Creative Streak

Re-Cap: Creative Thinking v. Strategic Thinking

Generally, the posts throughout February and March focused on creative thinking, and often, it's difference from strategic thinking. As a recap covering those nine entries, here's a review of the key principles.

If you're asking someone to be strategic, you're really asking them to ...

• Know and understand the (project's) business and communications objective, at whatever level is critical to the job’s successful completion.
• Have judgment abilities: to assess a piece of information for its intrinsic worth and develop insights into the critical problems.
• Know the available and potential resources, and determine how to use them most efficiently and effectively.
• Define criteria in advance of the brainstorm to select the best idea (if by no other virtue than it solves the problem or need).
• Measure their steps and final outcome to ensure the overall plan has/will achieve the goal.
• Develop a focused plan of action if warranted

A person's "strategic value" refers to how quickly they can assess and narrow down information to its insight so they may achieve a specific result, often through a measurable plan of action.

In other words: "Strategic people" look at information and ask: Yes or no?

If you're asking someone to be creative, you're really asking them to ...

• Be idea profilic - that is, to create as many potential ideas as possible - based on both the objective and insight into the problem.
• Not be prematurely judgemental.
• Be intellectually playful.
• Willing to take (calculated) risks.
• Express themselves – that is, to articulate both a) the insight from their knowledge in a way which others can acknowledge and understand, and b) the idea itself.
• Be non-conformist; they treat the status quo as another piece of information rather than a restriction.
• Seek ambiguity, uncertainty and disorder because this creates new and different explorations, explanations and experiences which creates potential answers.

A person's "creative value" refers to how many different or atypical ideas (both good and bad) they can create by harnessing actual or imaginary stimuli.

In other words: "Creative people" look at information and ask: What if?

People who are both strategic and creative share and leverage characteristics from one ‘side’ to enable the other. And most of all, one trait essential to both types of thinking is curiosity - the topic which I'll cover in the next several posts.

Finally: the answers for last week's 9-dot and 4-triangle puzzles.

Top The first - and most "traditional" - answer to the 9-dot puzzle

Middle  The second answer (in red) to the 9-dot puzzle.

Bottom  The answer to the "use 6 lines to make 4 triangles" puzzle. Think of the solution as three-dimensional, as if it's a pyramid with the fourth triangle as its base.

 

 

Out or In the Box?

Curious about where the phrase ‘out of the box’ comes from? It was coined in the 1930s after the famous nine-dot puzzle by American industrial psychologist Norman R. Maier as part of his work on problem solving. Maier asked his students to draw four continuous lines so that each of the nine dots has at least one line running through it – but without lifting the pencil.

The clue to the puzzle's solution demonstrates Meier's hypothesis. People are often prevented from solving problems because of real or perceived assumptions, limitations or restrictions. In other words, you must draw the lines outside of the "visual" box to solve the puzzle.

A prospective client last week asked if "in the box thinking" was bad. Generally no -- but it depends upon the topic itself and what you're trying to accomplish. Many professions and occupations need consistency more than they need creativity. For example: the law, science or accounting (Enron notwithstanding). At the same time, don't expect new outcomes if you only apply old solutions to old problems. That was the point behind Einstein’s definition of “insanity.”

Instead, think of "in the box thinking" as going by the rules, using existing or standard policies, or following common methodologies. As it’s been said before, only after you know and understand the rules can you break them -- or, in other words, to think "outside the box."

More important, if you’re going to ask someone else to think "out of the box" -- then you too must think beyond your own assumptions, restrictions and limitations as well. Otherwise, it’s a pointless exercise.

 Finally: If you think you can solve the nine-dot puzzle, then put your genius to work on a new puzzle. Try thinking ‘out of the triangle.’ Can you create four triangles from six lin es of any length. Unlike the 9-dot puzzle, the lines here don’t have to be continuous.

Answers to both puzzles next Monday. (Go here.)

