The Four Lenses of Innovation: A Power Tool for Creative Thinking

The Archimedes Principle

There is a common myth about innovation that big ideas simply come to us out of nowhere in a sudden flash of inspiration.

For over two thousand years, ever since Archimedes is supposed to have leapt out his bath crying “Eureka!,” this has been the way we characterize these magical moments. But even though it might feel sometimes as if ideas just pop into our heads out of the blue, we are now beginning to understand that there is much more involved in the process.

The fact is, creative ideas don’t just occur to us spontaneously from one moment to the next. Our minds actually build them from a unique chain of associations and connections, sometimes over a considerable period of time.

When we examine the creative process in more detail, we discover that breakthrough thinking is usually built on an illuminating insight (or a series of insights) into a situation or a problem that inspires an unexpected leap (or leaps) of association in the mind, resulting in a completely novel configuration of previously existing ideas. This fresh combination of thoughts, in which various, perhaps unrelated concepts and domains click together in a whole new relationship, is what suddenly manifests itself as a big idea or creative solution. That’s the famous Eureka moment when ...