The word “innovation” starts with an “I,” and so do many related words for processes and concepts in our creative minds that are necessary before an innovation can be created and released into the market. Let’s look at the interplay of these cognitive concepts related to the inner workings of the creative mind.

The 6I of your creative mind

In A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink argues that modern-day leaders must be whole-brain thinkers, mastering both left-brain and right-brain thinking. Decades of education and work have made most people adept at using their analytical, rational minds, but few bother to learn to use their creative, intuitive minds. When I was thinking about how to explain this to my creative leadership students, I noticed that six concepts play a fundamental role in creative cognition. These concepts all start with the letter “I” — insights, ideas, ideation, imagination, incubation, and intuition.

Insights and ideas: The outputs of creative cognition

Our first two I-concepts are the product of creative thought processes: insights and ideas.

• An insight is an “aha,” a deep, often sudden, understanding of what’s really going on in a given situation. Notice that you cannot gain insights on command or at will. Instead, the insights come unexpectedly, often while deeply exploring an issue or while relaxing after intense mental effort. When you hear someone say “aha!” you know that they have just gained an insight.
• Like insights, ideas are the result of creative cognitive processes. An idea is a thought or suggestion about a possible course of action. At this point, some, though not those who are interested in innovation, may have the idea to “stop reading this article and move on to something easier.”

You can consciously produce ideas, but just like insights, you may have an idea seemingly out of nowhere when you’re not thinking about your issue at all. These “bolts from the blue” are often your best ideas. And if you’re lucky, you might have a deep, surprising insight immediately followed by a breakthrough idea.

Ideation, imagination, and incubation: The cognitive processes of your creative mind

The next three “I”-concepts are the cognitive processes needed to produce insights and ideas: ideation, imagination, and incubation.

• Ideation is the short term for idea generation, and describes the cognitive process of creating new ideas. If we narrowly define the term, then we ideate predominantly with our conscious mind. That is, ideation is when we try to think of ideas for an issue, such as when we brainstorm in a group or brainwrite ideas in a notebook.
• Imagination is forming new ideas or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses. Imagine a juicy hot hamburger. Take a bite of it, and taste the grilled beef and all the other fresh ingredients of the burger. What you just did is use your imagination. While we can consciously choose to imagine something, we more often imagine subconsciously when our minds drift off to some other place or situation — and in the process, we may also gain insights and ideas.
• Incubation is thinking about a problem subconsciously while being involved in other activities. After you’ve been intensively working on a tough and important issue for some time, your subconscious mind takes over to incubate ideas for the issue and find a solution when you stop your conscious striving. When you do something enjoyable and relaxing, you may get a breakthrough idea out of nowhere and enjoy a powerful “Eureka!” moment.

Intuition: The subconscious judgment of your creative mind

After you’ve gained insights and ideas from your conscious or subconscious mind as a result of ideation, imagination or incubation, you need to evaluate your outputs. While most business people use their analytical, rational minds for this, our creative minds provide us with the subconscious judgment that constitutes our sixth and last I-concept: intuition.

• Intuition is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for further conscious reasoning. In other words, we intuitively feel that an idea is good or that an insight is true without consciously thinking about it. Intuitive judgment is always involved when you experience a “Eureka!” moment — you intuitively know right away that “this is it!” While most business theorists hail critical judgment and reasoning as the correct way to evaluate ideas (and even go as far as to compute weighted scores to find a winning idea), many creative business leaders such as Richard Branson or Steve Jobs emphasized the importance of listening to their “gut feeling” or intuition.

Moving from 6I to 8I

In the innovation economy, the most authentically creative leaders are whole-brain thinkers who know how to harness the power of both their analytical, rational minds and their creative, intuitive minds. To make full use of the latter, learn to master the 6I of your creative mind: First, make time available to ideate, imagine and incubate to produce novel insights and ideas for your issues. You then evaluate these insights and ideas by using your rational mind and by listening to your intuition. And if you work hard on a major challenge and are lucky, get ready to get a breakthrough idea from your subconscious mind. All you have to do then is to take action (or move to implementation — the 7th “I”) in order to produce meaningful innovation (the 8th and final “I”).

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2013. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the title “Understanding the inner workings of your mind” on 28 February 2013.