The Proper Utensils for Creativity (The 7 I's)

If the recipe from previous posts shows how to create ideas, consider the seven items below as the ‘utensils’ – tools, elements or influences which stimulate or improve brainstorming, either in a scheduled meeting, an informal hallway conversation, or a solo activity. Interestingly, each begins with the letter 'I'.

Intelligence is the total combination of your knowledge and information, stored conveniently in your brain. You tap this significant wealth to create or find stimuli to make ideas.

Imagination is a mental vision or picture of what might or could be. If intelligence is essentially past information, then imagination is future information. As a skill, it’s commonly known as daydreaming.

Insight refers to isolating the kernel of truth or understanding about a particular topic. It's created in two steps: through 1) observation and discovery, an intensive examination of everything associated with the need or problem, such as its history or the current perceptions of the audiences who might need or use the idea; and through 2) obsession, a thorough pre-occupation with both the topic and the problem, often when not directly engaged with the problem.

Infinity is your ability to create as many ideas as possible. By having more ideas, you’ll also yield more good ideas. (See the post on 23 February about the 90:10 Rule.)

Interaction can be described with the cliché 'Two heads are better than one.' While it’s not impossible to brainstorm alone, it’s more effective if the imaginative power of many people are leveraged at the same time. By sharing individual ideas and energy, compatible ideas from different points of view can be combined and merged into bigger and more successful ideas.

Inspiration is the flash of brilliance - the spark of AHA! - that comes when the other elements combust. Different people describe the moment of inspiration differently, but more often than not, it's usually a spontaneous and fateful event, happening when the problem-solver least expects it, during daydreaming, taking a walk or working on a different project.

Ideas are needed to make ideas. You’ve been making ideas, both good and bad, for other problems about the same length of time you’ve been on Earth. When you brainstorm ideas, you’re using ideas you've created or experienced to help solve another (entirely unrelated) problem in front of you now.

The Creative Birth of Some Common Inventions

Virtually all ideas are created by using the same recipe and ingredients: the purpose of your idea, combined and mixed with any stimulus, over and over. (Original post 2 March 2009). Here's some examples from history to show how it works.

As early as 2600 BC, Chinese farmers used small stones from a nearby river bed to keep track of their sheep in the fields. A single pebble was a symbol for each sheep, and lines on the ground noted their location. This idea worked until they had to move their flocks. To make the system portable, farmers created a small wooden frame, replaced the stones with wood beads, and substituted silk fibres for the lines. In the end, the world's first calculator: the abacus.

Purpose  To effeciently track sheep in open fields

Stimulus  Using nearby handy items: stones, lines, wood, silk

New Idea  An abacus

Samuel Morse couldn't find a suitable method to keep an electric signal strong enough to travel from the East to West Cost of the U.S. On a cross-country expedition, he noticed riders exchanging tired horses for a fresh ones at a series of outposts between St. Louis and San Francisco. He recreated a similar 'relay station' along an electrical path to keep the signal consistent from end to end.

Purpose  To maintain a signal strength over a long distance

Stimulus  Seeing tired horses replaced at key points along a pathway

New Idea  Electric relay stations

The examples are endless, and often amusing.

Noticing steam escaping from a teapot, James Watt used the same mechanics to harness a new type of transportation: the steam engine.

Tending to a cut on his wife’s hand from a kitchen knife, Earle Dickson had only wide surgical tape and large gauze pads at home. He cut down both elements to fit his wife's dainty hands, creating Band-Aids.

A colleague showed Helen Barnett Diserens the new invention sweeping the country in the early 1940s: the ball-point pen. Intrigued by the mechanics of a tiny ball trapping a reservoir of ink, she re-thought the engineering on a larger scale, creating the first roll-on antiperspirant.

Alexander Leipa had a crazy thought while raking leaves in his backyard: he could pack more leaves into rubbish bags if he could stack them. His crazy idea became Pringles potato chips.

