The simple model we use in our teaching at Constructivist is that an idea is simply what happens when we take two existing patterns and mix them to create something new.
In the mid-nineteenth century, horticulturalist Joseph Monier was looking for a more sturdy way to make large flower pots for the orange trees he was tending in Paris. These orange trees needed to be brought into the greenhouse in winter and taken out again when the weather warmed.
Monier began experimenting with creating cement pots. This material was already commonly used in gardens, but on its own is brittle. Monier’s innovation was to insert an iron mesh into the cement. The resulting composite material, as we know, is much stronger, and the rest is engineering history.
What Monier did was to take two existing patterns, concrete and iron, and mix them to create a new pattern: reinforced concrete.
A material from one context used in another. Taking a different shape and applying it to a familiar form. Applying an emerging technology to an existing field. These new combinations, or recombinations, of existing patterns all represent new ideas.
Of course, Monier’s pioneering took many more steps. We may never know the other material combinations he tried (History tends to forget the ideas that didn’t see the light of day). But all ideas, successful or not, start from this process of mixing.
This perspective on idea generation gives us two things to focus on in the creative process:
- what patterns do we need as inputs to creativity; and
- how do we make the new combinations?