An idea is a form, such as a thought, formed by consciousness through the process of ideation. In the objective worth of our ideas there remains the problem of the validity. As all cognition is by ideas, it is obvious that the question of the validity of our ideas in this broad sense is that of the truth of the collective knowledge as a whole.

Creativity techniques are methods that encourage original thoughts and divergent thinking mostly used to develop new materials for artistic purposes or to solve problems. Most creativity techniques use associations between the goal [or the problem], the current state [which may be an imperfect solution to the problem], and some stimulus [possibly selected randomly].

A concept is a cognitive unit of meaning; an abstract idea or a mental symbol sometimes defined as a "unit of knowledge", built from other units which act as a concept's characteristics.

Design ideation can be seen as a matter of generating, developing and communicating ideas, where ‘idea’ is understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete or abstract.