viiMany other organizations have similarly sought new lifeblood from the imaginations of their members. The war effort has encouraged this process to the point where the spurred-on ingenuity of the average American is reaching a new peak. New peaks in production for victory are resulting.
Donald Nelson, referring to the initiative and intelligence of free Americans, has said, 'We can properly call this our secret weapon because it cannot be made to serve the enemy, whose craftsmen toil under the lash of the slave driver.' And speaking of how this rich vein of American ingenuity is being mined, Mr. Nelson has said, 'Through suggestion systems this improved production art is being brought to the surface, used in the plant where the man works, and, through the War Production Drive Headquarters, plowed back to enrich all industry. Already some magnificent things have been brought to light. Men have made contributions that are now closely guarded military secrets. They are of that importance. But these great improvement do not measure the power of this weapon. The millions of little improvements that save an hour or a pound of brass make it devastating. In their aggregate these will amass our production victory.'
There is so little literature that might help Americans in their endeavor to think up more ideas for the war effort that I persuaded Mr. Osborn to send this manuscript to a publisher. I hope that a large number of copies will be circulated in American offices and plants."
1Someone once said, 'Ideas are a dime a dozen.' But now we know they are precious. In fact, ideas are not dimes but diamonds.
2Ideas are the priceless keys to good living. Some of life's stony problems can be cleared away by outside science, others by judgment, but most of them by ideas. The more ideas we can think up, the more satisfying our lives can be.
2Each of us has an Aladdin's lamp which psychologists call creative imagination. In a genius this lamp burns brightly from birth to death. The rest of us have to rub our lamps.
2And business is learning that Tom, Dick, and Nellie can be coached and coaxed to think up more ideas. The Aluminum Company recently coined the word 'imagineering' for this idea delving.
9Who can think up ideas? You and every other normally intelligent person. But you have to try. The fact that effort is the priceless ingredient is proved by (1) the axiom that necessity is the mother of invention and (2) the evidence that encouragement can grow great crops of creativeness even when the spur of need is unfelt.
11Robley Feland recently said this...'High up in our resources for happiness we can place the proved knowledge that we have, in our thinkery, a well-exercised power to think ourselves out of trials and difficulties. Although it is impossible to lift ourselves over a fence by our bootstraps, it is possible--it can be easy--to lift ourselves over life's obstacles by the force of our applied imagination.
12"You will admit that you need ideas for your own good and for the fun of it. 'But,' you may say, 'nobody else wants my ideas. Certainly not my boss. Children should be seen and not heard. Employees should work and shut up.'
That used to be true. But how this has changed! Employers are hungry for ideas from the rank and file. They have more trained researchers than ever. But they are not good bosses unless they try hard to draw out, and know how to draw out, the imaginative talent of every man and woman on the pay roll.
'What about labor unions?' you may ask. 'Don't they frown on having their members hand in ideas on how to speed up work?' No. With the war calling for larger and larger production, any method is favored that will permit the same employees tot urn out more work or that will release skilled hands for other war jobs. The labor unions are as cooperative as never before.
This attitude of labor is reflected in hundreds of factories throughout the nation, where suggestions departments are not an arm of management alone, but a part of labor-management committees that have been set up at the request of Washington. Everywhere these labor-management committees are speeding up the imaginations of workers in every line.
13Efforts to gather ideas from workers are not new. One manufacturer claims that his present program traces back some 40 years. The new fact is the sudden upsurge in this activity. This is due to three factors: (1) management's keener realization of the importance of ideas, especially during wartime, (2) improvement in methods of carrying on idea-garnering activities, (3) zeal of employees to aid the war effort by thinking up helpful ideas.
15Last spring, C.E. Wilson, president of General Motors, announced a new plan by which a worker could win a $1,000 War Bond for a single idea. This offer was not open to those whose regular duties call for creative thinking. Key people in engineering, processing, tool design, production planning, and supervisory work were told that their compensation and advancement were considerably influenced by the ideas they contributed form day to day. To the rank and file the General Motors president made this point:
"While the General Motors suggestion plan provides a monetary reward in the form of War Stamps or Bonds for suggestions accepted, there are other advantages accruing to employees who take sufficient interest in their work to make suggestions. It has been the experience of plants where similar systems are in effect that unsuspected ability and talent are demonstrated by the suggestions, and, as a result, employees have frequently been promoted to supervision, tool design, processing, or drafting work."
Less than five months after General Motors offered prizes for ideas, suggestions were coming in at the rate of 200 a day. Every day more than $1,000 in War Bonds has been awarded. In 5 months, 31,777 ideas were received from the rank and file.
