ABSTRACT
For a number of years I taught a course in “Creative Thinking” at the University of Illinois-Springfield. I introduced my students to a host of ways to generate new ideas. Of the books I used as texts, one of their favorites was the father (perhaps grandfather) of these books: Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking (Osborn, 1953). Osborn was a cofounder of Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn, one of the most influential advertising agencies of all time. In this book, Osborn makes an especially powerful argument that “man’s creative ability, imagination, is … without doubt, responsible for man’s survival as an animal and it has caused him, as a human being, to conquer the world” (p. 3).
