Creative Streak

Characteristics of the Creative Individual

The confluence of three events – the month-long summer holiday, a broken toe, and the imminent move to a new office – meant I had the opportunity of a lifetime. I could take my time packing boxes. (Why can’t all moves be this stress-less?)

While packing the bookcase last night, I found myself sitting back to re-read one of my favourite books on creativity – Creative Thinking in the Decision and Management Sciences, by James R. Evans. (Not an easy book to find, but see details below.) While much of the book focuses on the role of creativity in quality management, it's also an excellent 'textbooks' on creative thinking.

Here's an example: Evans' characteristics of the creative individual.

1. Awareness and sensitivity to problems. Notices things others do not. Knows that nothing is perfect and that everything can be improved upon. Recognises that a problem exists or can cut through details and misleading facts to find the real problem.

2. Memory. Has good memories, and displays remarkable powers of recall. Good retention and retrieval of information. The individual has a memory bank of life’s experiences to be able to recall them for creative’s sake.

3. Fluency. Can generate a large number of ideas easily. Can judge an excellent idea by seeing it in context with mediocre ideas.

Best Books on Creativity

There's nothing like a thriving conversation on LinkedIn to inspire you to research a topic further. Well, it also helps to break two toes over the holidays so your activities are curtailed to sitting much of your day in your home office.

Anyway, I'm a member of the Outside the Box Thinkers group on LinkedIn, and Francois Lavallee of Aliter Concept in Montreal, Canada, asked for suggestions to start a collection of books on creativity. With a couple of days, he had some excellent suggestions. It prompted to me to think about what books on creativity I like.

Of course, any list of "Best of ..." is contentious by its very nature. There are a lot of great books on creativity and innovation, both from an artistic/personal and a business perspective. However, of the 200+ books I've amassed in my career, I ultimately chose just a few books, based on just one criteria. Did I use the book again as a reference after the first reading?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on other books that you've considered, or even take a suggestion to re-read another book that you've particularly found helpful or insightful.

• 101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving, by Arthur (Andy) B,. VanGundy © 2005 – Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (ISBN 0-7879-7402-1)

• 101 Creative Problem Solving Techniques: The Handbook of New Ideas for Business, by James M. Higgins © 2005 – Published by New Management Publishing Company (ISBN 1-883629-00-4)

• The Artist’s Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self, by Julia Cameron © 1994 by Souvenir Press (ISBN 0-330-34358-0)

Creativity Hacks

Chuck Frey is the founder and publisher of the InnovationTools website - the world's largest site that is focused on innovation and creativity - and the Mind Mapping Software Blog, the leading blog focused on this type of productivity software.

He's also just published an e-book entitled "Creativity Hacks: Shortcuts to Help You to Crush Your Challenges & Live a Kick-A** Life." You can read more about it here.

According to Chuck: "My goal is to energize people to use their latent creative energies to solve the challenges in their lives. This book not only crushes the myth that creativity is inborn, but also shows specific techniques anyone can use for generating ideas, solving problems and, above all, for cultivating the richness that only a creative life can provide. It contains a significant amount of content about visual thinking, and how to do it effectively."

I've had a preview of the book, and it would be an invaluable addition to your library or a great gift.

Amplifying Ideas

One of the important phases of bringing a brainstorm to an efficient close is "amplifying" the average, medicre and half-ideas together, to create a better idea.

First, clean-up the flipchart pages.

• Ask the group to help bring order to the flipchart pages.
• Quickly review and fill in any words left out when writing the ideas down on flipcharts.
• Remove unneeded flipchart pages.
• Go through all pages, and circle or highlight the 3-5 words which encapsulate the concept behind the core ideas, good or bad. I prefer to use an entirely separate colour or a bright highlighter to visually separate the core ideas from the messy notes.

Clarifying Ideas / Creative Criteria

Following on yesterday's post ...

Here are some examples of suggested criteria to use when selecting the best ideas at the end of a brainstorm session. By no means a definitive list, use the points below as thought starters to create a specific list for your organisation, industry, environment or situation. If you have other examples, please share them with me, and I’ll publish additional notes later on.

The idea must ...

• Help to achieve the business result or (marketing/PR/communciations) objective
• Address / impact / diffuse / combat the (communications) issue
• Demonstrate a return on investment (which also means you need to have evaluation measures agreed-upon in advance of the campaign’s launch)
• Educate the target audience(s) by effectively delivering your messages
• Stimulate trial or loyalty, to ask for a product by name
• Gather demographic information from the target audience (e.g., sign-up booths, kiosks, write-in offers)
• Be moveable (e.g., the idea can be moved from market to market, between shopping centers, can be set up at town meetings, the lobby of Parliament)

More ...

Measuring Ideas

Unlike any other scientific measurement (a barometer, Richter Scale, yard stick, speedometer, glucose monitor or density index), creativity and its output – ideas – have no accurate basis of measurement.

