Just one small step left to being creative.  Actually, you don't need this last step.  However if you want to create something of value, it is the most important step.  I know many people who create stuff with no value, especially in the artistic and marketing worlds.  One of the things you will see when we discuss evolutionary search is that most new mimetic creations are of little to no value.  To be successful with creativity you must explore many combinations and test each.  The more you explore the more your chance of finding something useful.  But if you do not critically evaluate your creations the rare needle will indeed be lost in a haystack of nonsense. 

Interestingly, much of this exploration and testing occurs within our subconscious.  Our brains are truly remarkable instruments.  As we study broadly and use what we have learned our brains will automatically recombine things into new patterns.  We need to train our subconscious processes to be effective in the recombination and testing.  It is really a simple stimulus response issue.  Once again I will have to defer a clearer explanation of what I mean until I get to the Section on Theory.  However, I can at this time give you an example.

When I took geometry as a sophomore in high school, I found the subject easy and interesting.  I did well enough that our instructor, Mr. Zapa, had me grade all the exams, including the final examination.  Well that was a long time ago, and as is all too typical of a teenager, I was, perhaps, a bit too self impressed.  Quite frankly I didn't study much for the final.  When I was grading the exams and came to mine, I faced a problem.  There were four questions, each worth 25 points.  Since I had not studied I was not prepared to recite the proofs from the text.  I had answered one question fully.  On the second question I had run out of time.  I had not gotten to 2 of the questions at all.  The most I could honestly give myself was a 35 out of a 100.  Not very good for the star pupil!  Well that did help me (a little) to correct an ego problem, but it still left me with the problem of a grade.  I decided on an easy way out.  When I gave all of the exams back to Mr. Zapa, including my own, I said, I did not feel comfortable grading my own paper.  Not exactly the truth, but then, I did still have at least some ego left.  The next day Mr. Zapa passed out the graded exams back to the students.  Mine had been marked with an A+.  I waited until after class to speak with Mr. Zapa.  I thanked him, but I felt guilty.  I asked why the A+, after all I didn't even answer two of the questions.  He said, "True, but on the one complete answer, you gave a proof that is not in our textbook, or for that matter in any textbook, I have seen.  The proof is valid.  You deserve the A."

I do not know if Mr. Zapa understood the effect this would have.  When we do something original it starts in a less than conscious part of our brain.  It is handed up to our conscious mind.  There we need to test it for validity and value.  What Mr. Zapa did was to give those subconscious processes in my brain a strong emotional kick start.  More than 4 decades later those processes continue to give me, unbidden, original thoughts.  Since those the unbidden thoughts are not always the gems for which I am looking, I still have to do a lot of reality checking. 

What if Mr. Zapa had decided to teach me a lesson about studying and had given me an F.  I might very well have learned to suppress any creativity.  And fortunately some of my teachers and mentors taught me that tried and proven is often better than new and original.  You must master the ability to do both and to know which is better in each circumstance.

You must also learn to check the historical record for failures.  When we study what others have done we generally are looking at what was successful.  You must learn to search out and understand what was not successful.  It is more difficult to study failure.  The historical record tends to contain great successes and catastrophic failures.  What we require is some insight into the little failures that did not result in great success.  The best time to study these little failures is when you have created something new and improved.  Check the historical record for anyone who may have tried your approach before.  I think an example will be useful.

I once had a need for a low energy; very light weight, and very quiet electrical power generator.  I needed an engine that would produce less that one horsepower that then could be converted to about 350 watts.  Engines tend to be devices that move pistons back and forth.  Electrical alternators tend to be rotating devices.  There are several means to convert piston action to rotary action, but they all add weight and noise.  Therefore I considered 1) the design of a rotary piston with a rotary alternator and 2) the design of a standard piston engine with a linear alternator.  I eliminated the linear alternator approach because they have an inherently higher weight for power out than rotary alternators.  There is a Wankle rotary hobby motor that produces 1.27 horsepower and weighs only 6 ounces, but it is far too noisy.  So I looked at steam engines, which do not create the internal combustion noise problem.  There already exists a small light weight stem engine that would meet my requirements but it is a piston type.  So I combined the concept of rotary piston with the low powered steam engine.  Another creative success! Well not quite.  I check the historical record for rotary piston steam engines.  To my surprise (I should not have been surprised) many of the greatest inventors of the last 200 years had attempted to create rotary piston steam engines for exactly the same reasons I had.  They all failed.  Many of the designs were far more creative than mine.  The problem is that it is far more difficult to seal the pressure chamber for a rotary device versus a piston.  Because I checked the historical record I was able to see that my design had the same fatal flaw as all of the previous attempts and I avoided creating a failed prototype.  More importantly at the same time I discovered a way to reduce both the weight and noise of converting piston action to rotary action.  Again by seeing what others had done before, I was able to create an innovative combination

You must study hard and broadly.

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