3.4.8 STICK TO YOUR AREA

Specialisation is a fact of life. In, order to function in the world, you have to narrow your focus and limit your field of view. When you're trying to generate new ideas, however, such information- handling attitudes can limit you. They not only may force you into delimiting your problems too narrowly, they may also prevent you from looking in outside areas for ideas.

To counteract the effects of specialisation, we might heed the advice Edison gave to his colleagues: Make it a habit to keep on the lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are working on." Here are some tips that will help to improve your hunting ability:

Don't get so busy that you lose the free time necessary for idea-hunting.

Schedule hunting time into your day and week. Little side excursions can lead to new hunting grounds.

Develop different kinds .of hunting grounds. The wider and more diversified your knowledge the more places you will have to draw from.

Look for analogous situations. Often problems similar to yours have been solved in other areas

When you "capture" an idea, be sure to write it down.