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When Will People Stop Using the Word Brainstorming Incorrectly

2012-02-15T08:36:00.000-08:00

When Will People Stop Using the Word Brainstorming Incorrectly

You misuse the term Brainstorming.

Generalization of the term Brainstorming has created more problems over the past 60 years.

Brainstorming is the name Alex Osborn gave to a process for generation ideas that was based upon 4 guidelines he had discovered in his work with his people at BBD&O for producing ideas.

who caused the name to become a general term/word representing any time or action a human being or human beings try to think of ideas is the mystery.

You are using brainstorming to label thinking, thinking happens in thousands of ways, conscious, unconscious, preconscious, deliberate, spontaneous, systematic, haphazard.

your analogy to a maze does disservice to the work of Alex Osborn, Sid Parnes, Creative Education Foundation, and the thousands of Creative Problem Solving Institute leaders over the past 60 years.

Please use the word THINKING when that is what you are really referring to.

Reaction to NEGATIVE Brainstorming articles

2012-02-14T23:01:00.003-08:00

Reaction to NEGATIVE Brainstorming articles

Yes there have been some studies that APPEAR to indicate that BRAINSTORMING does not work or that groups DO NOT create as many total ideas or as many creative ideas as LONE INDIVIDUALS.

If you look at those studies: their designs, their populations, the lack of experience or training the subjects or the SUPPOSED Facilitators of the GROUP sessions you will find that the studies were flawed from the 1950s onward.

What people have done since the first of these studies were published in the 1950s to justify their position, such as Jonah Leher and Susan Cain most recently and Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman did in their two articles in Newsweek, July 11th 2010, is to quote these studies out of context to justify their positions.

The major challenges I have seen with these types of articles since I first got involved in Creativity in 1976 and then became part of the annual CPSI conference and the CEF - Creative Education Foundation (both founded by Alex Osborn and Dr. Sidney J. Parnes) are:

1) the design of their studies
2) the use of randomly assigned subjects
3) the lack of any familiarity or training in the use of Alex Osborn's BRAINSTORMING tool/process
4) the lack of any true familiarity, experience or degree/level of training in the facilitators.

Basically they are mis-using the overly clicked/hackneyed use of the word "brainstorming" and linking it to the actual tool/process/technique called "BRAINSTORMING"

Literaly hundreds of studies have been performed that proved to the greatest extent that

well trained subjects
well trained facilitators

will out produce most to all single individuals

open-minded unbiased subjects
who are facilitated by trained BRAINSTORMING/Idea Generation individuals

will out produce most to all single individuals

I have led such sessions for clients, community groups, civic organization, either pre-planned or spontaneously am have demonstrated that groups of people who are...

a. open minded
b. willing to participate
c. have some degree of commitment
d. have some ownership of the problem

will out produce most to all single or lone people in generating total number of ideas and the number of creative ideas in the same period of time.

Please go to the website page I set up in reaction to the most reaction ANTI-BRAINSTORMING articles.

http://www.cre8ng.com/about-me/creative-thinking-tools/brainstorming-or-brainstorming

Yes random groups will not general perform well in Western societies that unexpectedly asked to generate ideas as well as dedicated, committed, highly creative lone individuals.

That has little to nothing to do with the process called: BRAINSTORMING.

That has more to do with the lack of desire, willingness or skill or experience of most human beings in Western societies to work in groups and the miserable lack of skills and knowledge of most supervisors, team leaders (oxymoron) and managers to know how to effectively, efficiently, productively, creatively GUIDE. RUN, LEAD meetings, let along IDEA GENERATING, SOLUTION FINDING Meetings.

This has been a pain in my $%^&# ever since 1976 and continues to be in ALL of my colleagues, whether consultants, authors, researchers, professors, or speakers who have true experience and training in running effective, efficient, productive CREATIVE THINKING meetings.

As you can easily see I get rather terse about this and have now for 36 years.

Today's Solutions Generate Tomorrow Problems

2012-02-05T10:59:00.000-08:00

Today's Solutions Generate Tomorrow Problems

spackle
Duct Tape
paint
trim or moulding
clothing
masks
and many other human devices cover up the mistakes they have not fixed, corrected or possibly ever eliminated.

all can cover up problems that are not solved.

The longer I live the more I accept the principle I have learned through studying and working in creativity for many years...

Today's solutions usually create tomorrow's problems.
Why?
Because typically they were not really solutions. They just appreared to be.

Life is not a binary math problem like 1 + 1 = 2

Most of the time we do not consider all variables, factors, perspectives and out supposed solutions only appear to be from specific perspectives or points of view.

Are We Brainstorming or are brainstorming

2012-02-02T07:41:00.001-08:00

Are We Brainstorming or are brainstorming

The problem of the misuse of the word brainstorming as a general term for any time people gather and are asked to generate ideas together in the same room instead of its original use BRAINSTORMING a creative thinking technique developed for use with individuals, pairs and groups from small teams to larger groups named by Alex Osborn has been present since he first wrote publically about it.

Today's observations are not necessarily any different than the observations in the 1950s.

In the 1980s as the result of W. Edwards Deming and others of the Quality Movement that sparked QUALITY CIRCLES as an approach and method for American workers to complete more effectively with Japanese workers and Japanese Management techniques tried to teach "stray cats" how to "herd" and hopefully truly work together as "teams" not groups.

PEOPLE DO NOT READ ARTICLES THAT INCLUDE RESEARCH

2012-01-31T09:11:00.000-08:00

PEOPLE DO NOT READ ARTICLES THAT INCLUDE RESEARCH
If they do it is only a handful that supposedly support their viewpoints or beliefs.

They seldom ever read a wide variety of studies that claim to prove or those that challenge those same proofs.

I was convinced to read more than the surface crap articles by my Creativity MEISTER LIEBER, Dr. E. Paul Torrance.

He did studies. Not one. Many.

Then he often did studies of other studies. Not a few. Many. Usually 50 to 100 or more.

in response to the following message I read on Facebook a moment ago...

Kai Wang I am not annoyed because there are attacks on brainstorming. I am annoyed because such attacks are ungrounded and show up every other month on mainstream media. It looks like these people care little about academic research and its logic and just use academic papers for whatever claim they make, regardless of whether there is a real connection. Nothing pisses me off more than holes in logic.

Kai....I wasn't aware that it was monthly. Including newsletters, blogs, podcasts, webinars, newspaper, magazine articles in varied popular magazines you are probably correct>

Since attending CPSI the very first time in 1978 and attending a 3 hour session that Sid Parnes led with 20 or Springboard Leader Interns co-faciitating at individual tables learning about Brainstorming, Alex Osborn Brainstorming that is

I have come across articles nearly evey year.

When I did Google searches for

Brainstorming Does Not Work
and
Brainstorming Does Work

i received/found millions of hits....

Urgh!

The ones that have always annoyed me are the ones written by people with no real knowledge of any of the research except by seeing some of it referenced in a poorly written article such as

Susan Cain's
Jonah Leher's
Ashely Merryman & Po Bronson's

for example....

or they are written by people who have no training as facilitiators of group ideation sessions or even the most basic training in Brainstorming or any of the creative thinking techniues found in thousands of book and articles, blogs, websites now around the world.

General public does not READ
the few that READ read only such articles...
or books by pop hot selling authors like Dan Pink who write is easy to read styles and sprinkle in supposed examples of research to PROVE their points.

An Email to a Creativity Consultant Friend

2012-01-31T07:04:00.001-08:00

An Email to a Creativity Consultant Friend

Dear Creativity Consultant Colleague & Friend

Out of curiosity I just did a couple Google Searches

Brainstorming Does Not Work

93,400,000

Brainstorming Does Work

5,820,000

"Brainstorming Does Work" to limit the search to the specific combination of those 3 works

1,300

and still the first few were negatives or attacks on Brainstorming.

Hmmmm!? like defnding religion, politics, peace, love....

according to a open Google search for

Creative Thinking Consultants

2,450,000

(I am listed as number 2 behind de Bono...oh the rush to my mostly unemployed ego)

Creative Thinking Websites

19,700,000

(sniff, sniff mine didn't show up on the first screen...ha ha)

Creative Thinking Blogs

113,000,000

my cre8ng website shows up on the third screen

my blog createwithalan which I have just restarted posting one maybe somewhere there

searching more specifically for

creative thinking blogs createwithalan

and I am almost every hit on the first screen with Michael Michalko on the bottom hee hee

As I said in my after dinner keynote speech at 2010 ACA (you and most of my closest colleagues missed because you had already left the conference)

"After 60 Years Has Anything Improved or Changed"

J.P. Guilford challenged the membership of the APA to study creativity in 1950...

