Creativity

YAWIP*

*Yet another work-in-progress

Creativity

Important and fascinating topic, but difficult to define

Why is defining it so difficult? Creativity is based on diverse expression; it plays a role in technological innovation, education, business, the arts and sciences, entertainment, and many other fields

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Many famous people have earned their reputations from their creativity

What and how do you see?

You can only perceive beauty with a serene mind.

Henry David Thoreau

Trouble with you is the trouble with me. Got two good eyes but still don’t see.

Grateful Dead

Topics in cognition and creativity

• Creativity and intelligence
• Analogical thinking and metaphor
• Transformational capacity
• Problem solving
• Problem finding
• Restructuring and insight

Creativity and intelligence

• 1962: “Creativity is not clearly distinct from intelligence”
• 1965: “IQ, and the convergent thinking that is required for it, is independent of divergent and original thinking”
• 1969: Divergent thinking is moderately correlated with students’ extracurricular activities and achievements, but not with more traditional “intelligence” measures”
• 2003: “Divergent and convergent thinking are two ends of a continuum” - both convergent and divergent thinking are useful

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Tests of convergent and divergent thinking

Convergent thinking questions always have one or very few correct answers, such as:

• Who was the first President of the US?
• How far is it from New York to London?
• Who won the 2015 NCAA BCS championship in football?

Divergent thinking requires open-ended questions for which there are multiple answers and solutions, such as

Instances tasks

• make a list of things that move on wheels
• list strong things
• list square things

Uses tasks: different ways you can use a brick, shoe, or coat hanger

Tests of convergent and divergent thinking

Convergent thinking questions always have one or very few correct answers, such as:

• 5 + 5 = ?

One answer

Divergent thinking requires open-ended questions for which there are multiple answers and solutions, such as

• ? + ? = 10

Infinite answers

“Creativity is the principle of novelty”

“[o]riginality and creativity begin to emerge, not as something that is the result of an effects to achieve a planned and formulated goal, but rather as a by-product of a mind that is coming to a more nearly normal order of operation.”

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David Bohm, English physicist praised as a major contributor to the field of quantum theory physics, in Bohm, David (1998) On Creativity, Lee Nichol (Ed.) Routledge, London

“Creativity is a mark of originality

“There are tremendous numbers of highly talented people who remain mediocre. Thus, there must be a considerable body of scientists who were better at mathematics and know more about physics than Einstein did. The difference was that Einstein had a certain quality and originality.”

David Bohm, English physicist praised as a major contributor to the field of quantum theory physics, in Bohm, David (1998) On Creativity, Lee Nichol (Ed.) Routledge, London

Tactics to Spark Creativity

Sue Shellenbarger, Wall Street Journal

Three main themes for generating bright ideas

1. Context
2. Time-of-day
3. Mood

e.g., take a daydream break, have a drink (or two), stare at something green, tackle problems at your off-peak (night time for “morning people”) or transitional times of day (showering, jogging)

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323611604578398342398991844

The color green...

is a symbol of fertility, growth, and renewal, triggering the positive mood and striving for improvements that foster creativity

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Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323611604578398342398991844

Mind wandering

Mind-wandering, often seen as daydreaming, allows the brain to incubate new approaches to familiar problems, serving "as a foundation for creative inspiration"

Think of as many unusual uses for a common item (e.g., a brick) and then do a mundane task; you’ll come up with more creative ideas than people who kept doing cognitively challenging activities

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323611604578398342398991844

Moderate drinking

• Moderate drinking can also relax inhibitions in a way that seems to let the mind range across a wider set of possible connections.
• It can also help a person notice environmental cues or changes that a sober brain would block out
• In a 2012 study at University of Illinois at Chicago, students who drank enough to raise their blood-alcohol level to 0.075 performed better on tests of insight than sober students.
• Other research suggests watching funny videos can spark the positive moods linked to higher creativity.

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323611604578398342398991844

Moderate drinking: The case of e-Trade

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Tor Myhren, an ad executive credited with many successful campaigns including the ETrade talking baby, says he uses "massive creative stimulus followed by total solitary confinement" to start ideas flowing. Anticipating a period of hard work recently, he read Wired magazine cover to cover, then went to see Django Unchained. "When I set my brain up properly for it, when I've fed my brain properly, I can do it."

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323611604578398342398991844

3 lightbulb moments

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323611604578398342398991844

Buzzy

e*Trade

Best of...

Enviromixer on 22squared.com

Cancer epidemiologist + marketing executive => Health Tonic

“I can’t get research subjects to fill out arduous, 400-question medical surveys,”

"You have to make it entertaining. Why don't you just make it super fun and friendly on the iPad?"

