Are you looking to improve your creative thinking skills so as to impact your breakthrough thinking? Don’t believe you are creative? Creativity is often defined as the ability to connect ideas that are seemingly unconnectable.
Connecting ideas are how new ideas originate … it is the basis for creativity. Most of the time we time in terms of finding more ideas to add to our list of consideration … the more new ideas to connect, the more chances of improving your creativity.
But it doesn’t always work that way. Often you can rekindle your creativity by adding constraints to your problem space. Have you ever been successful in trying this technique?
My son once came back from a trip during which he broke a guitar string that he could not replace. He was actually delighted with the experience, having had to invent a different way of playing the instrument, and discovering new harmonies.
With one string missing, he had to work out the others to a whole new level. And voila … he used a part of his creativity he had never exercised.
This is a creative classic.
Other examples include legislation on car emissions that have led to the creative changes to the combustion engine and the rise of hybrid and electric vehicles. Another good example is Apple making the explicit decision to ban the use of a stylus, which led to the famous touch-screen products that we all know.
Examples of creative thinking.
Creative design can be enhanced not always by adding new degrees of freedom, but sometimes by cutting some degrees of freedom.
Sharing a story of creative thinking
We are always on the lookout for good stories. Stories to illustrate points we are emphasizing. So we read a lot. Today’s story is about generating ideas. Ideas from convergent thinking.
The story is about why you should ask why. It comes from Ideas Champions. A consulting company like us (but bigger and more well-known), who specialize in creativity, innovation, team building, and leadership. All favorite topics of ours. So we keep up with this team.
The story is about a big problem with one of our favorite monuments – the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC.
Simply put, birds — in huge numbers — were pooping all over it, which made visiting the place a very unpleasant experience.
Attempts to remedy the situation caused even bigger problems since the harsh cleaning detergents being used were damaging the memorial.
Fortunately, some of the National Parks managers assigned to the case began asking WHY — as in “Why was the Jefferson Memorial so much more of a target for birds than any of the other memorials?”
A little bit of investigation revealed the following:
The birds were attracted to the Jefferson Memorial because of the abundance of spiders — a gourmet treat for birds.
The spiders were attracted to the Memorial because of the abundance of midges (insects) that were nesting there.
And the midges were attracted to the Memorial because of the light.
Midges, it turns out, like to procreate in places where the light is just so — and because the lights were turned on, at the Jefferson Memorial, one hour before dark, it created the kind of mood lighting that midges went crazy for.
So there you have it: The midges were attracted to the light. The spiders were attracted to the midges. The birds were attracted to the spiders. And the National Parks workers, though not necessarily attracted to the bird poop, were attracted to getting paid — so they spent a lot of their time (and taxpayer money) cleaning the Memorial.
How did the situation resolve? Very simply.
After reviewing the curious chain of events that led up to the problem, the decision was made to wait until dark before turning the lights on at the Jefferson Memorial. About as simple a solution as you could get. Right?
That one-hour delay was enough to ruin the mood lighting for the midges, who then decided to have midge sex somewhere else.
No midges, no spiders. No spiders, no birds. No birds, no poop. No poop, no need to clean the Jefferson Memorial so often. Case closed.
Now, consider what “solutions” might have been forthcoming if those curious National Parks managers did not stop and ask WHY:
Hire more workers to clean the Memorial
Ask existing workers to work overtime
Experiment with different kinds of cleaning materials
Put bird poison all around the memorial
Hire hunters to shoot the birds
Encase the entire Jefferson Memorial in Plexiglas
Move the Memorial to another part of Washington
Close the site to the general public
Technically speaking, each of the above “solutions” was a possible approach — but at great cost, inconvenience, and with questionable results. Not great solutions.
The bottom line
To be effective in this new era, we as creative thinking business people need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire perspectives that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.
We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.
There can never be enough focus on continuous improvement on brand marketing, independent of how well the business is doing. It seems we all are looking to take our success to a new level. This is an excellent time to make a statement with their creative thinking. Changing before you have to is always a good idea.
Do you have any similar stories of creative design to share with this community?
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Need some help in improving the innovation process for you and your staff? Innovative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors? Or maybe ways to innovate new products and services?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options for innovation workshops to get noticeable results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on continuous learning from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
A crucial aspect of your creative thinking is the capacity to imagine. As an author and educational advisor Sir Ken Robinson once said: “Creative Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement.” You must expand your creative thinking continuously.