I was challenging a few members of ACA and guests

I guess I will go back to other things on this beautiful sunny Tuesday morning in January in Athens, Georgia.

Ciao Y'all

An OVERVIEW of my Life and Work

2012-01-31T06:14:00.001-08:00

An OVERVIEW of my Life and Work

backstory...history of my using visuals in my life.

I was born with a severe cleft palette and hare lip in 1944.

I was not able to speak to be understood like normal children until closer to the age of six so my vague memory tells me. I had surgeries, speech theraphy, speech training from around the age two both at Wayne State University, my elementary school and to my sophmore year in college.

No doubt my mother worked with me trying to help me be NORMAL like all other regular children.

How I communicated originally was through drawing and actions.

I taught myself to draw by tracing cartoons. Then copying them. Then creating my own.

I don't remember doodling in school but I probably did.

I do remember drawing, drawing, drawing and drawing more almost every day at home.

It was my developing drawing skills that helped me shine in school.

My art teacher was a wonderful person, Mrs Johnson, we had those in the US in the 50s and 60s. Today there are rare in our elementary schools if they exist at all in schools.

I and a few other classmates who showed drawing abilities were encouraged by her and let by her to work on whatever we wanted to not the lessons she prepared for the rest of our class. If you walked into John Trix Elementary School and saw large drawings or posters in the hallways, usually I was the one who drew them.

Out of frustration in my Biology class I drew cartoons of the teacher and experiments. I learned that my drawings and my drawing of them actually proved to be the way I actually learned what to do.

Visualizing taught me how to learn and helped me learn.

From High School I went to Architectural School and earned a BS in Arch.

After my BS I enrolled in a BA degree in advertising
jumped from that into an MA degree with duo majors: interior architecture and visual communication

1960 I began earning money with my cartooning, drawing and developing graphics designe skills.

1966 started my first job in Architecture

67 or 68 began doing freelance, moonlight graphic and display design work

70 left my architectural job with a famous architect: Gunnar Birkerts to find a job in advertising (many reasons or excuses) after 9 weeks of being unemployed a neighbor of my first wife's parents told me about a possible job at a very large architectural design firm, SH&G - Smith Hynchman & Grylls in Detroit where I was born and had spent all my life up and until then. I got a job as a graphics & signage designer in SH&G's graphics and signage department and worked there until the Summer of 1971 when the firm ended up laying off over 250 employees from their many different departments out of their 650+ employees. I soon found a job with an architectural firm and continued doing architectural and graphic & signage design for their clients.

72 moved to Florida....did architectural design work with 3 different architectural firms simultaneously over the first year until I quit the actual full-time job and moved to one of the other 2 firms that I was doing part-time or freelance/moonlight work for. Within less than a month I convinced the two partners/owners of Schwab & Twitty to let me set up a divsion of S&T called S&T Graphics & Signage and did until due to the miserable economy in 1976 I was laid off as the last employee to be laid off before they stopped.

Spring of 1976 I started my own architectural and graphics & signage firm (me and my drafting equipment and art supplies).

Fall of 1978 I returned to S&T to continue as a project architect and to do what signage & graphics work their clients needed as a consultling contract employee as a temporary job until my application for a doctoral program in creativity was excepted.

In September of 1979 my family and I left Palm Beach County, Florida and moved to Athens, Georgia for me to begin my doctorate in the teaching of creative thinking with Dr. E. Paul Torrance. I finished the degree in 1983 and simultaneously was a lecturer (non-tenure track contract professor) in the Univ of GA Art Department teaching a mix of interior and architectural design courses and teaching as an adjunct in the UGA School of Environmental Design.

In 1984 I began working as a full-time speaker and consultant with my primary focus on helping individuals, teams, departments, entire organizations / companies become more creative.

Pshew....that's a lot to say in one email.

How to Increase Creative Thinking in Children/Employees?

2012-01-31T05:41:00.000-08:00

How to Increase Creative Thinking in Children/Employees?

begin with Torrance's Future Problem Solving Program to teach many of the basics of creative thinking, creative problem solving.

Start by contacting the Future Problem Solving Program International website

http://www.fpspi.org/
encourage administrators to encourage principals to encourage teachers to encourage both parents and students to increase and use their growing creativeness and creative thinking skills

at work encourage CEOs, high ranking officers to encourage middle managers to encourage managers to encourage supervisors to encouarge team leaders to encourage ALL employees to increase and use their growing creativeness and creative thinking skills.
start with basics like

What If?
What else?
In What Ways Might We/I?

start with teaching and allowing students to be

Flexible
Fluent
Elaborative
Original

part of each lesson at least one day a week

Stomp BRAINSTOMPING on Ideas and encourage IDEA GENERATION from the silly to the serious from a few to hundreds.

Brainstorming is a creative process in a Perfect World

2012-01-31T05:20:00.001-08:00

In a perfect world people would be more creative and eliminate problems

In a perfert world the term BRAINSTORMING would not be used to represent poor meetings, run by unskilled, unfocused, uncommitted people.

IAPW BRAINSTORMING would not be used as the GENERAL TERM for any creative thinking tool/technique/process that has ever been thought of.

Instead BRAINSTORMING would mean and represent Alex Osborn's initial creative thinking process he first created to help teams of people generated more ideas to choose from that would lead to more creative solutions.

Since his first articles and books that Alex Osborn wrote about what he labeled BRAINSTORMING it has been further and further developed by hundreds to thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands of people over the past 60 years.

Yet still people misuse the term, the word.

Oh well.

We don't live in a PERFECT WORLD do we?!

Stop Chasing the BREAKTHRU IDEA Fantasy

2012-01-30T02:00:00.000-08:00

Stop Chasing the BREAKTHRU IDEA Fantasy

My work may have started with BREAKTHROUGH CREATIVITY because that was popular. That was what so many of the authors and speakers focused upon.

Over the past 33 years I have moved towards simple creative thinking, idea generation, problem solving for and/or by individuals, couples, teams, departments or entire organizations..mostly in the workplace.

One of my pet peeves has been the arguments about BIG C and tiny little insignificant c.

My focus has grown into helping people

a. accept that they were born with abilities to think creatively

b. accept that their cultures, schools, workplaces and even sometimes their families have stopped, diminished, KILLED their creativity into order to produce conforming, sameness, commoness, safeness

c. accept that they can respark, regenerate and grow their abilities to think creatively about anything in their lives

d. learn how to continually further expand, enrich and develop creative thinking skills, abilities and traits

another pet peeve is the belittling of group ideation or better yet team ideation and the labelling of it 'brainstorming'.

Which is like calling using computers IBM-ing, or photostatic copying/photography, Xeroxing.

brainstorming has become a generic, distasteful term used to label poorly run meetings

instead of what Alex Osborn, Sid Parnes, Charlie Clark, Bob Eberle, and hundreds to thousands of CPSI presenters and others who learned from their books or presentations or simply created their own versions or types of ideation with and among combinations of people.

Hero worshipping is another....

our profession, field, occupation is filled with too many people who use mythical stories

Edison invented the light bulb
Ford invented the automobile
Wozniak invented the personal computer
Archimedes invented creative thinking with his EUREKA streaking through the streets of Athens

Each of these are examples of fantansies of one GREAT GIANT BREAKTHOUGH IDEA that instantly solves a problem.

To me focusing on BREAKTHROUGH IDEAS instead of thinking more creatively....generating many options, not judging ideas initially, holding back people who are freewheel thinkers because "we"/Society thinks the ideas are dumb, stupid, weird, impossible, strange......

Of the many things I have learned through creativity is one that I have given Alex Osborn credit for now since 1978....

"It is easier to tame a wild, weird idea down to make it work, then to take an average or dull idea and make it exciting."

Steve Jobs and hundreds of Apple employees, venders or consultants they hired took many WILD WEIRD STRANGE ODD ideas and tamed them down into great products.

Seldom were any of their products since the two Steves worked in Jobs parents' garage or basement ever the result of

SINGLE BREAKTHROUGH IDEAS.

brainstorming does not equal BRAINSTORMING

2012-01-27T14:58:00.000-08:00

brainstorming does not equal BRAINSTORMING

Often writers talk about brainstorming, a bunch of untrained, unskilled, inexperienced in group dynamics and ideation generation sitting around a table or in a room with an equally untrained, minimally experienced person who thinks they are FACILITATING AN IDEATION SESSION.