George de Mestral noticed tiny hooks on the burrs he pulled from his clothes and his dog after a walk in the forest. He replicated this hook and loop mechanism in the lab, and today we have Velcro.

A neighbor suggested that the Jacuzzi Brothers - manufacturers of aviation and agricultural pumps - to create a portable pump which could be submerged in water to help his arthritis. Thus, the Jacuzzi Spa was born.

You don't have to invent new products to use the key learnings from these examples:

• Look to nature as a source of inspiration.
• Be open and curious to exploration, accidents, connections, common areas or parallels between two different items to spark new ideas.
• Look for metaphors to solve your problem or issue. In other words, adapt a solution from a similar problem from a different and unrelated industry or category.
• Use one of the most feared activites of business: day-dreaming. (Or are you the type that schedules actual thinking time out of your day?).
• Change some aspect of your topic or problem. For ex: Diserens increased the size the ball-point, while Dickson decreased the size of the tape and gauze.
• Two heads are better than one: many ideas were created by two people collaborating, particularly from different fields.

A Recipe: How to Make An Idea

When making dinner - particularly a new dish - it's often preferable to use a recipe. A simple guide for preparing and cooking food, a recipe helps prevent unfortunate errors in ingredients or measurement. It's also faster to use a recipe, and more effective too, since you can create a dish over and over with the same delicious results.

Doesn’t it make sense that your creativity could be improved if you hade a recipe to make an idea? Like cooking, it's true that experimenting when brainstorming is important, but at the same time, a guide - not necessarily a set of hard and fast rules – to create ideas would be helpful to make people more creative.

Two points-of-view - one old, one new - helped me define the recipe. James Webb Young, a creative director at J.W. Thompson in the 1920s, said: “An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements.” An online Facebook community used this definition: “An idea is two divergent thought elements (which) come together to produce a new idea, one that is fresh, different and unique from the original sources.”

Who could want a more simple recipe? Just two ingredients! Purpose + Stimulus = New Idea

The Purpose describes two things (often the same thing) about your brainstorming topic:

1. Your need or wish (something about the topic that you want to occur so you achieve your purpose), or
2. Your problem or isse (something about the topic that you want to eliminate, minimise or neutralise, also to achieve your purpose.)

In other words: what do you want the idea to do?

The Stimulus is any element which your brain uses to inspire your imagination. I divide stimulus into two diffferent types:

1. Stimulus which combine or merge
2. Stimulus which change or adapt

For example, you might combine or merge your Purpose with any of these Stimulus.

• A real or figurative item, a thing
• A mental thought
• A memory, an experience, a daydream
• A concept or theme
• Anything visual, such as a picture or a chart
• Another idea or solution. The idea might be a solution to a similar problem, an entirely different or unrelated problem, or anywhere in-between. Quite frequently, sometimes the stimulus is a bad idea.

The Stimulus also might be changing or adapting all or part of the topic itself. For example you might add to, remove or change to some degree one of its elements, such as size, frequency, colour, taste.

Basically, this is what happens to your brain when it's being creative. Consciously or unconsciously, your brain decides there’s a problem or need. Once it realises this, your imagination joins in - looking for stimulus with or without your help. For example, it might look for stimulus/inspiration when you're flipping through a magazine. Or it may arise as a fleeting thought, out of the blue, like riding to work or showering. It even keeps working on the problem after you've gone on to another task. At some point, all of the elements combine to create an idea - that moment of AHA!

The lesson: when you want to be creative, know exactly what you want to solve, trigger your imagination with stimulus, and be sensitive to those AHA moments when your brain makes an idea when you least expect it.

Next Monday, we'll look to history for a wide variety of examples of idea generation.

P.S.  If you remember the Baker's Coconut Recipes booklet, you'll want to visit here:

http://www.junkyardclubhouse.com/2007/03/10/bakers-coconut-cut-up-cakes/