8/3/2019 Thomas Elva Edison_thinking Skills

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THOMAS ELVA EDISON

Thomas Alva Edison was a perseverance and had a open minded approach. He proved that his

creativity is not only in developing new inventions but also in bringing them to market and winning out

financially over competitors. His notebook was a proof for of his creativity. Some of the Edisons

creative thinking strategy are:

1.Quality: Edison believed to discover a good idea you had to generate many ideas. Out of quantitycomes quality. By exerting effort on thinking, it allows us to generate more imaginative alternativesthan we otherwise would. Initial ideas are usually poorer in quality than later ideas. Creative thinkingdepends on continuing the flow of ideas long enough to purge the common, habitual ones andproduce the unusual and imaginative.

2. CHALLENGE ALL ASSUMPTIONS. Edison approached any idea or experience with wildenthusiasm and would try anything out of the ordinary. He felt that in some ways too much educationcorrupted people by prompting them to make so many assumptions that they were unable to seemany of nature's great possibilities. The various guidelines of challenging your assemtions are Theguidelines are: 1)List your assumptions about a subject.2)Challenge your fundamental assumptionsby reversing them. 3)Write down the opposite of each assumption.4)Ask yourself how to accomplish each reversal.5) List as many useful viewpoints as you can.

3. NOTHING IS WASTED: When an experiment failed, Edison would always note and record what hehad learned from the failure. His notebooks contain pages of material on what he learned from hisabortive ideas, including his many experiments on will power. He had an enormous talent forappropriating ideas that may have failed in one instance and using them for something else.

4. RECORD YOUR IDEAS. Edison relentlessly recorded and illustrated every problem worked

on in his notebooks. Whenever he is stuck with a new idea, Edison would to review his

notebooks rethink ideas and inventions he's abandoned in the past in the light of what he'd

recently learned.He would often jot down his observations of the natural world, failed patents and

research papers written by other inventors, and ideas others had come up with in other fields.

5. CONSTANTLY IMPROVE YOUR IDEAS AND PRODUCTS AND THE IDEAS AND PRODUCTS OF OTHERS.

Einstein believed that every new idea is some addition or modification to something that

already exists.Edison said that the key to creativity is to never quit working on your subject

until you get what you're after.

6. BE EXPLORATORY. Whenever Edison found something interesting, he would explore it

intellectually before he applied his emotions and prejudices, if we want to become more

creative, we should start acting like we are creative.

When we are looking for ideas we should create lots of ideas, consistently challenge assumptions,

Record your ideas and the ideas of others in a notebook, learn from our failures and the failures of

others, constantly look for ways to improve our ideas and products and the ideas and products of

others, should be exploratory.