BRAINSTORMING as written about, taught, trained, guided for 60+ years by first Alex Osborn, then Sid Parnes and Alex and since then hundreds to perhaps a 1000 or 2000 CPSI leaders during the 58 annula CPSI conferences, 25+ Winterfests, a few Houston Lites and other individual programs and regional Springboard programs is a CREATIVE THINKING TOOL/TECHNIQUE with initially Alex' 4 Basic Guidelines

1. Quantity breeds quality....the more ideas the better the probably of creative ideas being generated or discovered

2. No Judgement....60 years of experiences by thousands to 10s of thousands of trained teachers, trainers, consultants, college professors have demonstrated that with groups of stranger to groups of people who work together to even trained committed teams trying to be CRITICAL/NEGATIVE/JUDGEMENTAL at the same time that you are trying to GENERATE IDEAS/CREATIVE IDEAS kills the mood, spirit, energy and results of the ideation session.

3. Freewheeling....any idea is okay....this is one of the most difficult to keep people following in groups who THINK THEY KNOW EACH OTHER, because of differences in beliefs, backgrounds, morals, religions, political leanings, etc. It is also difficult with groups comprised of strangers.

4. Hitchhike...combine ideas to generate more and more ideas

Added to this are many other facilitation techniques and approaches that have been learned through the experiences of thousands and thousands of groups, both trained and untrained.

Humor
warming groups up
having ground rules or guidelines
having funny ways to teased people to stop judging
techniques for keeping the flow of ideas going and stopping people from over discussing or defending ideas during the IDEATION STAGE.

there is so much more that has been learned

but these learnings, techniques, processes, tools are not included in the infamous NEGATIVE STUDIES that authors in the 50s and still today keep quoting without ever looking at the MANY MORE POSITIVE STUDIES.

brainstorming seldom equals Brainstorming, what Alex Osborn created and thousands of people use and teach after 60+ years.

Are you sitting around throwing out ideas calling what you are doing as brainstorming?

2012-01-26T20:49:00.000-08:00

Are you sitting around throwing out ideas calling what you are doing as brainstorming?

BRAINSTORMING - Alex Osborn's creative thinking technique facilitated by trained facilitators and people in teams or warmed up to generate ideas.

brainstorming - the overly hackneyed cliche that represents a bunch of people sitting around throwing out random ideas.

BIG B Brainstorming ("Brainstorming" the ideation technique as created by Alex Osborn and his people originally at BBD&O in the 1930s or 40s) is too often misunderstood to mean what most people called "brainstorming" (an overly generic, hackneyed cliche) that means a bunch of people sitting around throwing out ideas with no conscious effort to use the 4 basic guidelines that Alex Osborn wrote about and the Creative Education Foundation through its nearly 60 years of Creative Problem Solving Institutes.

Successful Ideation sessions using Alex Osborn's "Brainstorming" technique has generated creative ideas around the globe for over 60 years.

Reported studies that claim that BRAINSTORMING does not generate more ideas than individuals generating ideas alone or many creative ideas are not talking about ideation sessions by trained, skill membes of teams. They are talking about groups of people who have no cohesive, minimum team skills and lists of other variables written about my many researchers and other writers over the past 60 years.

2012-01-23T12:19:00.000-08:00

Please no more traced turkeys Mrs Jones?

when we do Google or Yahoo searches, whether general or academic we find millions to billions of HITS for

creativity, creative thinking, creative problem solving, innovation

here is one example of a Google search for HITS on Creative Thinking

My only question is after 62 years since Dr. J. P. Guilford challenged the APA members when he was president in 1950 or Alex Osborn published his variety of books about Applied Imagination and Creative Problem Solving.....are our schools or workplaces really more creative in normal situations.

Weekend hobbies perhaps
but seldom in our classrooms and workplaces

"today kids I want you to take out brown paper and trace an outline of your hands, either one. Then we are all going to take these home as our "creative" pictures of a turkey for Thanksgiving,"

millions of refridgerators end up displaying this same crap every year.

Managers are Often Afraid to Be Creative

2012-01-23T11:54:00.000-08:00

this message was a response to a long time professional friend who was a client several years ago

Managers are Often Afraid to Be Creative

Johnny said...

In marketing meetings I talk about a creativity paradox that happens in business. When times are tough (the VERY time a business needs as much innovation as possible), we tend to hear "we can't risk it... we don't have the funds... let's just keep our heads low until things get better."

When times are good (when businesses have resources to experiment), we tend to hear "let's not rock the boat... if it ain't broke, don't fix it... this is working, why change it"

My response was...

Johnny

Same thing applies to highering consultants or trainers.

One of my independent studies I created and did for my PhD was to study the rise and fall of interest in creativity.

My main approach, was ancient by today's standard. I used the bound volumes of the READERS' GUIDE TO PERIODICA LITERATURE from 1900 to 1980 scanning each volume one by one for articles that were about creativity, creative thinking, creative problem solving, usually because they had those key words in titles (much as Google often does in their work).

The result when charted by numbers of articles and years

was a graph that undulated up and down but was increasing over time with some dramatic drops.

Out of curiosity I made an overlay of it and of the GNP over the same year period that a fellow student in economics shared with me.

Mostly they were opposites much like sine and cosine graphs.

When the economy was flying (1920s, 1950s (in some states) the interest in creativity was high but mostly in arts, crafts, hobbies not in the workplace or business and industry

During World War I & II the interest in some journals in creativity was high when EVERYTHING ELSE WAS GOING TO HELL.

When the economy was failing interest in creativity rose some but not until the bottom was hit.

Some of my teaching points over the past 30+ years consist of...

1) everyone is born with the capacity to be creative
2) cultures, governments, professions, larg groups kill creativity
3) people will be creative when they HAVE NO OTHER #$%^&* choice to survive.
4) the mavericks if given power or those who take power whether they have it or not will be creative.....Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs to name a few of the extreme winners.

THE 4TH GRADE SLUMP and LOSS of Creativity Due to Conformity

2012-01-23T11:30:00.001-08:00

Torrance labeled what seems to happen in cultures around the globe: "THE 4TH GRADE SLUMP"

He found by studying his original 400 Torrance Kids for decades....the 50th Year Book is being publishe in 2012.

by the time children who scored very high (almost everyone) on his Tests of Creative Thinking when retesting in the 4th grade showed dramatic drops in their scores. He found this around the globe: western, eastern cultures mostly the same result.

Then when they became 10th graders (teenagers) their scores generally dropped even more.

They hadn't disappeared just but away, hidden because they usually got into trouble being CREATIVE. My own daughter is a prime example. She finally realized that being different as a thinker only got her in trouble with most of her teachers and it kept her from becoming friends with girls and boys she wanted to be friends with.

Culturizing = Conformity

The highly creatives in any culture that choose to resist the numbing down or equalizing never conform. Unfortunately not all of them survive Some fail in many ways. Some become criminals, outcasts, misfits, weirdos, or MENZA MEMBERS and accomplish mostly nothing in the minds of their cultures, professions, occupations.

company climate permitted Silver to continue with his efforts

2012-01-21T13:56:00.000-08:00

company climate permitted Silver to continue with his efforts

A jigsaw type article based upon memories of bits and pieces in my memory from 1985 until today.

One of the reasons I liked Michael Michalko's book: CREATIVE THINKERING when I first read it to write the testimonial he asked to write for it was that he used mostly stories that do not appear in many other authors' creativity books.

This afternoon I read hhis article published today...that focuses on a couple of the stories...

Is Your Idea Crazy Enough? Book Giveaway!

Healthy Living Editors

His version of the Post-It Notes story from THINKERING varies from the one I have been telling, rewriting and retelling based upon more reading and interviews with 3M employees including Art Fry and other R&D people since 1985.

He starts the Post-It Note history with Spencer Silver's discovery of "the glue that didn't stick".

Based upon my reading and personal interviews with Art Fry I start the story on a Sunday at his church when he one more time was frustrated by his pieces of paper falling out of his hymnal.

Then I back up and tell a little backstory about Silver's playing with a Glue that Didn't Stick. It gets laughs.

Each storyteller has their way of telling stories.

Then I tell about Art and Spence talking about how they might help each other produce a potential product ("Little Yellow Sticky Things" the original working name). They had both worked at 3M for many years by then.

