A Technique for Producing Ideas

Metadata

• Author: James Webb Young
• Full Title: A Technique for Producing Ideas
• Category: #books

Highlights

• the habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes of the highest importance in the production of ideas. ([Location 133](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0145R7R22&location=133))
• A book like Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class or Riesman's The Lonely Crowd therefore becomes a better book about advertising than most books about advertising. ([Location 135](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0145R7R22&location=135))
• in the production of ideas the mind follows a method which is just as definite as the method by which, say, Fords are produced. ([Location 140](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0145R7R22&location=140))
• a real knowledge of a product, and of people in relation to it, is not easy to come by. Getting it is something like the process which was recommended to De Maupassant as the way to learn to write. "Go out into the streets of Paris," he was told by an older writer, "and pick out a cab driver. He will look to you very much like every other cab driver. But study him until you can describe him so that he is seen in your description to be an individual, different from every other cab driver in the world." ([Location 155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0145R7R22&location=155))