Since there’s no universal constant or benchmark to measure creativity or ideas, everyone evaluates them differently, based on their individual perceptions and perspectives. The problem becomes more acute when agreement between different parties is necessary. How can two people determine the best idea? What system do they use? Democracy? Seniority? Fists? It’s similar to judges in a beauty contest using different standards to select the prettiest girl. There’s no way to crown a deserving winner.

I once had a client who deliberately avoided any responsibility on the matter, saying: “Oh, I’ll know a good idea when I see it.” The honest truth is this: he didn't, and you won't either. You can't know whether the idea in front of you is good or bad or anywhere in-between because you haven't given proper consideration about what you’re looking for.  Trust me, you do not want to make a decision based solely on your emotional state at the end of the brainstorm. You need 'creative criteria.'

Brain Writing

Brain writing is a variation on traditional brainstorm techniques. It begins with people writing their ideas down on paper before sharing them aloud with the group. It doesn’t require anyone to talk (except a facilitator), and has infinite variations.

Use this exercise when your brainstorm participants are quiet or need to ‘save face.’It's also a perfect solution when you have a brainstorm participant who talks too much, or who refuses to listen to any other participant's ideas.

Instructions

• Hand out sheets of paper to the participants
• Outline the brainstorm problem, need or want.
• Everyone begins by writing their deas on the paper.
• After a minute or so (depending upon how much people are writing), people pass the paper to another person - either left, right or across the table.
• After reading the page, people either add to the initial idea, branch off on a relevant tangent, or create a fresh new idea. There’s no right or wrong step: just keep brainstorming.
• After a few minutes, pass again. Repeat until the pages are filled.
• After several rotations, ask people to read the best idea from all ideas on the page in front of them. List the best ideas on the flip-chart and now brainstorm aloud.

Who Should Be Invited to a Brainstorm?

One of the easiest ways to improve your brainstorms is to give some thought to inviting the right people to a brainstorm.

A brainstrom should not be a cattle call ("let's invite everybody!"), nor should it be random ("invite whoever's here today"). You want specific people, or people with specific skills. Personally, I believe four to eight people is ideal. Anything more becomes a hostage situation.

So who should be the invite list? First and foremost, you want to find ...

1. Prolific idea people. These are individuals who can let fly a dizzying volume of ideas, 90 percent of which will be utterly useless, silly, unnecessary, illegal or unimplementable – and 10 percent which will be terrific, WOW, shocking, thrilling and compelling ... in other words, exactly what you want.

2. People who fit the target profile. They might actually be the target audience, or second-best, they immediately understand, appreciate or communicate how the ideas may be perceived or implemented. This might include people who have similar or relevant experience.

3. People with considerable knowledge of either or both the purpose or key issues. This is not necessarily people who are members of the department or the account team. Look to other departments or other account teams - but preferably those people who can reduce all of the arcane information down into the key insights which are useful in a brainstorm. Again, find fresh brains.

And, last but not least ...

Group Brainstorming

The idea of generating ideas in a group setting is a relatively youthful concept, introduced in 1948 by Alex Osborn in his book, Your Creative Power, with further elaboration in 1953 in his second book, Applied Imagination. In both books, Osborn outlined how brainstorming could inspire creative thinking among a group of people by creating an atmosphere where ideas could be generated in a setting uninhibited of interruptions, judgement and censure.

According to Osborn, "Brainstorm means using the brain to storm a creative problem ... in commando fashion (where) each stormer audaciously attacks the same objective."

Beyond the obvious objective – to generate ideas – group brainstorming actually has several objectives:

• To generate ideas
• To create better solutions and ideas
• To combine and leverage the talents of several people (“Two heads are better than one”)
• To get support for ideas internally and externally
• To increase efficiency and productivity

Today, brainstorms are beyond being universal. But despite being a pervasive part of any manager in the world of business, it doesn’t mean they’re effective or productive. In fact, some of the world’s most well-known creative experts have spoken about how brainstorms are maligned to the point of damnation, some proclaiming their untimely 'death.'

Levels of Problem Knowledge

In his book The Concept of a Problem, Gene Agre defines a problem as “The gap between the current state of affairs and the desired state of affairs.” In other words, the “current state of affairs” is “the present”, or Point A. And, the “desired state of affairs” is “the future”, or Point B.

As it relates to communications, Point A is what the target audience thinks and behaves today, which is a result of their history, experience, expectations and background in relation to our company, reputation or product. Point B is what we want the target audience to think, believe or act. What prevents or dissuades the target audience from moving from Point A to Point B is the “problem.” The bridge between Point A and Point B are messages carried by the creative idea. (See the first, top.)

To solve a problem with creative thinking, it’s often helpful to understand what stage you are at in the problem-solving cycle. In one of the best books on creative thinking – Creative Thinking in the Decision and Management Sciences – author James Evans uses a simple chart to explain how problem solving occurs. (See the second chart, below.)