Michael's story about the "built in his basement" machine story is new to me. Art never shared that one with me. It is similar to Henry Ford's story about tearing down a wall of his neighbor's outbuilding where he had been tinkering with his first working Model T and thus creating the "first garage" aka Fortune or Forbes story years ago about the significance of THE GARAGE in the US business.

I eventually created my version of the Post-It Notes story that I titled "4 Dumb Ideas Create an Industry and Change Mass-Marketers into Micro-Mass Marketers."

My second story inside the overall story is about Spence and his glue.

One other story of the 4 I have been using now since interviewing Art the first time in St. Paul after his dinner presentation at the ACA meeting in 2002 involves the problems Art and Spence had with getting the "glue that wouldn'ts stick" to stay on the back of the "little yellow things" and not partially come off on other surfaces.

3 story and another partial solution....the white ink (primer) that is on the back of the notes where the glue is placed.

4th partial solution (modified from bits and pieces Art shared) involves the sending of sample packages of the notes to the administrative assistants of the Fortune 500 CEOs and providing a free call back number.

The 4th story I tease audiences with by asking "Why would that idea be considered dumb?"

the phone number was the personal home phone number of the 3M VP of marketing who had been turning done their various arguments or attempts of convincing the BRASS that Post-It notes was a potential viable product for a mass-marketing/mass-manufacturing corporation such as 3M that manufactured and sold their products in the millions of units annually (sandpaper, masking tape, cello tape and others.)

Part of my story that I began using in 1985 when Post Notes was already celebrating 12 or 13 years since it first was released by 3M is that the Post Notes success story was one of the factors that caused the current CEO to begin to become a MICRO-MASS-MANUFACTURER/MARKETER and lead them to begin getting rid of 25% of their product lines each year and to begin producing products from conception to production in months instead of the years it took Spence, Art and the others to go from Art's Sunday church service to Post-It Notes on the shelves.

When I talked with Art the first time in St. Paul in 2002 after his presentation he shared a variety of anecdotal stories about his experiences with Post It Notes. Some involved the various managers who tried to stop him.

company climate permitted Silver to continue with his efforts

Often in many books authors talk about the famous "15% Rule" at 3M that McNight started in the 40s when he was CEO.

I have interviewed 30 or 40 3M employees and past employees at and since the 2002 ACA Conference and then at GRIT meetings (2006) (an unofficial group formed by 3M R&D employees, retires or ex-employees) and then at ACA meetings in Philly and Austin since 2002.

None of them outside of R&D were allowed to do what so often is quoted or believed their managers would allow them to.

One of a few stories Art shared about him and his "various" changing middle-managers during the Post-It Notes development stage is the following...

Manager after manager had tried various ways to stop him.

Art went on vacation one time, unlike him, and when he returned he found the work area where had his various materials from the "the little yellow sticky things" project was completely BARE. Nothing was left but the furniture.

Art, fortunately, knew the janitor and found that they had been told to throw it all away. But because they had known Art much longer than that manager he/they stored it away for Art, just in case.

Art went back to working on it.

I asked him him about the "15% Rule".

He said that the RULE was practiced and supported for years but various CEOs and managers tried to stop it during their times in office or power.

But he also said that ALL of the FELLOWS, such as he and Spence and the other 6 R&D Fellows that presented at the ACA dinner (2002) got away with it because they were FELLOWS.

Various GRIT members told me at both lunches I attended that in the mid 00s, the CEO of 3M was focused on control, control, control and profits. From their perspectives they felt he was forcing 6 Sigma onto the R&D department and other areas and kiling or attempting to kill the INNOVATION SPIRIT at 3M. The GRIT members to a man or woman all said they had no respect for him. Some had quit not long after he became CEO or since then.

Then in 2006 or 7 I received an email from a 3Mer that I had met during one of the GRIT lunches that said, "there is dancing in the streets in St. Paul today. That #$%^ has left to go #$%^& Boeing.

Spence and Art and others at 3M over the years did and accomplish what they did because they were proven, long-standing FELLOWS not because of the 70 year old 15% Rule Myth.

I have come across people at several corporations that have told me similar stories or I have read similar stories of the MAVERICKS, REBELS, OUT OF THE BOX, RULE BREAKERS who survived somehow and ended up creating great famous products going around, over, under or simply didn't pay attention to what the rules said or they were told.

Unfortuantely, like the greater number, many that Wlater Isaccson has written about in his current book STEVE JOBS, ended up getting FIRED from APPLE during both of Steve Jobs' reigns and in between.

One of the books in my collection is an unofficial book about such a rebel inside Kimberly-Clarke. The book is simply titled MAVERICK.

A couple of my contacts, creativity colleagues from CPSI who were or still are employees at KC confirmed some of the stories as possiblly being true.

In 1985 I was hired to do an in-house version of my CREATIVE THINKING STRATEGIES program that Battelle Institute marketed fro me for a group of 30 R&D people at KC. In my pre-program preparation I found that NO official books existed, NO official pamphlets existed, NO official articles existed then or had since the beginning of KC.

Ramblings on a Saturday afternoon in Athens.

We don't know who discovered....

2012-01-19T09:11:00.001-08:00

We don't know who discovered....

CreatingAlan Black

‎"We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a fish."
- John Culkin

"we don't know who discovered air, but we're certain it wasn't a bird"
-Robert Alan Black

"we don't know who discovered dirt, but we're certain it wasn't a worm or a gopher."
-Robert Alan Black

"we don't know who discovered CREATIVITY, but we can possibly be certain it wasn't a MANGER or a TEACHER."
-Robert Alan Black

What do you think?

My thoughts about the article The NEW GroupThink by Susan Cain

2012-01-17T15:06:00.000-08:00

My thoughts about the article The NEW GroupThink by Susan Cain

Recently a student in my new online course in creativity for Drexel University: Tools for Creativity sent me Susan Cain's article titled: The NEW GroupThink.

I glanced quickly at it on Sunday night and found immediate mis-statements and I immediately wrote an attacking COMMENTS response. The when I went to save the article for future reading as a FTP file I saw there were over 40 pages of other people's comments. Then yesterday I received a colleague, Keith Sawyer's (author of Explaining Creativity and Group Creativity) attacking the same article.

So today I wrote several Facebook messages as I was reading Ms Cain's article

The following are all of my individual Facebook messages in one place.

---------

"Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all"

Is this true in your workplace or your classroom?

- - - -

"Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. "

what research?
where was it done?
who did it?

- - - -

another quote from a very poorly written article about creativity...

Consider Apple. In the wake of Steve Jobs’s death, we’ve seen a profusion of myths about the company’s success. Most focus on Mr. Jobs’s supernatural magnetism and tend to ignore the other crucial figure in Apple’s creation: a kindly, introverted engineering wizard, Steve Wozniak, who toiled alone on a beloved invention, the personal computer.

Yes Steve Wozniak, with the help of many fellow members of the HOMEBREW Club and Steve Jobs, created the Apple I, II.....it was the efforts of hundreds to thousands of people pushed by the obcessions of STEVE JOBS in orchestration with those tens to hundreds of people who worked with him and tolerated him that created what is now called APPLE, Inc.

If left alone Steve Wozniak would probably still be working at HP as a happy employee tinkering on technical things.

- - - -

ah yes Steve Wozniak may have said this in his memoirs...sharing advice for "fellow" inventors.

"...And artists work best alone .... I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone... Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

minor detail....

Not all and very few artists truly worked completely alone for very long.

Most had other artists to bounce ideas off of.

Very few disappeared to cabins on little lakes like Walden Pond and appear months later with a finished Guernica painting that no one had ever seen before.

yes some people prefer, like or appear to work alone for periods of time but not totally alone without contact or inspiration or involvement and input from other people whether equals (artists, scientists, engineers, architects, inventors)

whereas some others prefer to work mostly with teams of people they trust, are inspired by, challenged or provoked by.....much like apparently Steve Jobs tended to do with the many different groups (not sure the word team really applies) he worked with from the famous Macinstoch team to the "team" that created the iPod, iPhone, iPad and the iCloud.

- - - -

"If you look at how Mr. Wozniak got the work done — the sheer hard work of creating something from nothing — he did it alone."

still another mis-statement and interpretation..

Wozniak learned from playing other equipment and created his first computer much like many inventors. An invention. Not a product. Not a complete solution.

- - - -

“Without great solitude, no serious work is possible,” Picasso said

Ah yes tell that to anyone who has take some introvert's creative idea or concept and turned it into a finished solution or a manufactured product.

