But how can we stimulate creation of inventions? How should we proceed to find patentable solutions? The methods of general creativity stimulation shown above are applied also to technical creativity, in most of the cases. What else do we know from inventor’s experiences?
- Concentration: Inventors keep day and night their concerns focused on the problem in question; the intense physical and intellectual demands related with other subjects must be reduced.
- Alone: We will practice periods of meditation, of thinking about the solution sitting quietly alone, or in motion, walking.
- Otherwise: To any solution we’ll ask the question “isn’t it possible otherwise?”
- Don’t control your enthusiasm: To any solution or alternative, we get excited. In this way a dynamic stereotype is formed and retrieval of the solutions is psychically associated with satisfaction, which will create a “hunger” of such intellectual satisfactions in the future, and implicitly of creative acts.
- The terrain: The solutions found in the office, at the drawing board or in laboratory could be some enormities. Having the solution in our mind, we will go to the plant, to the construction site, to the commercial company, to the place where it will be applied. There we will have the practical possibilities revelation.
- Models: Using simple models made of wires, plasticine, mechanical games, and other simple methods, will give us the possibility of spatial perception of the problem and of using the sight; the eyes of mind are good, but they are helped by the actual impressions on the retina. In some countries, on the researchers’s desks there is a box with different pieces for assembly intended to this way of creative thinking stimulation.
- Different scientific culture: For engineers, the biological knowledges are an inexhaustible source of inventions. We have on the tray, around us, the optimal solutions found in nature for hundreds of thousands years. The in-depth study of physiology is a way of work, but with many further openings to engineering problems. It is known the fact that Edison were recruiting his collaborators based on a discussion about other science’s fields. The associative natures, common among us, can creatively use the science’s gains from one field in other fields. The analogy with other fields and extrapolation in other fields are intuitive creative methods recommended in many specialized works.
- When you have inspiration, work: There are days when whatever you do, you don’t progress. This is why, in good days, when we are in shape, we have to work continously, almost to the point of exhaustion, leaving everything else for anothe time. The factors which caused the focus of ecitation in the favorable brain area for the problem we have to solve, can be only partially controled by us.
- One idea attracts other ideas: Once you’ve found a new solution, keep dealing with it. If you achieve it, mostly practical, new partial ideas for different parts of parent solution will come to you every day. Do not block this soar, do not change your concerns, because the inspiration doesn’t come when we call it.
- Cooperate: Many inventors haven’t produced for humanity as much as their mind allowed them, because of the disturbances produced by upsets regarding their priority’s recognition or regarding the practical realization of the solution. The desire for affirmation, for appreciation is a powerful engine. But if we want to achieve more we will have to take others to help us. Than an invention forgotten, better an invention applied with several authors; the world knows what everyone’s contribution is.
- Before badtime: Original solutions are mostly the product of the affective processes of the subconscious. Think about the problem before bedtime to force the cortex to work directed during sleep.
- Using their own hands when performing works, experimentations, offers the possibility of peception of the additional sensations compared with only using the visual analyzer. These physical sizes sensations such as the mass of objects, velocities, accelerations, etc., are stored in subconscious and help the creation act that, as it has been shown, has an important subconscious component. Manual works performed during childhood or youth facilitate this mental appreciation of the intensity of physical sizes.
- Independent projects: The creative spirits can manifest, and usually manifest, in school, during activity in the year and diploma projects. But if a standard project is performed, with given relationships in which the initial parameters are replaced, and with performed solutions, from which the student have to choose, than he will choose, and will not create anything; at least one third of the project must be without a clear, decided solution. Not to mention about the convenience of using a dedicated software. For the endowed groups of students it can be started by giving the principle subject, the goals pursued so that they can conceive also the assembly of the machine or installation. In order to force the thinking it is good for each student to have another component part or even another machine. During school, inspiration from colleagues is common as a mean of saving intellectual effort.
