How to Get a Great Idea The guests had arrived, and the wine was warm. Once again, I'd forgotten to refrigerate it. 'Don't worry.' a friend said, 'I can chill it for you right away.' Five minutes later she emerged from the kitchen with the wine perfectly cooled. Asked to reveal her secret, she said, 'Easy. I poured the wine in a plastic bag and then dipped it in ice water. After a few minutes the wine was cold. The hard part was getting it back into bottle. I couldn't find a funnel (漏斗), so I made a cone with wax paper.' My guests applauded. 'How wonderful if we could all be that clever,' one remarked. A decade of research has convinced me we can. What separates the average person from Edison, Picasso or even Shakespeare isn't creative capacity--it's the ability to use that capacity by encouraging creative impulses and then acting upon them. Most of us seldom achieve our creative potential. I think I know why, and I can help unlock the reservoir of ideas hiding within every one of us. One puzzle I've watched students deal with is retrieving a Ping-Pong ball that has fallen to the bottom of sealed, vertical drainpipe. The tools that they can use are either too short to reach the ball or too wide to fit into the pipe, which is also too narrow to reach into by hand. At last some students make the connection: drainpipe＝water＝floating. They pour water down the hole, and the ball floats to the top. This and many other experiments suggest concrete ways of increasing creativity in all of us. Here are the best techniques. Capture the fleeting A good idea is like a rabbit. It runs by so fast that sometimes you see only its ears or tail. To capture it, you must be ready. Creative people are always ready to act, and that may be the only difference between us and them. Poet Lowell wrote of the urgency with which she captured new ideas, 'Whatever I am doing, I lay it aside and attend to the arriving poem,' she wrote. Like many other writers, Lowell sought paper and pencil when she saw a good idea coming. I enter new ideas into a pocket computer. Anything---even a napkin---will do. In a letter to a friend in 1821, Ludwig van Beethoven talked about bow he thought of a beautiful tune while dozing in carriage. 'But scarcely did I awake when away flew the tune,' he wrote, 'and I could not recall any part of it.' Fortunately for Beethoven and for us--the next day in the same carriage, the tune came back to him, and this time he captured it in writing. When a good idea comes your way, write it down on your arm if necessary. Not every idea will have value, of course. The point is to capture first and evaluate them later. Daydream Surrealist Dali used to lie on a sofa, holding a spoon. Just as he began to fall asleep, Dali would drop the spoon onto a plate on the floor. The sound shocked him awake, and he would immediately sketch the images he had seen in his mind in that fertile world of semi-sleep. Everyone experiences this strange state, and everyone can take advantage of it. Try Dali's trick, or just allow yourself to daydream. For many, the 'three b's' bed, bath and bus--are productive, there, and anywhere else you can be with your thoughts undisturbed, you'll find that ideas emerging freely. Seek challenges When you're stuck behind a locked door, every behavior. that's ever gotten you free turns up quickly: you may push or pull on the knob, bang the door--even shout for help. Scientists call the rehappening of old behaviors in a challenging situation resurgence. The more behaviors that reappear, the greater the number of possible interconnections, and the more likely that new ideas will occur. Try inviting friends and business associations from different areas of your life to a party. Bring people of two or three generations together. T