Chester Carlson had an aha. He spent time creating a work model that demonstrated his BREAKTHRU concept that he called "Xerography"

It took many scientists and technicians at the Battelle Institute and many employees at a small technical film company to tuen Carlson's "litte red box" into the first mass produced XEROX 904.

creativity happens in the minds and hands or loners
solutions that are mass produced require many introverts and extroverts to produce.

- - - -

"Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity."
Another example of the lack of knowledge or research the author of THE NEWGROUP THINKING article.

Many more research studies since the 1950s have shown that group brainstorming involving people who are trained in the use of the techiques of Brainstorming as created by Alex Osborn of BBDO in the 1930s and 40s and described in his numorous books in the 40s and 50s that are lead by trained and experienced Facilitators are EXTREMELY EFFECTIVE at stimulating creativity and creative ideas.

The author needs to contact the Creative Education Foundation, founded by Alex Osborn in the 1950s and the Buffalo State University International Creative Studies Department to learn that the very few studies that claim to "prove" that "...brainstorming session are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity." have actually been done or done well.

- - - -

"Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone."

no real problem with this statement that the author of The NEW GROUPTHINK sprinkles throughout her article as her main point.

My problem is her OUT OF CONTEXT referencing to RESEARCH that she nevers references or give complete information about.

Also she has forgotten or left out the extensive research that would discredit many of her claims.

- - - -

"But decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” wrote the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.”

This same poor research appeared in Newsweek written two self-proclaimed science writers: Ashley Merryman and Po Bronson.

My request of the author of THE NEW GROUPTHINK do better research as I requested and many others did request of Merryman and Bronson when their equally invalid, incorrect article was published in Newsweek.

- - - -

here is another quote....this one I have been sharing from

**my years of education

(BS in Architecture,
MA in Interior Architecture
combined with MEd in Guidance and Counseling of Gifted, Talented and Creative Individuals
plus a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology studying
how to teach creative thinking skills to individuals and groups or teams)

Sorry about the self-promotional bragging. I shared it to compare against the author who has written an essay/articles using individual puzzle pieces (quotes out of context from supposed research studies) to create the finished puzzle she calls her essay. Looks interesting but fairly shallow and often in correct in its claims.

Here is the quote that I believe most people will agree with.

"But it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. "

that is a valid generalization but not completely accurate about the reality of workplaces throughout the US or the World.

- - - -

MS PPT & Apple Keynotes are Tools for the Visually Untrained.

2012-01-17T11:41:00.000-08:00

MS PPT & Apple Keynotes are Tools for the
Visually Untrained,
Unskilled or Simply Illiterate

my father show me how to use his Bell & Howell 35 mm slide projector in 1956 when I was only 12 years ago. Soon after that the 3rd grade teacher at my elementary school walked into my 6th grade classroom and asked who among us students knew how to work with a slide projector.

Thus my visual aids career began.

In high school I chose a Visual Aids class as one of my electives and began to learn how to use movie projectors, overhead projectors, reel to reel players and recorders.

Throughout my college, university studies from 1962 to when I completed my doctorate in 1983 I continued to learn how to use various types of visual aid equipment.

Since 1984 I have been ever expanding my visual aid tool knowledge thru a couple types of PCs before buying my first Apple MacIntosh Classic and the following 11 Apples I have had since.

I refused to use MS PowerPoint for a few years because most of the visual presentations I saw by managers and speakers were crap. Poorly designed.

One of my masters degrees was in VISUAL COMMUNICATION.

I started doing graphic design when I was 16.

In most the 9 architectural firms, 1 interior design and my own design companies I have been responsible for visual presentations (2, 3, and 4 dimensional)

3M published a small pamphlet in the 1940s or 50s that told people how to create better visual slides.

few words, controlled numbers of typefaces, colors of type, recommend type sizes
generally no more than 6 words per line
no more than 6 lines per slide

yet still most people who use MS PowerPoint rely on the automatic crappy templates.

most people I have seen using Apple Keynotes use too many bells and whistles which ends up annoying audiences.

I started using MS PPT in 2003 when I bought my first brand new OS Apple laptop after I discovered how to...

Delete or not use any of the trite or badly designed MS PPT templates

Create my own templates.

When the bestselling PRESENTATION ZEN or ZEN of PRESENTATION book first came out I read it and it was a nice overview and reminder of some things I learned through experience, in school and from many other design books from 1962 to when Zen was released.

My main objection with ZEN book and the very, very few design concepts it claims to be THE way to design visuals.

There many ways of designing 2 dimensional visuals to be used as tools not in place of excellent presentations.

TELL ME
SHOW ME
INVOLVE ME
REACH ME

are forms of ways I choose from to create a PRESENTATION or LEARNING EXPERIENCE.

True Innovation Seldom Happens according to founder of TED

2012-01-17T10:01:00.000-08:00

True Innovation Seldom Happens according to founder of TED

At least that is what Richard Saul Wurman, author of The Information Anxiety, published over 10 years ago has recently said. Read after my following response to his claims and see what Mike Brown published on January 17, 2012 about RSW's speech and Mike's own response

Though I was greatly impressed by Richard Saul Wurman's (ex-architec also) The Information Anxiety when I read it several years ago and mildly liked one of his most recent books I see he has done what he is bitching about.

He needs to read...

Rolf Smith wrote his book The Seven Levels of Change

among many others that have written about creative ideas or innovative ideas over the past few decades.

or watch

James Burke's two original BBC series shows

Connections (what Wurman is NOW talking about 30 years later)

followed by his second series

The Day the Earth Stood Still or Stopped (or something like that) where he discussed that NEW ORIGINAL IDEAS still do happen.

Here are the contents of MIKE BROWN's BRAINZOOMING ezine about RSW's speech

Richard Saul Wurman – No New Ideas

Posted: 17 Jan 2012 02:50 AM PST

I saw Richard Saul Wurman, author of Information Anxiety and founder of TED, speak at the PCMA conference last week in San Diego. Among various topics, Richard Saul Wurman talked about how there is very little real innovation, defined as completely new ideas that have not existed previously. In fact, Wurman characterized most things that pass for innovation as simple improvements over what is already available. He pointed out that even the automobile wasn’t invented; it was aggregated from multiple other inventions, including the steam engine and a horse-drawn carriage.

Richard Saul Wurman identified five strategic thinking perspectives (and examples) typically underpinning new ideas:

Addition (or Connection) – Putting together already existing products in new ways, with the automobile as the example he shared.
Subtraction – Taking away elements which conventional wisdom suggests you should have to you create something new. Wurman pointed to the TED conference, where he subtracted a podium, introductions, and long presentations.
Exaggeration – Taking something to its (comedic) absurd is a valid way to trigger change. Wurman talked about the link between comedy and new ideas, including his enjoyment of comedians Steven Wright and Emo Philips.
Doing the opposite – Wurman’s book “33” is too complicated to explain in one sentence, but its protagonist succeeds in improving things by doing completely the opposite of what conventional wisdom and social norms suggest.
Fixing gaps & failures – Wurman talked about how so much information that’s shared doesn’t explain anything. He addressed this with Information Anxiety and a host of books explaining geography, instructions, and medicine, among other topics, in new ways.

Even though I don’t buy his relatively narrow definition of “innovation,” Wurman’s construct and examples reminded me of a very familiar exercise learned from Chuck Dymer: Trait Transformation.

One twist?

While we typically use Trait Transformation and multiple transforming attributes to increase randomness in new ideas, Wurman’s approach gets me thinking about using only one transformer to really push a single concept (i.e. subtracting things) for very focused, extreme creativity.

There’s plenty more to report from the conference, including probably another whole post of Richard Saul Wurman one liners. But we’ll save all that for another day - Mike Brown

Difference produces betters results than Sameness

2012-01-17T06:26:00.001-08:00

‎"The greater the contrast, the greater the potential. Great energy only comes from a correspondingly great tension of opposites."
- Carl Jung

this may explain why heterogenous TEAMS tend to be more successful than homogenous GROUPS.

Difference produces betters results than Sameness

STUFF...Your STUFF...TOO MUCH #$%^ STUFF

2012-01-16T03:02:00.000-08:00

STUFF...Your STUFF...TOO MUCH #$%^ STUFF

Are you having trouble with too much STUFF in your office, cubicle, home, attic, basement, garage, storage buildings?

please scan down this webpage (pages actually) on my website and be prewarned of your future like in the Story of Scrooge.

http://www.cre8ng.com/alans-photo-pages/my-tree-house-of-books

I have just discarded a dozen of more Magazine storage boxes of magazines that I have stored for over 15 to 20 years and have not touched except to more them from one room to another in my house.