Or perhaps a more inspirational quote would be this one from Albert Einstein:
“Creative thinking is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
Creative thinking is the ability to consider something in a new way. It might be a new approach to a problem, a resolution to a conflict between employees, or a new result from a data set. Employers in all industries want employees who can think creatively and bring new perspectives to the workplace.
Without imagination, our ability to blend ideas, to see things not as they are but as they might be, is greatly hindered. If we cannot imagine new possibilities, our ability to think creatively is limited. How can we think of ways that generate novel and worthwhile ideas if we keep coming back to existing and proven ideas?
To improve your critical thinking, you must look at the source of our perceptions: your knowledge.
What fuels critical thinking is everything we already know.
Our minds always come back around to what we already know. It’s in our nature to compare new experiences to ones we’ve already had, without that comparison we cannot begin to understand new ideas.
For example: try imagining a color that doesn’t exist. The harder you try to do so, the more likely you are to keep envisioning colors that readily come to mind: blue, red, yellow, green, white, black, and so on. If you try hard, you might blend colors, forming off-shades of violet, teal, etc.
Where our knowledge fails our imaginations, our perspectives can encourage them.
We can easily turn our knowledge on its head to come up with more imaginative answers to the question at hand: What if we were to imagine sounds like colors? Not literally, of course, but metaphorically. Who’s to say the ping of a door closing or the hum of a flapping wing cannot be types of colors? Or what about textures, or tastes, or entire experiences? Suddenly unimaginable colors are imaginable…but again: only in the context of what we already know.
To build a bridge between what we know and what’s possible, we must do two things.
First, we must build knowledge and gain new understandings of the world. If our minds can only imagine possibilities within the context of what we already know, then it’s clear we must increase that knowledge if we want to increase what we can imagine.
Thankfully, knowledge is easily gained if you dedicate even a small amount of time to it.
Reading, not merely books or blogs you are drawn to, but the ones you initially disagree with or find boring as well is one way to build knowledge. Travel can open your mind to new cultures, often ones that will do things in surprising or backward ways than you’re used to, as a way of spurring knowledge and ideas. Trying out new things, like a new type of food or a new store in your neighborhood, helps to build knowledge as well. Conversations with acquaintances can be a surprisingly powerful source of new knowledge too.
The second thing we must do to increase our imaginations, once we have begun to build our knowledge, is to remain powerfully curious about that knowledge, even humorously so.
We can do this by asking questions constantly, not only about new things we experience but about everything old and true as well.
Learn by observing imaginative people very closely. You’ll note they are different because they operate a little differently. They:
Your creative thinking … build on others
One of the misunderstandings around creativity and imagination is that you have to be utterly original to do it. The truth is all creative people stand on the shoulders of those who came before. Writers learn to write by reading; painting students are sent to museums to copy the masters, while great chefs learn the already tested basics of cooking to create some new dish.
Innovation stands on a platform that already exists. Yes, inspiration is involved, those flashes of insight, the ah…ha moments. You start with something that already exists and takes it to another level. So relax. Let go of thinking you have to do something original. Take the pressure off. Celebrate that there is all this help available.
Question everything
Want to think what nobody has ever thought? Start by questioning all assumptions.
There comes a moment in time where everyone agrees with everybody about pretty much everything. For any sized organization that is focused on creating a culture of relentless innovation, hardened dogma is an innovation obstacle they must overcome.
And that starts best with questioning everything, assumptions included.
Pay attention to patterns
Treat patterns as part of the problem. Recognizing a new pattern is very useful, but be careful not to become part of it.
Observe with all senses
Truly creative people have developed their ability to observe and to use all of their senses, which can get dull over time. Take time to “sharpen the blade” and take everything in. Add thoughts as you go.
Your creative thinking skills … continuous learning
Both creativity and innovation are based on knowledge. Therefore, you need to continually expand your knowledge base. Read things you don’t normally read as often as you can.
Defer judgment
Your perceptions may limit your reasoning. Be careful about how you perceive things. In other words, defer judgment. Let it all hang out.
Experience as much as you can. Exposure puts more ideas into your subconscious. Actively seek out new and very different experiences to broaden your idea thinking experience portfolio.
Look for what is not easily seen
Creative thinking examples are everywhere.
Look where others aren’t looking to see what others aren’t seeing.
Be able to overlook rules
Rules, to the creative person, are indeed made to be broken. They are created for us by other people, generally to control a process; the creative person needs the freedom to work.
Ask“what if…”
Seeing new possibilities is a little risky because it means that something will change and some action will have to be taken. Curiosity is probably the single most important trait of creative people.
