Creative Thinking

What is Creativity?

An Ability. A simple definition is that creativity is the ability to imagine or invent something new. As we will see below, creativity is not the ability to create out of nothing (only God can do that), but the ability to generate new ideas by combining, changing, or reapplying existing ideas. Some creative ideas are astonishing and brilliant, while others are just simple, good, practical ideas that no one seems to have thought of yet.Believe it or not, everyone has substantial creative ability. Just look at how creative children are. In adults, creativity has too often been suppressed through education, but it is still there and can be reawakened. Often all that's needed to be creative is to make a commitment to creativity and to take the time for it.
An Attitude. Creativity is also an attitude: the ability to accept change and newness, a willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, a flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good, while looking for ways to improve it. We are socialized into accepting only a small number of permitted or normal things, like chocolate-covered strawberries, for example. The creative person realizes that there are other possibilities, like peanut butter and banana sandwiches, or chocolate-covered prunes.
A Process. Creative people work hard and continually to improve ideas and solutions, by making gradual alterations and refinements to their works. Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity, very, very few works of creative excellence are produced with a single stroke of brilliance or in a frenzy of rapid activity. Much closer to the real truth are the stories of companies who had to take the invention away from the inventor in order to market it because the inventor would have kept on tweaking it and fiddling with it, always trying to make it a little better.
The creative person knows that there is always room for improvement.

What is creative thinking?

Creative thinking is the process which we use when we come up with a new idea. It is the merging of ideas which have not been merged before. Brainstorming is one form of creative thinking: it works by merging someone else's ideas with your own to create a new one. You are using the ideas of others as a stimulus for your own.

This creative thinking process can be accidental or deliberate.

Without using special techniques creative thinking does still occur, but usually in the accidental way; like a chance happening making you think about something in a different way and you then discovering a beneficial change. Other changes happen slowly through pure use of intelligence and logical progression. Using this accidental or logical progression process, it often takes a long time for products to develop and improve. In an accelerating and competitive world this is obviously disadvantageous.

Using special techniques, deliberate creative thinking can be used to develop new ideas. These techniques force the mergance of a wide range of ideas to spark off new thoughts and processes. Brainstorming is one of these special techniques, but traditionally it starts with unoriginal ideas.

Developments of products occur much more rapidly using these deliberate techniques than by accident. Many people known for being creative use these techniques, but are not aware they are doing so because they have not been formally trained in them. If you use these deliberate techniques during advanced brainstorming sessions then you too will be more creative.

With practice, ongoing creative thinking (the continuous investigation, questioning and analysis that develops through education, training and self-awareness) occurs all the time. Ongoing creativity maximizes both accidental and deliberate creative thinking. Ongoing creativity takes time and deliberate practice to become skillful at, but it's surprising how quickly it becomes an attitude, not a technique.

The first step to take is to learn the creative thinking techniques so that you can deliberately use them to come up with new ideas. You will then be at an immediate advantage over those who don't know how to use them. You should then practise the techniques to increase your skill at ongoing creative thinking. (After a while you may even find it unnecessary to use specific techniques because you may be having too many ideas anyway.)

Question 1:
 How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator? 
Answer: Open the refrigerator, put the giraffe in, and close the door.

This question tests whether or not you're doing simple things in an overly complicated way. 


Question 2:
 How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator? 
 Answer: Open the refrigerator, remove the giraffe, put the elephant in and close the door. You couldn't possibly fit both the giraffe and the elephant in the refrigerator. This question tested your foresight. 


Question 3:
 The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend except one. Which animal does not attend? 
Answer: The elephant. Remember, the elephant is in the refrigerator! This question tested your ability for comprehensive or 'prerequisite-causation' thinking. 


Question 4:
 There is a river filled with hungry crocodiles. You do not have a boat. How do you cross it? 
Answer: Simply swim through it. Remember, all the crocodiles are attending the animal meeting! This question tested your reasoning ability.