The Key to Progress
Crawford H. Greenewalt, president of Du Pont, in a speech called "Key to Progress—the Uncommon Man" has said, "Just when we will realize (the) promise of the future and how far the new developments will take us depends on how well we are able to recognize and encourage individual achievement. We cannot move very rapidly if we shut the door on our ablest people by absorbing them in the lifeless tomb of mediocrity.
"Try as we will, we can create no synthetic genius, no composite leader. Men are not interchangeable parts like so many pinion gears or carburetors; genius, as John Adams said, is bestowed 'imperiously' by nature upon an individual. And behind every advance of the human race is a germ of creation growing in the mind of some lone individual, an individual whose dreams waken him in the night while others lie contentedly asleep.
"We need those dreams, for today's dreams represent tomorrow's realities. Yet, in the very nature of our mass effort, there lies this grave danger—not that the individual may circumvent the public will, but that he will himself be conformed and shaped to the general pattern, with the loss of his unique, original contributions. The group nature of business enterprise itself will provide adequate safeguards against public affront. The great problem, the great question, is to develop within the framework of the group the creative genius of the individual.
"It is a problem for management, for public education, for government, for the church, for the press—for everyone. The stake is both the material one of preserving our most productive source of progress and the spiritual one of insuring to each individual the human dignity, which is his birthright.
"I know of no problem so pressing, of no issue so vital. For unless we can guarantee the encouragement and fruitfulness of the uncommon man, the future will lose for all men its virtue, its brightness, and its promise."
Brainstorming is one way we can discover the uncommon man and his ideas. It can help solve the great problems of life. It can be used to solve the vast problems of science, of government, of philosophy.
Most of us use only a fraction of our brain power. We can no longer afford that great waste. We must learn how to mobilize all our creative force to solve the fundamental problems of our world.
This, then, is the mission and the charge to each of us: we must develop our own creativity and our own subconscious, so that we can make a telling contribution to the progress of our civilization.
In learning how to do this, we shall all be explorers of an area that is hardly known.
No one yet really knows how the mind functions, why it is so very much more than a giant computer reduced to portable size. Each of us can, however, probe the limits of this world.
This book is not an end. It is a summing up of the present art of brainstorming, but it is a beginning and an inspiration to discover what we can do with our brain power to make our world a better one.
Try brainstorming—and find out how to think up ideas that make a difference in your life and our world.
"Try as we will, we can create no synthetic genius, no composite leader. Men are not interchangeable parts like so many pinion gears or carburetors; genius, as John Adams said, is bestowed 'imperiously' by nature upon an individual. And behind every advance of the human race is a germ of creation growing in the mind of some lone individual, an individual whose dreams waken him in the night while others lie contentedly asleep.
"We need those dreams, for today's dreams represent tomorrow's realities. Yet, in the very nature of our mass effort, there lies this grave danger—not that the individual may circumvent the public will, but that he will himself be conformed and shaped to the general pattern, with the loss of his unique, original contributions. The group nature of business enterprise itself will provide adequate safeguards against public affront. The great problem, the great question, is to develop within the framework of the group the creative genius of the individual.
"It is a problem for management, for public education, for government, for the church, for the press—for everyone. The stake is both the material one of preserving our most productive source of progress and the spiritual one of insuring to each individual the human dignity, which is his birthright.
"I know of no problem so pressing, of no issue so vital. For unless we can guarantee the encouragement and fruitfulness of the uncommon man, the future will lose for all men its virtue, its brightness, and its promise."
Brainstorming is one way we can discover the uncommon man and his ideas. It can help solve the great problems of life. It can be used to solve the vast problems of science, of government, of philosophy.
Most of us use only a fraction of our brain power. We can no longer afford that great waste. We must learn how to mobilize all our creative force to solve the fundamental problems of our world.
This, then, is the mission and the charge to each of us: we must develop our own creativity and our own subconscious, so that we can make a telling contribution to the progress of our civilization.
In learning how to do this, we shall all be explorers of an area that is hardly known.
No one yet really knows how the mind functions, why it is so very much more than a giant computer reduced to portable size. Each of us can, however, probe the limits of this world.
This book is not an end. It is a summing up of the present art of brainstorming, but it is a beginning and an inspiration to discover what we can do with our brain power to make our world a better one.
Try brainstorming—and find out how to think up ideas that make a difference in your life and our world.
posted by Dennis Cheesman at 8:35 AM
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