Previous lessons have referred to theoretical approaches to and empirical research on creativity. It is clearly an interesting area, which often has practical applications in the form of heuristics and methods to enhance creativity. However, it is also a difficult area to study in a rigorous manner with as many myths as facts and very hard to distinguish between the two.
This lesson offers a few pointers into the academic and practical literature on creativity and also discusses some of the more well established results in the area including the heuristics of de Bono and Polya, aspects of personality and the importance of a good night’s sleep!
6.1 Introduction
There is large literature on creativity both practical how-to-do-it guides, especially for artistic creativity, and also more theoretical work form psychology, management science and social science. This section gives a few pointers into the literature including some authors that have been mentioned in previous lessons. We also look at some of the methods that are used to study creativity.
6.2 Attitude and Aptitude
Do you have to be a little mad to be creative? There are many myths as well as some science about the relationship between personality, lifestyle and creativity. We explore a few of the more well-established aspects (facts is probably too strong a term). We also lay the ground for why personality prosthetics (tools that help you no matter who you are) are so important.
6.3 Fixation and Insight
You’ve probably all had one of those times when you have been working and working on a problem, perhaps a crossword or a difficult design issue, but seem to be going over the same things again an again, making no progress. You go off, perhaps sleep on it, or maybe just take a break, and then when you return to it, suddenly the problem that had seemed impossible is suddenly trivial.
These issues of fixation and insight are well-studied in the literature, partly because there are a number of simple puzzles that lend themselves to those ‘aha’ moments. However, aspects of these simple puzzles do relate to more complex problems, so we can learn practical techniques form the theoretical studies.
6.4 Out of the Box
You have perhaps been told to ‘think out of the box’, or just told yourself you need to do it. It is one thing saying, “think out of the box”, and another to actually achieve it! We have already seen many divergent techniques, not least bad ideas, which help you to think differently. You have probably also heard of De Bono’s concept lateral thinking, which not only advocates this out of the box thinking, but also offers some useful techniques to do it. Perhaps most crucial is to become aware of the boundaries that are hemming you in – once you can see the box, you may well see a way out of it.
6.5 What is the Problem?
You probably know that you need to ‘think out of the box’, break free of the entrenched ideas or standard solutions and find something new. However, possibly more important, is to be clear about the problem. Puzzles have well defined goals, materials and constraints. In contrast many of the design problems we face are ‘wicked problems’, where even clarifying the problem is a major task.
6.6 Roles
Do you always end up being the person who sees the downside in other people’s suggestions? Or perhaps you are the person who has lots of madcap ideas, and then has to suffer them being dissected and rehashed.
De Bono talks about thinking hats, different roles in problem solving. In general being aware of the role toy are playing allows you to deliberately change the role, put on a different hat. The effect of taking on a role can be quite dramatic, you literally become a different person.