Some people spend their professional lives refining existing products without ever inventing anything and yet produce great value in their work, some people invent new products of great value, and some people invent all their lives and do not produce anything of value at all.
Many engineers think of inventing as being a uniquely engineering process, but inventing is done in almost all fields of human activity:
- Scientists invent hypotheses and instruments.
- Authors invent characters and plots.
- Artists invent forms.
- Composers invent melodies and rhythms.
- Business people invent deals. (If you become an entrepreneur, you will have the opportunity to do so)
- Soldiers invent tactics.
- Parents invent games.
- Some criminals invent frauds, and others invent techniques, tools, and tactics for violent crimes.
- Business lawyers invent contract terms, and litigating lawyers invent arguments and strategies.
- Surgeons invent procedures and instruments. (They sometimes work in cooperation with engineers, as an example)
- Diplomats invent treaty terms.
- Legislators invent laws.
- Financiers invent financing deals.
- Salespeople invent persuasive arguments.
- Marketers invent strategies.
The word "creativity" is widely used to describe the aptitude and productivity of inventors. Many believe it is quite a proper word, but it is used so much in ways that we do not entirely admire that we have developed distaste for it and do not often use it. Aptitude, talent, productivity, inventiveness, and ingenuity are some of the words which we prefer and which we use here.
Commercial testing companies administer psychological tests to measure a variety of aptitudes such as spatial visualization, mathematics, and abstract thinking as well as other personality characteristics. Many believe (there's that word again) that most of us would be better off if we were similarly tested before starting college so we could choose a career path for which we were well fitted. Our scores could be kept private to prevent their prejudicing other people against us.
What are the attributes of an inventor?
The inventor mentally combines, proportions, and operates in his or her head the elements of an invention. Therefore the ability to visualize mechanical structures and their motions or electrical or chemical circuits and structures and their invisible actions is essential. The fisher's expression "to think like a fish" suggests the inventor's ability to think like the invention. The same ability enables the engineering diagnostician (debugger) to visualize the internal performance of a real device which is not operating as desired.
Developing your talent
To what degree are we confined to our genetic talent, and to what degree can we develop whatever talent we have? Talent alone produces nothing without development. Here are a few rules which will help you.
- The hardest is brute-force education: school, homework, examinations, and grades. Mathematics and science, if you really understand them and don't just pass examinations, teach you how nature works. (Many inventions are new combinations of parts of nature.) Engineering courses teach you the existing elements and combinations of your craft and how to use your mathematics for their quantitative design.
- Practice inventing. (Remember Mozart and his piano.) Many may be pompous for a moment; the human mind is the only instrument which gets sharper the more you use it.
- Permit unconventionally within the privacy of your own head. If you fear or dislike having a silly idea, or a disrespectful idea, or a dumb idea, or an immoral idea, then you won't have one. You also won't have the great idea which appears among a thousand poor ones. An invention, in its nature, is unconventional.
What happens inside the head of an inventor during the process of in-venting? Many doubt if anyone knows for sure, but many others believe it is approximately this:
As soon as a problem is considered, there is a stream of free association of ideas, existing devices, components, and materials and other memories of many kinds, including things quite unrelated to engineering. They appear in combinations and with variations in scale, shape, and material which seem relevant to the problem. The selection process is not conscious, but the elements selected become conscious. Many do not know the mechanism by which a very small fraction of one's enormous store of memories becomes selected except the psychologist's word "association."
There is parallel thinking as well as serial thinking; i.e., the brain juggles many balls in the air at the same time. This is the opposite of the disciplined, logical thinking we engineers have worked so hard to learn.
The result is a jumble of schemes, most of which are worthless. Judgment enters, as you go along, and discards the very bad ideas or components of ideas. Then engineering rationality enters with approximate calculations and other criticisms of the schemes in mind. The judgment and the rationality do not appear at any programmed times-you use them when your feelings tell you to use them.
Do not freeze your thinking by precisely defining the problem as you were taught to do in school. Modifying the problem may be a valuable part of the invention. If you are talented and lucky and hard-thinking, a valuable invention, quite logical and practical, will rise out of the wild confusion in which it was born.
Everyone knows that the mind is at work unconsciously while we sleep and while we do unrelated things. Does it invent unconsciously? Yes, it does. Most of the process described above can also take place without our even knowing that it is going on. Many do not suggest that to invent you should watch TV and just jot down the brilliant conceptions which interrupt the football game. Your unconscious thinking requires the same intensity of effort as your conscious thinking.