Push the boundaries of mistakes
A photographer doesn’t just take one shot, and a composer doesn’t just write down a fully realized symphony. Creation is a long process, involving lots of boo-boos along the way. A lot goes in the trash.
Collaborate
The hermit artist, alone in his garret, is a romantic notion but not always an accurate one. Comedians, musicians, painters, chefs all get a little better by sharing with others in their fields.
Engage all the senses
“There is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the imagination.”― Virginia Woolf
Do not shut your senses off when you are doing creative thinking.
Include all the senses to make it rich. Some of us are visual learners while others are kinesthetic and others learn best while reading and writing.
The bottom line
Make your thinking vivid by including what comes naturally to you. For example, you may not be able to imagine sequences of images very well, but you may excel in imagining other modalities such as smell, touch, and sound. You may be excellent in infusing your visualization with emotional charge and great feelings.
DO not feel compelled to stay within any single modality but make your visualizations and imagination vivid and rich by including numerous modalities. Your senses are wonderful tools for you to engage while unleashing the power of the imaginative mind. Make it colorful and exciting. Make your imagination your ally and your best friend.
Need some help in improving the creativity of you and your staff? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote for a workshop on creativity. Learn about some options for creativity workshops to get noticeable results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new creative ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your creativity, innovation, and ideas?
Do you have a lesson about making your creativity better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on creativity from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
A young Albert Einstein struggled to solve the perplexing problem of relativity. He took to one of his many famous thought experiments and imagined what he would see if he traveled alongside a beam of light. By imagining the perspective of such an observer, he was able to improve his creative thinking skills.
A creative imagination can help get us outside of the proverbial box.
But, ironically, imagining that which we have never experienced can only by realized by the experiences we have.
Lev Vygotsky stated:
“the creative activity of the imagination depends directly on the richness and variety of a person’s previous experience because this experience provides the material from which the products of fantasy are constructed. The richer a person’s experience, the richer is the material his imagination has access to.”
Creative thinking skills.
Therefore, a great way to improve our critical thinking skills is to improve the diversity and quality of our experiences.
Listen to a genre of music you would ordinarily never listen to. Watch some movies you would normally scoff at.
Take up a hobby you’ve never considered. Forcing yourself into experiencing the world in new ways helps you be more creative and imaginative.
By having a diversity of experiences, you have more building blocks to build your imagination with.
When my two children were younger, they were fortunate to inherit several large bins of Legos from a family friend.
What made their eyes light up was not just that there were so many pieces but that there were so many different types. There were helicopter pieces, house pieces, car pieces, animals, people—you name it.
The diversity gave us (yes, me too) the ability to build so many more imaginative things.
If we compared that to a box of 10,000 pieces—but all of the same size, shape, and color—the extent of imaginative possibilities would likely be limited.
In the same way, a diversity of experiences can give your imagination more to build from.
Creative thinking skills … build on others
One of the misunderstandings around creativity and imagination is that you have to be utterly original to do it.
The truth is all creative people stand on the shoulders of those who came before.
Writers learn to write by reading. Painting students are sent to museums to copy the masters. Great chefs learn the already tested basics of cooking to create some new dish.
Innovation stands on a platform that already exists.
Yes, inspiration is involved, those flashes of insight, the ah…ha moments. You start with something that already exists and takes it to another level.
So relax. Let go of thinking you have to do something original. Take the pressure off.
Celebrate that there is all this help available.
Investigate ‘thought experiments’
Construct a few of your own. One such experiment might be to imagine you are a microscopic entity and place your awareness somewhere in your room.
Perhaps leaping from key to key on your keyboard..inhabit the keyboard with a world of imaginary civilizations.
Enact massive wars on a microscopic scale, within your mind…again, let your mind run free.
Develop a taste for novelty
Explore artwork and the result of other people’s imagination. Discover how other people conceived their ideas. Look at the abstract and surreal artwork on Deviant Art.
Change your thought patterns
By this, I mean consciously make an effort to look at the world differently and in a more creative way, as if you were a child.
On a more intellectual level, attempt to vocalize these creative insights.
The more you make an effort to see novel ways of looking at the things, the more these efforts will turn into habits, and the easier it will become.
People are rarely born creatively acute, or funny, or negative, or optimistic; it is learned behavior.
The underlying behavior of creative people is their thought patterns are creative.
Creative thinking skills examples.
Question everything
Want to think what nobody has ever thought? Start by questioning all assumptions.
There comes a moment in time where everyone agrees with everybody about pretty much everything.
For any sized organization that is focused on creating a culture of relentless innovation, hardened dogma is an innovation obstacle they must overcome.
And that starts best with questioning everything, assumptions included.