Also I have taken banker boxes full of family/group table games that I was going to give away and my daughter and my oldest grandson have accepted them.

So instead of moving them to another room or to another spot in my attic or a storage space I will be moving them to my daughter's house....

Watch/listen to George Carlin's comic routine about stuff...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

My Tree House of Books | CRE8NG

www.cre8ng.com

My house is filled with personal & professional collectibles of various types: photos, books, cds, video tapes, audio tapes, toys, etc.

CREATIVE THINKERING by Michael Michalko

2011-08-29T17:20:00.000-07:00

Months ago I was honored by Michael Michalko when he asked me to review his next book, which is out now through Amazon and other booksellers.

Started readin gmy gift copy this afternoon and re-enjoying his ideas, stories, examples, exercises assembled to challenge the reader and help them PUTTING (THEIR) IMAGINATION TO WORK.

Within the next week I will be reporting pieces of it in this blog to entice you purchase your own copy and read it.

CREATIVE THINKERING by Michael Michalko

Breaking Crayons Produces Creativity

2011-08-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

Breaking Crayons Produces Creativity

http://www.cre8ng.com/professional-materials/broken-crayons-unbroken

This article has been written and rewritten for several professional journals. This particular one was published by HFMA – Healthcare Finance Management Association (of the USA)

Class now take out your pretty crayons. Remember we want to keep them neat.
Handle them carefully. We don't want to break them.

Across the United States school teachers continually tell their students this daily. But why? Are they trying to teach them orderliness or how to use some wonderful tools.
Keeping crayons neat, not peeling them (because children will not know the names of the colors), and not breaking them limits the creativity of the children and eventually diminishes their natural creativity as adults.

Crayons can be seen as metaphors for tools. Too often teachers, parents, even employers or friends and fellow managers or workers squelch natural creativeness by emphasizing neatness, orderliness, and limited, selected use of tools.

For instance, what are crayons? They are simply portions of colored wax. Why are they pointed? Because Binney & Smith, the CrayolaTM manufacturers, thought they would look and work better if they were shaped like pencils? The pencil shape restricts the possibilities of line widths and shapes. Why do they have wrappers on them? Perhaps the manufacturers wanted the children to remember the colors name (in small print) and also to reinforce the brand name (in very large bold print)?

Rarely do children or artists refer to colors by the manufacturers chosen names. Plus the name is not important. While the visual recognition of the color is.

If the inference of the teachers crayon lessons is taken literally, we need to learn to use our tools only in the manufacturers prescribed ways. If we do this we will only limit
our potential capabilities as tool users, problem solvers and creative human beings. This is also true of the greatest number of our rules, policies and traditions in the common workplace.
Breaking crayons symbolizes the need and act of change that is especially needed in today’s medical profession.

What policies have you been following without question? What procedures have you not analyzed or challenged for relevancy today? What job assignments have you reviewed for their necessity recently? What work tasks have you reviewed for responsibility placement this year to better serve your patients?

Break your crayons!

Perhaps you have a policy requiring multiple signatures for purchases over $100. Perhaps the policy was put into effect in 1963. Break this crayon. Can you raise the dollar value to $250 or more in todays dollars? Re-examine what time and steps are required for the signatures to be collected or who is actually collecting the signatures. Perhaps in 1963 the three or four people who then signed the requisition were located near each other but now are in varied locations at your facility? Back in 1963 it took a few minutes to collect the signatures. Today it might take 3 or 4 days using inter-department mail.

Break this crayon!

Have you examined the locations of your equipment, department by department, use by use, shift by shift recently? The locations may be based on decisions made in 1978? When you think about it you may realize you have had 5 separate renovation projects since then. Break these crayons!
Have you purged your record storage recently? Break your crayons! Research continues to report that very few stored records are ever used again, even though they are required by law. Verify whether you could lessen your record storage without sacrificing completeness. Verify whether you have duplication or not. Ask, Can we store these records more efficiently or more effectively.

Break these crayons!

Department by department, job by job, shift by shift examine
equipment storage locations. You may even check to see if you have acquired multiple tools or materials that duplicate each other.
Break your crayons!

Each of these may be crayons at your medical center, hospital or clinic. Each might function better or be better performed if they were broken and examined to be made more efficient and effective.

Is your floor plan layout like a box of unbroken crayons--limited in its flexibility and outdated for todays needs? Are doorways in their best locations?

What about the placement of lighting?

What about the type of lighting?

Does it suit your needs in 1993?

Are the colors of your walls, floors, ceilings, equipment, uniforms effective for today?
Each of these also may be crayons at your medical center, hospital or clinic. Each may be vastly improved if they were broken and examined and then replaced or modified to suit the 90s.

Change and flexibility are the greatest strategies and tools of the 1990s in the medical field. By learning to break our crayons. By training your staff to break their crayons you can discover and develop more efficient and effective policies, procedures, tools, methods, and systems. Each of these can benefit all aspects of the medical field.

So! Peel your crayons. Then break them. Then experiment making as many different kinds of lines as you can with the broken ends, the unbroken ends, the sides. Hold several different pieces at one time and discover what you can create.

Challenge your rules, policies, procedures and traditions (paradigms). Try doing things differently, at least in small ways.

Using our tools as prescribed, teaches us only to follow instructions, not to think, not to create and therefore limits the possibility of discovery.

So what might you do? Go break a crayon today. Have fun.

Discover as much as you can. Encourage employees to break crayons. In fact you may have a staff meeting and have everyone break crayons together. Remember those who see their tools only as hammers will only see their problems as nails. Instead see your hammer, your crayons, your tools as objects that may have endless uses when you apply your natural imagination and intelligence to challenges you choose.

©1990 Robert Alan Black, Ph.D. RAB, Inc. - Cre8ng People, Places & Possibilities P. O. Box 5805 Athens, Georgia 30604-5805 alan@cre8ng.com -- www.cre8ng.com 1-706-353-3387

reviving this blog

2011-08-28T08:51:00.000-07:00

I have used many electronic, snail mail, print, face to face presentation means to communicate about how YOU, I, WE are all born creative, yet most to all of our cultures, school systems, families, employers tend to squash, resist, prevent or even kill creativity.

This blog is one of my means.

I have send some blog messages over the past 7 years but not consistently, persistently.

Since January 1997 I have been sending out my weekly ALAN'S CRE8NG CHALLENGES that are ways to develop our creative thinking skills, tools and traits.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlansCre8ngChallenges/</b>

Beginning today I will be posting on this blog daily things I am writing or have written about how to DEVELOP CREATIVE THINKING and how to use it at work, school, home...

Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2011-35 Connectivity, Awareness, Combinations, Hitchhiking of Ideas

2011-08-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2011-35
Connectivity, Awareness, Combinations, Hitchhiking of Ideas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlansCre8ngChallenges/

In his book WHERE DO GOOD IDEAS COME FROM Steve Johnson shares what he has learned about sources of ideas, breakthrough ideas based upon his experiences in the hi-tech field and five years of reading and colleting of examples and thinking about what they are saying.

Occasionally I recommend that you watch TED talks, videos, read articles, books, blogs.

This week each day watch one RSA Animate's wonderful animated videos of speeches given by current authors and thinkers

We all grow from reading. listening, talking, sharing ideas and questions.

Monday
RSA Animate – Where do good ideas come from Steve Johnson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU&feature=player_embedded

the rest of the week go to RSA Animate's YouTube Channel

Tuesday
RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what ... - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc 11 min - Apr 1, 2010 - Uploaded by theRSAorg
This lively RSAnimate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in ...

Wednesday
RSA Animate - The Secret Powers of Time - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg 10 min - May 24, 2010 - Uploaded by theRSAorg
Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are ...

Thursday
RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g 11 min - May 6, 2010 - Uploaded by theRSAorg
This video is a response to RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth ... try perhaps contacting the author (theRSAorg) thought their channel ...
 
Friday
RSA Animate - Smile or Die - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo 10 min - Mar 17, 2010 - Uploaded by theRSAorg
The impact of happiness and smiling on our lives.

