Steve Allen has written a book I call a must-read for everyone interested in strengthening their creative-thinking muscles. It was published in 1989 as Dumbth: And 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter and in 1998 as Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking with 101 Ways to Reason Better & Improve Your Mind.

The question of intuition comes up eventually whenever people discuss creativity, innovation, and how the creative process works. Some reject the idea of intuition as something magical or spiritual. Others disregard it as a shortcut for hard, intellectual work, and a principal source of error.

Creative idea-generating techniques include those that produce surprising innovations and inventions by forcing thinkers to consider opposites. Nature teaches us this lesson. Where would we be, after all, without opposite sexes?

The collision of random ideas often results in the most interesting and exciting innovations. Like the French entomologist who, while examining a wasp's nest, got the idea of manufacturing paper from wood pulp.

Any idiot can kill a great creative idea. All it takes is the ability to recognize that the new idea is different. Like rejecting the Model T because it doesn't have a feed bag. Or poo-pooing any innovation just because it's different. We've been known to justify our distaste for the different with the ultimate authority.

Forty-one percent of workers want to quit their jobs because they are dissatisfied with company training. So says Business Week/Up Front, "Why your workers might jump ship."

Don't you just love nitpickers? The horseflies of life's hike through the woods. And they think they're so helpful. You've just put a precious part of your life into a piece of creative work, when along come the bright-eyed, ever so helpful nitpickers, who actually think they can make it better in minute or two!

There's a story going around about a lawyer who bought a box of rare and expensive cigars and insured them against fire. It doesn't take a terribly creative mind to come up with such a loony notion. It would take some real innovative sleight of hand, however, to pull it off.

This is the story of the original bat man. People called him bat man, not because he protected them from harm, which he did, but because they thought he was crazy.

Creative people, dressed in black, use skinny, white Macs. That's the rule. The rest of us plod along with un-cool, not-so-innovative Windows. I'm here to throw that rule out the window.

"The most insolent monstrosity ever perpetrated in the history of music." That's what one critic called Bolero. Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, was greeted with, "...stupid and hopelessly vulgar music!" by another. Yes, he was writing about one of music's most creative and revolutionarily innovative composers of all time!

Men and women need no more reasons to bicker. They have no trouble creating their own bones of contention. So as a public service, I would like to eliminate one source of confrontation among many heterosexual couples--the battle over whether to leave up or put down the toilet seat.

What do you do when your creative people present you with something you absolutely hate?

We all know pi--the transcendental number you get when you divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter. This most monumental and incredibly ennobling invention came to us from the Greeks. But the idea (that the ratio of the circumference of a circle and its diameter comes out to a little more than 3) goes back even further--to the innovative geometers of ancient Egypt, Babylonia, India, and again, those creative Greeks.

Remember that great idea you had a few years ago--on-premises daycare. How could you forget? You brought it up to your employer, and he made you feel like an idiot, right?

Have you ever been involved in a creative session or an innovation initiative in which someone has not said something along the lines of "...so to get our creative juices flowing..."?

John Poco of Lawrence Livermore Labs in Livermore, California, works with the lightest solid material ever made--silica aerogel. About as heavy as the air over San Francisco on a foggy day, the substance has been nicknamed "frozen smoke," because that's what it looks like. Poco and his Livermore scientists have reduced the density of aerogel and improved its composition and clarity.

I'm thinking of the last time I rode a bus full of school children. It's not pleasant, but I'm doing it so you don't have to. It's a long trip and someone eventually pipes up with, "99 bottles of beer on the wall..." An eager chorus, all those with nothing better to do, chimes in. At the same time, another group, including the parents pleads, then demands that they stop.

What would you call the familiar, plastic packaging device that holds your six-pack together? Koko the gorilla speaks with the help of a word board--a tool that lets her point to icons that represent words. It's said that she used her word board to describe the six-pack holder as "bottle necklace."

About 20 minutes into their December 2005 Charlie Rose television interview, Edward O. Wilson and James D. Watson agreed that "Charles Darwin was the most important person who ever lived on Earth." Watson explained to Charlie that "Darwin was the first person, using observation and experience, to really put man in his place in the world."

Maybe we'd all have a little more respect for our planet if it had a nobler name. Something other than Earth anyway. The word comes from roots that mean "base." Even today, earthy implies low or common. And why not? What's more common than earth?

In one of my favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants, there's a sign in the restroom that begins, "Please leave light on..."

Ever hail a great idea with an exclamation like, "I wish I had thought of that!" Or along the same lines, ever wonder why some obvious bright ideas weren’t introduced sooner?

In my never-ending search for the ultimate truth, I asked a group of about 30 executives, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Nine said the chicken. Five said the egg. The rest didn't answer. Except one who had the courage to admit, I don't know.

The student of the creative process has learned many times the value of making mistakes. I for one have paid a lot of attention to the advice of Thomas Edison. His remarks on the invention process are quoted often enough to make them almost clichés.

Where is your Creative Space? Where are you when you get your best ideas? Can a place actually help you be more creative? These questions have intrigued me for some time now. I've snooped around a bunch of creative spaces. Some stand alone brainstorming centers, some rooms dedicated to creative thinking inside advertising agencies and innovation-focused corporations, and some of the places I've made more conducive for my own inventive efforts.

At age 11, Emily Rosa staged a rather simple science project which ended up in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. In doing so, she became the youngest person to land a research paper published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. Not bad for a fourth-grader. How did such a young girl make such a big splash?

An article published at the end of 2007 in the New York Times, "Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike" by Janet Rae-Dupree, reminded me of what a knucklehead I've become. And not just me but all of us who think we know anything.