Which activity is listed as one of the three approaches to inventing?

• A. Spending many hours brainstorming
• B. Reading industry reports
• C. Copying competitors' products
• D. Relying solely on formal data

Answer: (A)

Generating new ideas through structured creativity is essential to inventing. Spending many hours brainstorming directly produces novel concepts by encouraging a wide range of ideas without judging them immediately. This helps break out of routine thinking and can reveal unexpected combinations that become breakthroughs when refined and tested.

Reading industry reports or formal data is useful for understanding the landscape and constraints, but it doesn’t by itself create new inventions. Copying competitors’ products is imitation, not invention. Relying solely on formal data misses hands-on exploration and creative synthesis that often spark truly original ideas. So, brainstorming stands out as a primary way to generate inventive concepts.