Have a great creative week

alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

new Twitter name
You_I_We_Create

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Creative-Thinking-SPREADngCre8ng-w-Robert-Alan-Black/170921742919955

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-Alan-Black-cre8ngcom/355855356494

Begin Your Creative Thinking Development Program Today

2011-08-08T07:24:00.001-07:00

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlansCre8ngChallenges/

Begin your Creative Thinking Development Program today

Faces of 17th HAWC this week

2011-07-19T11:12:00.000-07:00
30 Presentations, several workshops, over 100 partipants and growing

Metaphor...WWWWWH.....

2011-07-14T15:26:00.001-07:00
In 1981 I met Bob Samples, author of METAPHORIC MIND. It was and still is one of the most influential books in my life.

Because of a reference in a podcast of the India TRIZ group I just watche an excellent TED Talk about metaphor, what is it, what it might be, how is it used.

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_geary_metaphorically_speaking.html

Are you in the 4th, 3rd, 2nd or 1st Quadrant?

2011-07-14T14:46:00.001-07:00
Some thoughts for last chapter of Steven Johnson's
WHERE DO IDEAS COME FROM
"The Fourth Quadrant"

In Steven Johnson's last chapter of WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM he shares a 4 quadrant grid. Horizontall dimension is individual on the left and network on the right. Vertical dimension is for market driven on the top and non-market driven (sharing) on the bottom

p.229 shows listing of inventions, breakthur ideas from 1800 to present with the largest number being in the 4th quadrant: non-market driven networked.

How might the growth of the Creativity Movement look on such a chart with Edward de Bono in the 1st, and Torrance, Stein, Osborn, Parnes in the 4th?

if you are a creativity consultant where do you fit?

1st individual focused on making money with your ideas

2nd individual focused on sharing ideas

3rd network/collective/company sharing your ideas to make money

4th network/collective/association sharing ideas to help others with no or limited focus on generating money for yourself?

2011 Future Problem Solving Program International Conference

2011-06-11T04:55:00.000-07:00

Founded by creativity pioneer, Dr. E. Paul Torrance, Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI) stimulates critical and creative thinking skills, encourages students to develop a vision for the future, and prepares students for leadership roles. FPSPI engages students in creative problem solving within the curriculum and provides competitive opportunities. Future Problem Solving Program International involves thousands of students annually from Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, and the United States.

FPSPI Mission: To develop the ability of young people globally to design and promote positive futures using critical, creative thinking.

E. Paul Torrance studied creative thinking skills for 50+ years, created and founded the Future Problem Solving Program for teaching creative and critical thinking skills in Elementary, Middle and High Schools watch the opening of the 37th FPSPI - International Conference

http://edtech-media.uwlax.edu/UWLMediaSite50/Viewer/?peid=d93c5d29226a4b9384cc00e9aa5c397d1d

Are You Trying to Become More Creative?

2011-05-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

Are You Trying to Become More Creative?

The Learning Connextion in Wellington, New Zealand is an art school devoted to helping its students become more creative in the visual arts and in their lives

http://tlc.ac.nz/

That is one end of the spectrum.

Add to that...

Buffalo State University's INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR CREATIVE STUDIES and it masters degree program and its undergraduate and masters degree courses in various aspects of creativity development

http://www.buffalostate.edu/creativity/

At the other end of the spectrum of resources for you, teams, departments, organizations are hundreds if not thousands of independent creativity development consultants like...

humbly me....ha ha

http://www.cre8ng.com

or some of the following professionals you can find doing a Google.com search for creativity consultant.

http://www.google.com/#q=creativity+consultant&hl=en&prmd=ivns&ei=q7fGTauQD4eFtgeZoqCsBA&start=10&sa=N&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=59d278d6a8964448

even I show up in the first 12 or 13 hits....ha ha

Do something each day that helps you use and further develop your creative thinking skills, and creative thinking tool knowledge.

look at my Alan's Cre8ng Challenges Yahoo.com group

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AlansCre8ngChallenges/messages

Best wishes,

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

May 1st, May Day....Creativity Events are happening

2011-05-01T08:56:00.000-07:00
It is May 1st, May Day, celebration of Spring, celebration for Communism in some countries, Here in Athens a beautiful Spring day filled with sunshine and warm temperatures with a clear blue sky.

2011 Florida Creativity Weekend happened in Sarasota
2011 American Creativity Association Conference happened in Ft. Lauderdale
2011 Atlanta Creativity Exchange happened near Atlanta in Kennesaw
2011 CREA-Italy happened in Sestri Levante
2011 World Creativity & Innovation Week happened

next comes...

2011 CPSI in Atlanta (57th)

What other creativity events do you know about?

Why Go to Many Creativity Conferences?

2011-04-12T02:45:00.000-07:00

The following is my answer to Gregg Fraley's question(s) about why attend many creativity conferences a year, for many years.

"Basically Gregg I did that for a variety of reasons..."

1. to learn much about creativity and the field
2. to strengthen skills
3. to develop connections
4. to become known in the field around the US, then the globe
5. to become part of the field
6. to sit at the "cool kids" table
7. to help people in many places
8. to have fun
9. to develop professional contacts
10. to develop personal friendships with people in field
11. to travel to unique places
12. to recharge, generate the energy of being with such people
13. to help make a difference in the US, then the world
14. to generate clients
15. to generate credentials
16. to earn or win awards in the field
17. to earn a reputation in the creativity field
18. to learn how to make a living, more as a creativity professional
19. to make connections
20. to make connections that would lead to articles, books, teamed work

and perhaps other reasons

since 1976 I have gone to and presented at over 140 creativity focused conferences.

Have I accomplished these 20 and other things?

To some degree yes.

To the level or degree I had planned, wished for, dreamed I would?

In a few cases yes. In most cases in relation to the cost of time, money and commitment...some degree to minimal.

So now instead of going to 14 or more each year, including some every year for years, a few new ones each year for the variety to once again attempt to complete the 20+ goals.

For the past 5 years I have gone to and still go to a select few that fit within my yearly business revenue.

I started doing this type of thing as a young architectural student in that field in the early 1960s. Then I did it in the field of graphics and signage in the 70s

Then once I became a full-time professional speaker and consultant I did them with the National Speakers Association and the Global Speakers Forum.

From 1984 until 1998, my late wife and I did it in the other area of mutual focus: Storytelling by attending workshops, festivals, conferences. During the past 13 years I have cut those way back to 2 or 3 a year for fun, to hear and meet new tellers and to reconnect with tellers I have gotten to know professionally and personally.

I began going to and becoming part of various creativity, architectural, storytelling programs, events, conferences, workshops for most of the 20 reasons listed for personal and professional benefits.....

A few of my creativity friends,speaker and storytelling friends have joked for years that doing this became an addiction or addictions for us.

for me they also have fulfilled some of my other goals or addictions:

meet new people
travel to new places
see more and more of the US and the world
doing something that provided purpose and meaning to my life that I enjoyed doing

has all the time, money, commitment been worth it?

that each person must decide.

Have I become famous?
Have I made a fortune?
Have I develop true friends?
Have I made a difference?

These are questions I often find myself asking ...

at least when I am not traveling to or attending another conference, workshop, convention, event.

at least they have filled my life with meaning, value and purpose, while I have tried to fulfill my list of 20 goals.

Creativity, Creative Thinking Takes Place Before Innovation Does

2011-04-05T18:47:00.001-07:00
Creativity, Creative Thinking Takes Place Before Innovation Does

WHen I first began doing workshops on creative thinking for companies to Fortune 500 companies in the early 1980s creativity was of interest.

Now 30 years later the word creativity or creative thinking has become a negative word that has been replaced by INNOVATION and Innovation Systems, Managed Innovation.

Managing Creativity is an oxymoron.

Creativity, Creative thinking precedes Innovation.

When I was an architectural student in the early 1960s I read an article by architect/philosopher Frederick John Kiesler where he said

5 to 10% of practicing architects are CREATIVE
10 to 15% are INNOVATIVE basing their work on the ideas of the CREATIVES
75 to 85% are IMMITATIVE copying the work of INNOVATIVES without understanding the thinking of the CREATIVES.

Over the past 40+ years I have worked in various design fields and the creativity deveopment movement as a consultant, writer and research/searcher. During that time I have generally found Kiesler's numbers tend to fit in all fields.

In the 70s I became aware of the work of E. Paul Torrance and J. P. Guilford who continually said that all people are born with capacity for creative thinking, creativeness and creativity.