Pay attention to patterns
Treat patterns as part of the problem. Recognizing a new pattern is very useful, but be careful not to become part of it.
Observe with all senses
Truly creative people have developed their ability to observe and to use all of their senses, which can get dull over time.
Take time to “sharpen the blade” and take everything in. Add thoughts as you go.
Meet new people
Brian Grazer is an Oscar-winning producer and co-founder of Imagine Entertainment. In his book, A Curious Mind, he writes about a personal discipline he has had since his earliest days in Hollywood.
In what he calls “Curiosity Conversations” Brian would schedule meetings with top influencers in the industry.
He found such benefit from these encounters that he branched out to meet with the most successful people in all areas of life.
He has met with Jonas Salk, Barack Obama, 50 Cent, Muhammad Ali, Gloria Allred, F. Lee Bailey, Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, Henry Kissinger, John McCain, Wolfgang Puck, Ronald Reagan, Condoleeza Rice, Tony Robbins, our Betty above Edwards, and countless others.
“It’s refreshing to be reminded, over and over, how different the world looks to other people.” — Brian Grazer
Each meeting exposed him to new angles on familiar concepts and produced an understanding of altogether unfamiliar ideas.
By gaining different perspectives from different people he has been able to imagine and produce stories in a way, he might not otherwise—stories such as A Beautiful Mind, Splash, The Da Vinci Code, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and many others.
In the same way, by opening ourselves to new people, we open our minds to new understandings of the universe.
As we develop relationships with different people, we will find the quality of our imagination increased.
Continuous learning
Both creativity and innovation are based on knowledge.
Therefore, you need to continually expand your knowledge base.
Read things you don’t normally read as often as you can.
Defer judgment
Your perceptions may limit your reasoning. Be careful about how you perceive things.
In other words, defer judgment. Let it all hang out.
Experience as much as you can. Exposure puts more ideas into your subconscious.
Actively seek out new and very different experiences to broaden your idea thinking experience portfolio.
Look for what is not easily seen
Look where others aren’t looking to see what others aren’t seeing.
Creative thinking techniques.
Be observant
Betty Edwards is a world famous author and art teacher known for helping people see what is in front of them as opposed to their perceptions of what they see.
For instance, the average person asked to draw an apple will produce an image symbolic of an apple. Such a drawing often has a high degree of abstraction to catch the essence of apples everywhere.
It’s called drawing what you know, not what you see.
Someone trained to see models properly, however, will draw an apple in front of them with great realism. The exact contour, the angle of the stem, blemishes, even tonal differences are repeated in exact detail.
Her students often produce the symbolic version on the first day of her course and end with extraordinary examples of the realistic.
To produce such results, Dr. Edwards teaches a technique of viewing models upside down to trick the definition-prone left hemisphere of the brain to bow-out.
In its absence, the spatially-oriented right brain can begin to dominate perception. Invariably, observation improves dramatically and immediately because of the part of the brain that judges and names what it sees take a backseat.
Drawing is one of the only ways I know of that this degree of improvement in observation can be developed.
When I was taught this method in my college graphical drawing class, I immediately began to notice things for what they were.
I could see shape and form as something very individual to each person or object I drew. Texture and tone became real to me. I even began to experience light.
A deliberate way to strengthen our experiences is to become more observant by recording them through drawing.
Be able to overlook rules
Rules, to the creative person, are indeed made to be broken.
They are created for us by other people, generally to control a process; the creative person needs the freedom to work.
Ask“what if…”
Seeing new possibilities is a little risky because it means that something will change and some action will have to be taken.
Curiosity is probably the single most important trait of creative people.
Push the boundaries of mistakes
A photographer doesn’t just take one shot, and a composer doesn’t just write down a fully realized symphony.
Creation is a long process, involving lots of boo-boos along the way. A lot goes in the trash.
Collaborate
The hermit artist, alone in his garret, is a romantic notion but not always an accurate one.
Comedians, musicians, painters, chefs all get a little better by sharing with others in their fields.
The bottom line
Since as much as 90% of what we learned in a life-time always come to us via visual cues, we should constantly enhance our perceptual sensitivity to the environment, according to information scientists.
So, more than 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci was right when he said, use all our senses, especially our sense of sight.
Our power of observation and imagination depends on it.
Productive thoughts often have their origins in the combinatorial play and dynamics of sensory inputs from environmental cues.
In my view, our thinking cap is often governed by how far we can stretch our power of vision and imagination.
Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy continually improving your continuous learning?
Do you have a lesson about making your learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
More reading on creativity from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
