Creativity
by Ronni Kahalani, Copenhagen School of Design & Technology.
Exploring creativity phenomena affecting high-performance teams.
Learning how to facilitate creative and innovative ideation.
Who am I?
Thank you for stopping by.
I’m Ronni. I hope you’re well and wish you a safe and worthy journey.
This presentation is part of the Software Engineering Series, from my lectures at Copenhagen School of Design & Technology.
You can view the Introducing Myself, if you want to know a little more about who I am.
All my presentations and materials are free and available at my blog post: Software Engineering.
Don’t let me uphold you,
continue your journey, go to next slide.
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Agenda
Why is creativity important?
Facts
A simple question
It’s hard to be creative when your day consists of
interruptions, meetings, noise and other challenges.
Take mental breaks, before and along the way,
in the creative process.
5 neuro creativity phenomena affecting creativity
Priming
Remote Associations
Cognitive Inhibition
Fixation
Eureka
1. Priming
Avoiding priming / influence of others thoughts, lets every individual bo contribute with their thinking.
Priming (influence of thoughts)
Priming is like programmed filters, which sorts stimuli affecting our rational ego- and sensitive chimpanzee brain. Some filters inhibit, others strengthens, our attention.
Endless stimuli like words, sight, smell, body language, status, instincts and attitudes compete for our attention and constantly redefine our individual perception of reality. We also prime ourselves, with New Year resolutions, morale and nudging.
Priming example
The CEO arrives unannounced to visit the team.
How are you primed to respond? Are you scared, humble to authority or relaxed?
Priming example
Make an experiment where everyone shout ”MOSQUITO” 30 times, a shout every second,
ask the question below, which must be answered lightning fast (no thinking time)
”What color symbols drive in a traffic light?”
It can prime the answer "RED", because of the close association between MOSQUITO,
BLOOD and RED. Magicians and illusionists are exceptional priming experts.
Neuro mind mapping
The brain associate concepts, words and phrases to mind maps.
Creativity is about the quantity of remote associations.
The very creative brain
Creative minds have more remote associations,
connecting across remote domains of experience.
2. Remote Associations
Strive to create more remote associations in your mind.
Remote associations
Very creative ideas are often based on remote associations.
If I say DINNER TABLE… What does your immediate mind map then contain?
Remote associations
raft, musical instrument,
sledding, hiding place,
dancing, bed, sex, ...
Close associations
cloth, legs, cutlery, chair,
family dinners, plates,
togetherness ...
Remote associations
Tools that test and train your ability for remove associations.
Remote Associates Test (Rat)
Alternate Uses Test (Aut)
GO TO WEBSITE
Remote Associates Test (Rat)
Here’s a simple way to train your thinking in remote associations.
Find 3 words, which all match a 4th common word,
which must be connected in front of or behind all three words.
Example: Prune, Red, Oats, (4th word: Porridge). Try it yourself.
The easy one
Officer, Dog, Civil
The hard one
Log, Banana, House
The answers are on the next page ;)
Remote Associates Test (Rat)
Answers for the previous page.
The easy = Police
Police Officer,
Police Dog,
Civil Police.
The hard = Boat
Log boat,
Banana boat,
Houseboat.
Alternate uses test (Aut)
Find all the alternative uses you can do with an object.
The alternate uses shall be based on useful remote association.
A brick for ”Building a house” is a very close association, where paperweight, potted plants or murder weapon are a bit more remote.
3. Cognitive Inhibition
Eliminate cognitive inhibition to increase creativity and open-mindness.
Cognitive Inhibition
Behaviors and environments that inhibits and blocks creativity.
Cognitive Inhibition
Behaviors and environments that surely inhibits and blocks creativity:
Cognitive Inhibition
4. Fixation
Don’t get fixated, step back and view the whole perspective.
Fixation
It’s easy to get fixated on a subproblem and forget the full picture.
First, let individuals think alone, then as a team.
Take breaks, focus, facilitate and remember the full picture.
Fixation
When people think too long about the chicken and egg problem, they
have become fixated on a chicken and an egg.
The reality is that the egg came long before the chicken, as snakes,
lizards, turtles and other reptiles existed long before the chicken.
5. Incubation
Let go of focusing on challenges and ideas, let your unconscious mind lose, and do something nice and refreshing.
If everything seems impossible, take a break.
Incubation
Eureka = I have found (it)!
Archimedes jumped out of his bath and ran naked through town, when he discovered a way to weigh the mass of gold, because he suspected a blacksmith from stealing his pure gold by mixing it with silver.
Let’s play…
Clear the mind and lets play with some mind calibration games.
Close your eyes and…
The eight-coin problem
Challenge
Move 2 coins, so that every coin touches at least 3 coins.
The nine-dots problem
Challenge
Connect the dots with only four straight lines, without lifting the pen.
Selective attention test 1/3
Follow the cup with the Hershey’s kiss
Selective attention test 2/3
Count all the red cards
Selective attention test 3/3
Count all passes between those in white jerseys
The blind spot
We all have blindspot 30%, in each eye, because of the optic nerves.
The blind spot
Everyone has two blind spots in their vision, each eye has a blind spot about 30 degrees from its focus area (from 20-30 cm. distance).
The blind spot
Cover your left eye and zoom in/out.
The blind spot
Cover your left eye and zoom in/out.
Black spots
There are 12 black spots, but you can’t see them all at once.
Black spots
Notice the black dots showing up, in your mind.
Straight lines gets curved
Straight lines gets curved
Both surfaces has the same color.
Facilitating Creative High-Performance Teams
A Simple Guide On How To Increase Team Creativity
Divergent vs. Convergent thinking
Too often we tend to rush into convergent thinking (solution mode), when challenged.
Convergent thinking, narrows the option space, to identify the best options and take a decision.
Divergent thinking is about exploring all kinds of options, focusing on:
By starting with divergent thinking, you increase the chances for much better ideas.
And the more remote ideas, the bigger the chance to find a serious hit.
The creative human
Who’s creative?
Creative minds are often more
The creative human
“Creativity involves breaking out of the established patterns,�in order to look at things in a different way”�Edward de Bono
“Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks,�breaking rules, making mistakes and having fun!”�Mary Lou Cook
The creative idea
When is something creative?
The neuro-science definition:
Original, novel and useful.
Einstein's theory of relativity
E = mc2
Einstein did not invent the concepts of energy, mass and speed of light.
He combined these old ideas in a new (original and useful) way.
That's what creativity is all about ... to think outside the box.
The creative process
It's about people and their ability to create synergy and collaborate in harmony, in search of the most creative ideas. The more distant the ideas, the greater the creative process.
Constraints
Constraints are important to balance the team’s creativity level.
If the team freezes, creativity wise, experiments with constraints
can affect, and kick-start the team creativity level again.
Increasing constraints
Decreasing constraints
To think outside the box, you need a box to begin with.
Constraints
In certain situations, some people hunger for constraints and other people hate constraints.
In other situations, the same people, feel opposite.
The magic lies in adjusting the constraints, fast, flexibly and proactively, on demand, via access to the constraint owners.
So be sure to relate to all constraint owners.
The creative director / facilitator
Questions?
Anything? What’s on your mind? Come on ask me anything…
Feedback?
Thank you for your precious time.
I hope it was worth it and would love to get your feedback.