15John Collyer, president of B.F. Goodrich, which has 40,000 employees, recently said:
"...Nearly all of us have more imagination than we ever put to work. Too often we either do not try hard enough to think things up, or we are too modest to hand in ideas which occur to us. For victory's sake, let us put our imaginations on overtime!"
17Akron is the rubber capital of the world. America's rubber crisis makes ideas desperately urgent in that Ohio city....
In this first year of the Second World War over 7,000 ideas, thought up by working men and women, will have been received by the rubber industry in Akron alone. To draw forth, to judge, and to make use of these ideas, the big rubber companies have established special departments or committees. They pay cash for each idea that can be used.
18How to make rubber usable was originally thought up by one man working by himself. Back in 1839 a New Englander named Charles Goodyear went bankrupt when Uncle Sam refused to pay him for his rubber mail sacks.
19Encyclopedias list Goodyear as one of the great inventors of all time. They may never mention Harry Schoman, a rubber worker for B.F. Goodrich Company at Akron, Ohio. Yet Harry has turned in a steady stream of ideas. He received $100 cash for just one of them; his total earnings from this source have been $885--not bad for an unschooled mechanic.
20Women rubber workers are contributing more and more suggestions. They may not be so skillful as men at describing their ideas, and they are not so willing to stick their necks out.
22Among many others, War Production Drive Headquarters has honored Martin Pearson, author of Western stories, who works for the Yellow Truck and Coach Manufacturing Company, Pontiac, Mich. He made two suggestions that saved 76,000 feet of lumber in 60 days. The first, an improved method of boxing Army trucks for shipment, has been adopted by three other plants. The other idea was to stencil information labels directly on trucks instead of on boards wired to them. This saved 484 work-hours in a 2-month period.
24Managers recognize the importance of enoucragement. Even if the worker's idea is silly, he receives courteous treatment. Never is he told he is a nut. A polite letter went to the man who wrote, "I suggest that shude put Gloss windows in Dores in Mens and Women toilet for safty When two men mit nither one can see eachother and often makes cowlision."
24As a matter of fact, most companies will help any worker put his ideas on paper if he needs aid. If he can't draw--and how many can't?--the committee will assign a man to put his suggestion into picture form. If he can't write easily, he can tell his idea to a skilled production engineer.
25You can think up better if you team up with others. Two heads are better than one, and five are better than two, but only if their owners will honestly make them work for the good of the group.
26If a conference is intended as a court to consider whether this is better than that, it usually works well. Everybody loves to be a critic or a judge. Judicial judgment calls for no great mental sweat. Conferences to decide something are usually successful.
But conferences to think up something up? Ugh!
27"No conference to think up an idea should be undertaken without some ground rules, such as the following:
1. Judicial judgment is ruled out. Criticism must be withheld until all ideas are in.
2. Wildness is wanted. The crazier the idea, the better. It is easy to tone down but hard to think up.
3. The best ideas are simple. But some complex ideas have simple parts that can be put together with parts of other ideas to make a 'wow.' Most of the very best ideas are thus synthesized. If you can't originate an idea, think up how someone else's good idea can be turned into a better idea.
28We sorely need new games which will exercise imagination instead of straining memory. In schools, particularly, idea clubs could do much to step up the creative skill of young America. Almost every campus has a French club, a Spanish club, even a German club. Why not an idea club?
30If you can put the spirit of a game into a think-up conference, you will find imaginations will work best. By a strange paradox, a person can think up more ideas when trying hard in a relaxed frame of mind. One successful device for group thinking in our business has been through what we dubbed 'brain-storm suppers.' To these we invite some dozen youngsters and a few 'brass hats.' They meet in our company dining room after hours. The executive in charge carves the beef and serves the salad. Our attractive dietitian makes all feel at home. After the coffee and pie all sink into soft chairs in another room. The ground rules are laid down. All are equal. The youngster is not afraid of the oldster. The problem is assigned. Ideas begin to flow. Every idea, 'crackpot' or 'crackerjack,' is recorded. Supper starts at six; 'brain-storming' starts at seven thirty and ends at nine. By nine, brain-stormers have begun to enjoy themselves so much that they hate to quit. But at nine, nevertheless, the game is called.
Out of these sessions we get scores of ideas. Not until the next day are they scrutinized for merit.... The ideas have been found valuable, but the result on the participants is valuable, too. They have gained in creative stature. They have seen proof that they can spark if they will. They have exercised their creative muscles. They have encouraged a habit that will do most for them in business and in private life.
