Nick Morgan
At the end of a long day spent brushing up leaves and grass cuttings in his garden, John Coathupe thought, There has got to be a quicker way of doing this job.
The obvious technology to start with was a vacuum cleaner, but the former engineer knew there would be two problems: a fan would clog with wet leaves and suction would be reduced as the bag filled up. After a few hours of experimentation and pondering, John sighed and sat down with a cup of tea and a biscuit. He took a sip and the answer came to him: he didn't need to suck, he needed to blow.
If he could send air over a specially designed surface in the mouth of the collection tube, it would create suction just as an aeroplane wing creates lift. This could be used to suck up garden debris and transfer it along a tube directly into the
bag without any risk of clogging. John's invention is now licensed to Flymo and used in their best-selling Gardenvac.
How do people such as John have these ideas? The fact is anyone can. Your brain is the most complex object in the universe. Every second, more than ten billion neurones send electrochemical signals round your head at speeds of up to 250 mph.
"There is an inventor in all of us," says Trevor Baylis, who pioneered the clockwork radio [see "My Life As an Inventor", February 2000] and is planning to open an Academy of Invention. "Say you keep tripping over a carpet join. As you reach for a hammer and nail to tack it down, you realize it could happen again and again, wasting hundreds of nails. Instead you use a plastic strip to cover the whole join. That's creative problem-solving."
So what can we do to help coax out spectacular ideas? We asked some of the country's most innovative and successful minds for tips and techniques. Here are their professional tools for brilliant thinking:

1. Take exercise
Some of the greatest "eureka moments" occur when we are active—swimming, hiking or even running to catch a bus.
Eileen Mulligan, a personal success coach, recommends that her clients take regular exercise. "When you exercise, the conscious brain can go into a relaxed state, almost like meditation," she says. "In this frame of mind the more creative half of the brain can start working."
Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor of the ZX series of personal computers, exercises every morning. "I've come up with my best designs when running," he says. "Your mind gets clearer. At the moment I'm working on a lightweight bike, and there
are complex questions to consider. Should I use magnesium or carbon fibre? What are the energy losses in
a wheel? The answers just came to me last week when I was running."

2. Keep a pen and paper by the bed
"Imaginative solutions often hit when somebody is either asleep or half asleep as that is when the subconscious can carry on working," says Susan Greenfield, professor of pharmacology at Oxford University and author of The Human Brain (Phoenix, £6.99). But how many times have you woken up in the night with a brilliant idea, only to find that the next day the details have faded like a dream? The answer is to keep a pen and paper handy and write down your ideas straight away.
Neil Summers, who invented the award-winning Backstretcher, an exercise device for athletes and back-pain sufferers, uses this technique. "At about 11 at night I'll be in bed half asleep and the ideas will just drift into my head, so I force myself to wake up and write them down."

3. Bounce ideas around
Constructive criticism is invaluable and just talking your concept through with someone else can help you to see both its strengths and its weaknesses.
Pam and Phil Richardson, a retired couple, work from their cottage in the Welsh hills inventing medical equipment.
"We often wake up in the morning and just start talking," says Pam. "I have a very undisciplined approach and think anything is possible, while Phil is much more technical and will point out the problems. Often we come up with an answer between us."
As a former nurse, Pam knew that sometimes during operations needles puncture surgical gloves without the wearer noticing. "If we could find a glove that changed colour when pierced," she mused one day, "we'd have a very saleable invention."
Phil warned that releasing any sort of dye might endanger the patient. So they bought and examined a selection of coloured latex products—elastic bands, washing-up gloves and balloons.
Pam experimented with blowing up the balloons. She noticed that when a green one was inside a white one, the green colour showed through where her breath had condensed between them. She showed this to Phil.
He thought about it and said: "Surgeons could put on a green latex inner glove then a white translucent outer one. If the translucent glove became punctured, capillary action would draw moisture between the two layers and the translucent glove would become transparent, creating a green patch."
Medical manufacturer biogel snapped up the idea and Reveal surgical gloves are now sold throughout the world. They are also part of an exhibition in the Millennium Dome.

