Page 126 - THE DO-IT-YOURSELF LOBOTOMY Open Your Mind to Greater Creative Thinking

Intergalactic Problem Solving 117

creative types, whom I call dreamers, along with other creative person-
ality types.)

7
INTERGALACTIC THINKING IN

EVERYDAY LIFE

Electrical engineer Philo Farnsworth, the man who made the break-
through in the development of television, is said to have found his
inspiration while he was tilling a potato field. Row by row, Farnsworth
maneuvered his horse-drawn harrow back and forth, suddenly realiz-
ing that an electron beam could scan images the same way, back and
forth, on a picture screen.
A number of years ago I was about to develop a TV campaign for
a small breakfast cereal company. As I sat in on the preliminary meet-
ing with the client, the media pros from my agency were telling the
client that the best way to reach cereal consumers was morning TV.
“TV?” the client said incredulously. “I can’t even afford radio.” That
gave me the idea of doing a radio commercial on TV, which was much
more economical to produce and helped drive home one of the main
points of the commercial: Because we don’t spend big bucks on adver-
tising, we pass the savings on to you.
Rocker Patti Smith tells a story of how she was inspired to write a
song about helicopters in Vietnam when she looked up in a recording
studio and saw ceiling fans spinning their whirlybird-like rotors.
You can make lightning strike.
You don’t have to wait until you’re plowing a field or watching an
industrial fan. You need not physically travel to another place to be
struck by inspiration in this way. Did Philo Farnsworth have to be in
a potato field to have been inspired by a potato field? No. He only had
to think of that back and forth movement of a tractor to come up with
his revolutionary idea. He could have gotten the same inspiration by
reading a book line by line, by knitting a sweater row by row, or just
by thinking about farming, reading, or knitting.

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What follows is the strict, disciplined way to use Intergalactic
Thinking. It’s the method I use in leading group brainstorming ses-
sions and in coaching people at my Creativity Workshops. I suggest
that you use this most disciplined process early on. As you begin to