A2Z ≠ A2B

Ideators make room for a lot of spontaneity and flexibility in their everyday life. They experience sudden insights, make discoveries, and come up with fresh solutions to old problems. They seek alternatives to the usual routine way of doing things.

Letting go

Circumstances are always shifting and changing in the realm of design ideas. You may feel the need to return once again to a previous condition, just to see if things might have changed. If they have not, let go of the idea and leave in good conscience.

Timely effort

"It's not just effort that makes it possible for a new product to be a massive hit. It also has to be timely and technology should be ready to make a certain design a reality." Lee Minhyouk, vice president for design at Samsung Mobile, admitting in an interview with Reuters that his work does not yet match the work of Apple's Jonathan Ive.

The forgetful professor

Modern science tells us that if you train your working memory, it increases fluid intelligence, which is what gives you the ability to reason and solve new problems. Adds memory aid expert Tony Buzan: "As you train your memory, you become simultaneously more creative on all levels and fascinatingly, less stressed. It's because you're not trying to remember in linear ways, which isn't how your mind works." This suggests that if you train your memory, your physical brain cells make more connections and you'd get better at ideation. But does that help explain "the forgetful professor?"

Ideas communication

"It really helps if you can communicate your ideas. I work with so many different types of people – people from all over the world, people without a design background – so for meetings or phonecalls, it's key. Your ideas should speak for themselves, but people love to hear the story behind them." British designer Paul Cocksedge

Ive got an idea

'What I love about the creative process, and this may sound naive, but it is this idea that one day there is no idea, and no solution, but then the next day there is an idea. I find that incredibly exciting and conceptually actually remarkable.

The nature of having ideas and creativity is incredibly inspiring. There is an idea which is solitary, fragile and tentative and doesn’t have form.

What we’ve found here [at Apple] is that it then becomes a conversation, although remains very fragile.

When you see the most dramatic shift is when you transition from an abstract idea to a slightly more material conversation. But when you made a 3D model, however crude, you bring form to a nebulous idea, and everything changes - the entire process shifts. It galvanises and brings focus from a broad group of people. It’s a remarkable process.'

Jonathan Ive, http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/sir-jonathan-ive-the-iman-cometh-7562170.html

Sinovate

If China is to flourish, argues The Economist, its manufacturers must move up the value chain. Rather than bolting together sophisticated products designed elsewhere, they need to do more design work themselves. Taking a leaf out of Germany’s book, they need to make products with higher margins and offer services to complement them: Innovate or slow down.