarded in the branding and advertising world as a must read (It can be found super cheap on amazon, and is still well worth picking up 50 years on).

Young’s first stage in the ideas process is all about data gathering. Obviously in the 1940’s this meant trawling through newspaper articles, reading books and listening to the radio. Crucially, Young makes the distinction between targeted data gathering (i.e. research on your subject matter) and contextual data gathering (anything and everything else that might have resonance). With a wealth of relevant and non relevant data at your fingertips you’re ready to start trying to piece it all together to form your idea!

Despite Young claiming his process could be used by anyone and everyone, it seems to me that a creative mind is still needed to hunt down which articles or books to read. Telling someone to effectively ‘research anything’ is a big hurdle for many to overcome. If, for example, I’m trying to come up with an ad campaign for a milkshake, which 6 books would I borrow from my local library? A book about the history of milk? An illustrated book of British dairy cows perhaps? How about Jamie Oliver's chocolate and cocoa recipes? There are literally hundreds of sources of information that could prove useful – narrowing them down is the problem!

Fortunately for us data gathering took a huge leap forward with the introduction of the internet. Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg is a prime example of someone who levied the power of the net to pieced together data from multiple sources (human psychology and online networking to name just two) to form an idea.

These days data gathering is even easier. Using Twitter and RSS feeds we can literally feed ourselves a constant stream of relevant information. How do I come up with an ad campaign for a milkshake in 2011? Well one place to start would be following dairy farmers, smoothie makers, chefs and taste experts on Twitter. Add in RSS feeds from blogs like Lifehacker and I can sit back and let the ideas come to me.