30Over a year ago we helped create a new product, advertise it, and market it for a national manufacturer. We had used many good lines in our advertising, but we wanted a real slogan. Of the boys and girls invited to that brain-storm supper, the majority had never worked on the account. But as consumers they had become users of the product and were convinced of its superiority. About 150 promising slogans were popped in one 90-minute session. The 100 best were then scientifically tested. Certain ones seemed to click with consumers....
The firm that makes and markets this product maintains a great market-research department headed by a former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Once asked whether imagination has any place in research, he replied, "Apart from thoroughness and accuracy, the most important and most valuable factor in research is imagination."
31There is no royal road to creation. The production of ideas can never be a science but will always be an art.
32I was driven to it when I was fired from my first job as a cub reporter. In despair I gave myself the chore of thinking up one new idea each day before breakfast. The ideas were puny and worthless, but it was great exercise.
32Go to your room, close the door, kick off your shoes, lie down. Pick yourself a problem within your experience. A husband might choose: What can I do this week to make my wife happier? A wife might think up what she can do to make her husband happier. A young man might choose: What can I do this week to make my boss think more of me?
33And the brighter you make your lamp glow, the more your personality is likely to glow.
35As an art, creative effort can never be formulated. But if there could be a technique, it might be something like this:
1. AIM: Pick out a single target, as I did when stuck at a railroad station one night. Although not mechanical myself, I chose a specific mechanical problem. Strolling up and down the platform, I found the puzzle an engaging companion. On boarding the train, I made a few sketches, but next morning a new and better idea cropped up. It wasn't much of an invention, but a manufacturer paid $300 for the patent.
2. FIRE: Shoot freely with your imagination. Don't let judgment hold you back. List your ideas, no matter how silly they may seem.
3. REVIEW: Examine your initial ideas coldly. Pick the best three. Brood over them...
4. RELAX: Forget it. Listen to music. Go to a theater or go to church....
5. CONFER: If you still miss, talk it over. By stating your problem clearly, you will throw light on your creative target.
6. RELOAD: If you still fail to hit your mark, retrace your previous shots, reload your imagination, and fire, and fire again. Eventually Old Man Average will cry, 'Bull's eye!'
36Prior to the First World War, Americans looked up to people of the D'Artagnan type. In those uncouth days a man was expected to stick out his neck even at the risk of seeming cocky. Mysteriously, the style changed. Modesty became the mark of the model American. In recent years self-effacement has been glorified to the point where the average young American is almost ashamed to advance an idea. He would consider it gall to assume that he could think up more ideas if he tried.
That philosophy has done much to cramp our creative muscles. Another cramping influence has been our sense of security. A person can push his imagination harder when fear pushes him. Likewise a nation is up on its toes creatively when down at its heels economically. Our forefathers were havenots and so had to use their ingenuity. The prosperity that they built made us soft in creative energy. Like a champion who breaks training, we got groggy. Luckily for use, creative supremacy can be regained, but only by heroic effort.
We were in the Second World War a long time before we realized that Hitler's creative skill was what made Nazi Germany more formidable than the Kaiser's Germany. And how tragically we underestimated the imagination of the Japs! When in all history was there an idea like Pearl Harbor? The Trojan horse was a puny notion by comparison. Democracy's losses, from the rape of Poland up to Stalingrad, were based on seemingly impossible enemy plans. We were beaten to the punch because we failed to imagine how the plans could be possible. Before flying to India in 1942, Sir Stafford Cripps said, 'Lack of imagination is what the United States and Great Britain are suffering form today.'
It was not until the spring of 1942 that our Army and Navy became aware that ideas had too long been lightly passed over. In May, 1942, a high-ranking officer said, 'Unless we go all out in imagination, we will never beat the Axis.' At about the same time, and in the same dire tone, Robert Sherwood said that the only way to win is 'with the power of the light that is in our minds.' And by 'our minds' he meant the imaginative mind of every American.
And when it comes to postwar plans, we desperately need enough ideas that the right ones may be culled. A very ingenious, and, some say, perhaps the most thoroughly thoughtful, plan for organizing the postwar world has been created by a man whose name will surprise you. He is not a college president, a statesman, or an economist. He is a bridge expert who has made his name known around the world. His secret is that he knows how to work his imagination on any subject. His name is Ely Culbertson.
Culbertson's plan for a global setup may never be adopted, either in whole or in part. But by setting up his ideas, even though only to be knocked down, Culbertson has done more than his bit toward winning the peace. Perhaps in the mind of some modest man there are the makings of the model for the millennium. Will his buried ideas be buried with him, or will he mine them with the dynamite of conscious effort.