Creativity is possible at all levels from the kitchen chemistry lab to the killer app corporate development project or to the multinational research initiative. Whatever the era or product, the successful project or company starts with a creative visionary. Somebody who is persistent and has a multifaceted mind. 
Steve Jobs for instance.
Traits that all great inventors have in common that will be valuable to anyone interested in creating new designs and products are:
> Unleash your curiosity, quest for knowledge and propensity for noticing things. No lesser minds than Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein were noted for being passionately curious, using their imagination as their prime lens to see ahead and their creativity to solve problems. Einstein wrote: "The important thing is not to stop questioning." You should also notice things, however unrelated to your quest they may seem. When Will Carrier noticed the apparently odd behavior of water droplets in fog, he had stumbled into the basics of the novel technology of the Carrier Corporation, world leader in airconditioning.
> Project your mind into imaginagion space, focusing on all the interrelated aspects of what you are creating or inventing. To create your Eureka Moment, you must forcefully move your mind beyond existing thinking about the subject. You must move out of your conscious world and focus your mind in a new place occupied only by the new creation. This is your glorious imagination space. Some people, very few, keep this imaginative ability through adulthood. Their imaginings lead to inventions, art, designs and explorations of many frontiers never seen before. To start, try to be a child with the almost naive capability of unfettered imagination. Emotion is part of this creative formula, and that has not been replaced in any advanced computer.
> Bring in experts and specialists whever and whever appropriate. A common mistake is to be overly protective about your novel idea. At the earliest possible time you should have your design or composition reviewed by an associate, faculty member, consultant or other trustworthy knowedgeable advisor. Usually you do not have to disclose important details to protect from copying, and very often a reviewer can give you surprisingly good guidance on design or composition improvement.
> Focus on the practical, useful, needed and beautiful. Very often inventions and other creations start out answering to a major need or a broad interest. Then the project morphs into a personal passion with little or no market value. Whether you're a garage tinkerer or a Thomas Edison, ultimately your commercial success depends on developing something which economically fills a real need and which looks attractive to potential buyers. As you develop prototypes, theories or compositionsd, show them to people in the market for overall attractiveness feedback.
> Be persistent. Don't give up. In one famous incident, an associate found Thomas Edison at his lab bence surrounded by a sea of experimental storage battery test cells. 9,000 experiments had been carried out with no promising developments. His associate offered condolence: "Isn't it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done, you haven't been able to get any results?" Edison replied, "Why, man, I've gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work!" For a major invention like the light bulb, this is what's involved. Even minor inventions seem to take more time than imagined to get to the production prototype stage.
This site will expand on the above ideas and much more.
EXAMPLES OF INVENTING is a slide show illustrating creativity and invention.
RECOMMENDED INTERNET are links to other websites that relate to creativity and invention.
REFERENCES is a library of papers relating to imagination, creativity and invention.
I am now well along writing a new book MegaMinds: How to Create and Invent in the Age of Google whose site you can visit here.
I look forward to hearing from you. Contact me at lkilham@gmail.com.
(c) Lawrence B. Kilham 2010
All rights reserved