4. Change your environment
" When I visit somewhere new—even if it's just a different part of town—ideas often click into place," says Sir Clive Sinclair.
He had the idea for the Zeta 3, a detachable electric motor for bi-cycles, while on a flight from Hong Kong to London. "The idea seemed to come from nowhere," he recalls. "Travel not only broadens the mind but triggers it as well."
"A change in environment makes you more alive to your surroundings," explains Professor Greenfield. "In this receptive state your brain can be more alert to new ideas too."

5. Let your mind wander
After a particularly hard day Iris Whyte went to the bottom of her garden with a glass of wine, a pillow and a blanket, and lay down. Her granddaughter had just returned from school with a load of odd socks and Iris started wondering what could be done about them. She gazed up at the patterns in the clouds, watching the sun disappear and re-appear. Suddenly an idea came to her.
What if socks could be joined together as a pair and washed? If they came with free small plastic fasteners they could stay together from the moment they were taken off till the moment they were put back on.
Iris received the silver award for her idea at the 1997 International Inventors Fair and made the top ten at the British Female Inventor of the Year awards this year. Snappy Sox will be on the market this summer.
"Clouds are unique and abstract and so are without associations," notes Professor Greenfield. "This frees the brain from rigid lines of thought, allowing it to make un-usual connections."

6. Forget about it
The brain doesn't just work nine to five, it works all the time. Says cognitive scientist Professor Steven Pinker, "One theory is that if we put a problem aside it actually incubates in the unconscious. Then without warning something triggers off an idea and a fully formed solution presents itself."
Businessman Barry Jones came across some alarming figures about the number of people who die in first-floor fires. It seemed to him that there had to be a way to help victims escape, yet he could not think of anything practical enough.
Later that evening while watching TV, he saw a magician create the illusion of a rising ladder by telescoping tubes of card.
That's it! Barry suddenly thought. He could make a telescopic emergency ladder out of metal, small enough to fit under people's beds.
Today Barry's Laddermatic is manufactured in Scotland and sold throughout the UK.

7. Believe you can
Deborah Withington, an auditory neurophysiologist at Leeds University, was driving home when she heard an emergency vehicle siren. She looked around to see where it was coming from and noticed that everyone else was doing the same. From her work she knew the problem was that the human ear needs to hear a broad range of frequencies to pinpoint a sound.
"If you were walking in a park and somebody snapped a twig, you could tell instantly where the sound came from," she explains. "But with bird song, which has a narrow band of sound, there isn't enough information for the brain to place it." The same goes for mobile phones—so when one rings on a train, everyone checks their bags.
The simple two-tone siren had a similar effect. At the next set of lights an idea popped into Deborah's head: wouldn't it be much safer to have a wider range of frequencies in alarms so people could tell where the emergency vehicle was?
Yet when Deborah talked to her friends and colleagues, she was surprised that some could see only the obstacles. But convinced that she was on to something, Deborah began the long and painstaking process of organizing controlled tests.
In 1997 Deborah's idea won the Prince of Wales award for innovation and is used today in many forms of life-saving equipment. The latest is the Directional Fire Alarm, which can guide people towards doorways in smoke-filled buildings. It performed well when tested recently on the BBC's Tomorrow's World.
Many of us are let down by an everyday object and think, I know what's wrong with this design, but we take it no further. In fact, having the idea is just the start. "The lesson I've learnt", says Deborah Withington, "is believe in yourself and stay committed, no matter what others say."

David Wardell, editor of Inventors and Investors magazine, says, "Ask me how many inventors there are in the country and I'd say 58 million. An inventor is anybody who thinks, This could be made better."
We simply have to create the right environment and the eureka moment will happen.

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