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323611604578398342398991844

Source: Thelongandshort.org

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Mind-wandering to nurture creativity

• “Creativity requires time and nurturing”
• Mind-wandering, often seen as daydreaming, allows the brain to incubate new approaches to familiar problems
• Build time for mind wandering into daily routines, breaking away from tasks requiring concentration to take a walk or run, look out a window or do some relaxing, routine physical task.

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Source: Thelongandshort.org

Mind-wandering undergoes a rehabilitation

Research associating it with creativity and foresight has found coverage across the full media spectrum, from the Wall Street Journal (The Benefits of Mind-Wandering) to Stylist (How Procrastination Can Do Wonders for Your Career).

At the root of this turnaround: the idea that mind-wandering is not a waste of attention but simply a different kind of focus.

http://thelongandshort.org/society/is-mind-wandering-an-anti-mindfulness-movement

http://thelongandshort.org/society/is-mind-wandering-an-anti-mindfulness-movement

Could this be the beginning of the revolt against mindfulness?

No.

Mind-wandering is not an alternative to mindfulness, but a complement to it: "One mental mode is potentially just as beneficial as the other," as Fast Company puts it.

A better question would be: why are these opposing philosophies of mind gaining popularity at the same time?

http://thelongandshort.org/society/is-mind-wandering-an-anti-mindfulness-movement

Scientific interest in mind-wandering

The scientific interest in mind-wandering began with the mental equivalent of white noise. "Brain imaging was for a long time focused on which parts of the brain are active when we focus on specific tasks, such as reading words, recognising faces, or mentally rotating visual patterns," says Michael Corballis, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Auckland and author of The Wandering Mind. "It was then observed that widespread areas of the brain were active between experimental trials." What had previously been dismissed as white noise was, in fact, purposeful neural activity. "The brain is active all the time."

http://thelongandshort.org/society/is-mind-wandering-an-anti-mindfulness-movement

http://thelongandshort.org/society/is-mind-wandering-an-anti-mindfulness-movement

“Default network” and “attention network” modes

• Forget left-brain versus right-brain. Now it’s default network (unprompted thoughts) and attention network (prompted by external stimuli)
• Mind-wandering is only one of many types of spontaneous thought the default network produces, but from a scientific point of view, its connection to the default network is the reason to study it.
• Mind-wandering is one of those paradoxical mental states, like sleep, which is impossible to enter into by conscious effort. We call these states “peripatetic states”
• To observe it, researchers adopt two main strategies:
1. either they ask people to tell them when they have been mind-wandering; or
2. they give them something to do, then interrupt them to ask if their mind is focused.

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http://thelongandshort.org/society/is-mind-wandering-an-anti-mindfulness-movement

http://thelongandshort.org/society/is-mind-wandering-an-anti-mindfulness-movement

Benefits of mind-wandering

• CREATIVITY - “Zoning out” increases insight and imagination
• There are some cases where it's enormously beneficial to go for a walk and let your thoughts slow and have a chance to make connections… Let your brain just sort it out on its own." When we mind-wander we really can think of anything. This roaming allows us to forge the kind of associative connections that lie at the heart of creativity.
• Mind-wandering also produces a prospective bias in which we think about what we’ll do in the future (e.g., “autobiographical planning”)
• See also these research studies: Harnessing the wandering mind: The role of perceptual load (Forster, S., & Lavie, N. 2009. Cognition, 111(3): 345-355) and Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking

http://thelongandshort.org/society/is-mind-wandering-an-anti-mindfulness-movement

View: Nilofer Merchant: Got a meeting? Take a walk on TED.com

How can we differentiate good from bad mind-wandering?

• Mind-wandering has not been cleared of its association with depression and anxiety, or of its detrimental effect on many essential functions. Hence the focus of current research: what makes the difference between positive and negative mind-wandering? How can we mind-wander effectively, instead of destructively?
• the best way of maintaining mental harmony during mind-wandering is to be able to be aware of the fact that you are doing it. Taken together, they present a picture of the ideal situation for mind-wandering: a state of calm monotony, neither too stimulating nor too boring, in a place where we are comfortable rather than frustrated. No wonder that, as study after study confirms, our best ideas really do come to us in the shower.

http://thelongandshort.org/society/is-mind-wandering-an-anti-mindfulness-movement

http://thelongandshort.org/society/is-mind-wandering-an-anti-mindfulness-movement

Thinkpak

Nine principles of Thinkpak

• Substitute something
• Combine it with something else
• Adapt something to it
• Magnify or add to it
• Modify it
• Put it to some other use
• Eliminate something
• Rearrange it
• Reverse it

SCAMMPERR!

