Work out ideas

Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021), the American composer and lyricist, had rather romantic views of art: "I had always thought an angel came down and sat on your shoulder and whispered in your ear 'dah-dah-dah-DUM ...  Never occurred to me that art was something worked out". This he came to realise while studying composition at college: "You think it's a talent, you think you're born with this thing. What I've found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. It's just that some people get it developed and some don't". And so with ideation. Altough the Eureka!, or Aha! moment may be tinted with romantic views of art and creativity - that art, and creativity is somehow a talent. Yet successful ideas have to be worked out. Work out in the sense there's a problem to solve by considering the facts. (Interestingly, Sondheim regarded himself a mathematician by nature). Ideation, then, as problem solving that includes skills (deliberate practice) and ways of seeing (mental representations) that can get developed (can be learned) over time.

The world through rose-tinted glasses

The phrase ‘to see the word through rose-tinted glasses’ means to see things in an overly optimistic, often unrealistic way. But does wearing rose-tinted glasses actually make the world a better place or make people feel happier? And in the wake of COP26, the latest of the United Nations Climate Change Conferences, which serve to assess the progress in dealing with climate change, a process that began in the mid-1990s, would the world look more realistic through green-tinted glasses? If so, given the seriousness of climate change, should ideators form new ideas through seeing the world through a green rather than a rose prism? Yet social science research suggests that viewing our world a bit askew — with rose-tinted glasses — can have postive effects in that it puts us in a better mood, and therefore makes us more receptive to taking in more information, such as on climate issues. But there are risks with the rose-tinted approach, for example, toxic positivity, or delusional thinking. Moreover, seeing things through rose-tinted glasses may have a self-deceptive bias. That is, there’s a difference between perceiving the best account of things and perceiving the true account of things. However, because of this difference, "there are instances in which our beliefs can be wrong but useful", says Phil Corlett, an associate professor in psychiatry at Yale University. In the context of ideation, then, this suggests that ideators have to choose what they belive in to gain control over their ideas, and this whether seeing the world through rose-or green-tinted glasses (or any other colour).