Everybody has ideas, of course. Only, somehow, certain people seem to be more creative than others. How come? Research on creativity began in the early 1960ies. Realizing the economic potential of high creativity, scientists began to systematically explore the nature of invention.
Edward de Bono, one of the movement’s pioneers, defined creativity as “the ability to break free from the prison of old ideas and to develop new ones”. Thus creativity does no longer imply utter chaos and an inexplicable results, but follows patterns.
This perception lead to a large number of techniques, that support the process of having ideas. No thought, no idea grows out of a vacuum. They have to be stimulated, by something. Among the numerous techniques to initiate ideas we find Brainstorming, Six Thinking Hats, Bisoziation, Synektik, Reizwort-Analyse, Random-Input, Attribute-Listing.