Thinkpak contains idea-triggering questions based on these nine principles

Origins of Thinkpak

Alex Osborn, a pioneer of creativity, first identified the nine principles of manipulating a subject

Bob Eberle later rearranged the principles into the mnemonic SCAMMPERR

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Give me some examples

• Imagine a family trying to generate ideas for more fully enjoying their meals together. By focusing on magnify they might come up with the following ideas:
• “Invite more people occasionally - foreign students, teachers, local writers, etc.”
• “Increase the number of courses in the dinner (e.g., ‘small plates’) to provide more variety

Give me some examples

• If they focused on eliminate they might come up with:
• “Eating at a smaller table to make dinner more intimate” or
• “Eliminating a meal each day and feeding a needy family instead”
• For rearrange,
• eating on the porch or
• eating dessert first

Thinkpak consists of 56 cards

• Card #1 is an easy-reference list of the nine principal strategies
• Card #2 outlines the basic techniques for using Thinkpak
• Card 3-47 are idea stimulators. These cards are designed to change the way you think. “If you always think the way you’ve always though, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
• Cards 48-56 are techniques for evaluating your ideas

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Thinkpak strategies

Random strategies

Do these to stimulate your imagination

• Pick any subject - a paper clip, your life - and ask yourself how it can be changed, improved, and or made into something else.
• Shuffle the idea stimulators (cards 3-47), draw a card at random, and try to apply the questions to your subject.
• If the card isn’t applicable, keep drawing - be creative in your interpretation and thoughts
• List ideas as you go, and keep drawing cards until you’re satisfied with the ideas you’ve generated

Systematic strategies

Do this after you’ve isolated the subject or challenge you want to think about

• Go straight through cards 3 - 47 one at a time, thinking about the question on each card
• This will cause you to think up as well as about something
• If a question doesn’t prompt an idea, move on to the next card
• Spend 1-2 minutes on each card and list ideas as they occur
• Review you ideas and try to combine the first two ideas into one; then take the third and try to integrate it into the new idea, and so on
• Finally, select and evaluate your ideas

Attribute listing

Making a list helps you concentrate on your subject and makes it easier to see from other viewpoints. List the subject’s attributes (characteristics, parts, dimensions, etc.), then focus your attention on each of them in turn

Steps

1. List the subject’s attributes
2. Select the most significant or unique attributes
3. For each attribute, write down any ideas you have on how to improve or change it
4. Keep asking “How else can this be accomplished?” and “Why does this have to be this way?”

Problem-solving strategies

1. Take the plan, problem, or challenge that you face and write it as a specific problem statement
2. State the parts or elements of your problem simply
3. Isolate the parts (stages) that you think are most significant (e.g. “What procedure can I substitute for my current one?” or “modify,” “combine,” or “adapt”)
4. To get ideas, use the idea stimulators, either randomly or systematically
5. Review and elaborate on your ideas by asking: How else can this be accomplished? Why does this have to be this way? What else?
6. Repeat this for each stage of the process to generate a maximum number of ideas to consider
7. Evaluate your ideas

Lotus Blossom

• This exercise involves starting with a central theme or problem and working outward, using ever-widening circles or “petals.”
• Central themes lead to ideas that themselves become central themes, etc.
• The unfolding themes trigger new ideas and new themes

Get it?

Blossoms!

A visualization of the lotus blossom technique for chair concepts

Lotus Blossom - How to Use It

1. Copy the diagram onto a large sheet of paper (or use a projector to cast an image of the diagram on a large whiteboard!) - it’s a 9x9 grid
2. Write your central theme in the or problem in the diagram’s center
3. Think of related ideas or applications and write them in the surrounding circles
4. Use the ideas written in in the eight boxes immediately surrounding the center as new central themes for the surrounding boxes
5. Try to think of eight new ideas involving each new central theme
6. Continue the process until you’ve completed as much of the diagram as you can
7. Evaluate your ideas - sometimes you can make new connections between the different “attributes of the attributes”

Here’s a good example on Flickr

The case of the unemployed marketing executive

An unemployed marketing executive used the lotus exercise to generate ideas he needed to land a job. His central theme was “job.” One of the ideas around “job” was “create a resumé.” “Resumé” then became a new central theme and, using the idea stimulators, he came up with a number of variations on the idea of a resumé. He took out several ads in several papers with the bold headline “$50,000 Reward.” The fine print underneath explained that an employer could save $50,000 by not paying a headhunter to find a person with his marketing talents. When interested employers called the phone number in the ad, they heard a recording of his resumé. He received 45 job offers.

This example is more than 20 years old. How would modify this approach to get a job today?

References

Guilford, J. P. (1967). Creativity: Yesterday, today and tomorrow. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 1(1), 3-14.

Kounios, J., & Beeman, M. (2009). The Aha! Moment the cognitive neuroscience of insight. Current directions in psychological science, 18(4), 210-216.