Combining these two premises and beliefs I find the excessive focus on INNOVATION and ongoing attempts to INSTITUTIONALIZE INNOVATION creativity, creative thinking, creativeness is being avoided and LIMITING the results in ALL WORKPLACES.

My 30+ years of working in creativity has led me to focus my work on the DEVELOPMENT OF CRE8NG COMMUNITIES AND THE CREATIVE THINKING SKILLS OF ALL EMPLOYEES THROUGHOUT ENTIRE ORGANIZATIONS.

Too often the emphasis today on INNOVATION, institutionalizing of Innovation was KILL MOST CREATIVE THINKING, CREATIVENESS AND CREATIVITY in our workplaces.

Innovation efforts are focused on products, services, businesses not on the thinking of all employees.

Everything done in any workplace can be done more creatively or innovatively.

Creative Thinking - generation of new ideas or new combinations of existing or past ideas

innovation or Innovative Thinking - improving of existing or past ideas, products, services or the successful application of creative thinking.

What do you think?

TED Talks can inspire any of us

2011-03-27T06:54:00.000-07:00

This week through my Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2011-13
I shared the following 12 links to TED Talks about various aspects of creativity and creative thinking that I have enjoyed. Hopefully you will too!

Other People's Ideas Impact Creativity

Reading ideas, listening to ideas in speeches, discussing ideas with and by other people, whether from the ancient past, recent past, current times can influence and spark our own creativity.

This week let the ideas of 12 TED Talks impact your thinking and your mind in order to spark or respark you thinking.

MONDAY

Amy Tan on creativity | Video on TED.com
Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, looking for hints of how hers evolved.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/amy_tan_on_creativity.html

Jeff Bezos: What matters more than your talents | Video on TED.com
In this Princeton University graduation address, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos makes the case that our character is reflected not in the gifts we're endowed with at birth, but by the choices we make ov...
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jeff_bezos_gifts_vs_choices.html

TUESDAY

Stefan Sagmeister: The power of time off | Video on TED.com
Every seven years, designer Stefan Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook. He explains the often overlooked value of time o...
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off.html

Milton Glaser on using design to make ideas new | Video on TED.com
From the TED archives: The legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser dives deep into a new painting inspired by Piero della Francesca. From here, he muses on what makes a convincing poster, by break...
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/milton_glaser_on_using_design_to_make_ideas_new.html

WEDNESDAY

Scott McCloud on comics | Video on TED.com
In this unmissable look at the magic of comics, Scott McCloud bends the presentation format into a cartoon-like experience, where colorful diversions whiz through childhood fascinations and imagine...
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/scott_mccloud_on_comics.html

Moshe Safdie on building uniqueness | Video on TED.com
Looking back over his long career, architect Moshe Safdie delves into four of his design projects and explains how he labored to make each one truly unique for its site and its users.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/moshe_safdie_on_building_uniqueness.html

THURSDAY

The Creative Spark | Video channel on TED.com
How are we inspired? Where might our imaginations take us? What does creativity look like in its wildest form? These clever, invigorating speakers plumb the wellspring of inventio...
http://www.ted.com/themes/the_creative_spark.html

Tales of Invention | Video channel on TED.com
TED has always loved a good creation story. No matter the scale -- kitchen, continent, or solar system -- invention grants us access to the frontiers of our understanding. Legendary designer Phi...
http://www.ted.com/themes/tales_of_invention.html

FRIDAY

Tom Wujec | Profile on TED.com
Tom Wujec studies how we share and absorb information. He's an innovative practitioner of business visualization -- using design and technology to help groups solve problems and understand ideas. H...
http://www.ted.com/speakers/tom_wujec.html

Derek Sivers | Profile on TED.com
Through his new project, MuckWork, Derek Sivers wants to lessen the burdens (and boredom) of creative people.
http://www.ted.com/speakers/derek_sivers.html

EXTRA

Elizabeth Gilbert | Profile on TED.com
The author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert has thought long and hard about some large topics. Her next fascination: genius, and how we ruin it.
http://www.ted.com/speakers/elizabeth_gilbert.html

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity | Video on TED.com
Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It'...
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

WEBSITES, WEBSITES AND MORE CREATIVITY WEBSITES.

2011-03-20T06:59:00.000-07:00

Here is today's Alan's Cre8ng Challenges, 2011-12

Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2011-12
WEBSITES, WEBSITES AND MORE CREATIVITY WEBSITES.

I just did some google.com searches for creativity related websites.

a. Creativity - 6,760,000 hits
b. creative thinking - 2,620,000 hits
c. creative problem solving - 2,060,000 hits
d. creativity discussion groups - 3,680,000 hits
e. creativity ezines - 6,980,000 hits

In 1978 at CPSI in Buffalo I met a dozen or more people who called themselves creativity consultants. Now there are thousands, In 1978 we didn't have the internet, www, ezines, electronic newsletters, discussion groups. Now we have thousands if not tens of thousands. In 1978 Sid Shore had his 4 to 8 page printed monthly creativity focused newsletter called Creativity in Actions. In 2011 there are tens of thousands of newsletters (printed and/or electronic), ezines, blogs, Facebook pages, discussion groups. In 1991 Marc Tassoul started his CREA-CPS listserv internet discussion group/chat group that is now a Yahoo.com group. Now there are tens of thousands.

In 1978 CEF - Creative Education Foundation had been around since 1954 and was sponsoring the 24th CPSI - Creative Problem Solving Institute. In 2011 there are hundreds of small to large creativity programs or conferences or Institutes around the globe.

Last week I encouraged you to spend your creativity development time scanning and/or reading newsletters and blogs focused on creativity, creative thinking, creative problem solving.

This week I am encouraging you to review websites of samples of Idea companies, creative thinking skill development companies and creativity associations.

Monday - problem solving and skill training companies
http://www.whatifinnovation.com/
http://www.newandimproved.com/

Tuesday - problem solving & product creation companies
http://www.newshoestoday.com/site/home
http://www.davison.com/
http://www.ideo.com/

Wednesday - idea companies
http://www.cpsb.com/research/communique/
http://creativeideasforyou.com/

Thursday - idea companies
http://www.ideas-consulting.com/comp_profile.php
http://www.idea-sandbox.com/what-we-do/

Friday - creativity associations
http://www.cpsiconference.com/home.cfm
http://www.amcreativityassoc.org/index1.htm

Continually expand your knowledge of creativity, creative thinking and creative problem solving in order to improve your creativity, creative thinking and creative problem solving.

Best wishes for a creative week

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

Highly Creative People Are Seldom Chosen as Leaders

2011-03-12T06:05:00.000-08:00
Leading, leader, leadership tends to mean direction, logic, confidence, assuredness

Over my 31 years of speaking on leadership, leading, leader skills, leader traits I have searched for a finite number of traits, aka: 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE, or the 10 or the 12. With my groups of community leader development groups sponsored by Chambers of Commerce, supervisors inside city, county or state government or those inside private or public corporations or those working for the military I have tried several exercises to search for THE TRAITS.

Another strategy was to survey leaders.

Another strategy was to read a few hundred books on Leaders, Leading and Leadership that were the big sellers beginning with Warren Bennis written by researchers, written by leaders (Jack Welch-GE, Richard Branson-Virgin, Mary Kay, Etc. written by speakers and college professors of business. From reviewing the bold print traits in those books and my highlighted notes or margin notes in those books I collected over 450 seaparate traits.

Added to that I read several articles, research papers and a few books about the TRAITS OF LEADERS that included many types of surveys and once again discovered hundreds of traits.

Then I combined all of what I found others wrote about traits of leaders and compared them to what my various groups had said about the traits they thought were important and what they thought they wanted in a leader and looked for the top 12, which I labeled as the Cornerstones of Productive Leading.

All that said, also while working on my doctorate increativity I did a study of the traits of HIGHLY CREATIVE PEOPLE based upon the studies and writing of nearly 150 authors, professors, researchers, speakers, consultants and found over 450 traits.

But like the sampling of the various messages in the thread I just read on CSTC seldom do the traits of LEADERS match the traits of HIGHLY CREATIVES.

My view is that they do not match.

HIGHLY CREATIVES can start firms but seldom take them to their maximum success and maintain them

George Land talked about that in his famous book GROW OR DIE. Most business books I have looked at talk about the PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE or the COMPANY LIFE CYCLE or Leadership books often talk about the varied types of leadership styles required during the various phases that a business goes through from the beginning thru growth to high success to continuing on

Most of the HIGH CREATIVES have many traits that align with the traits of ENTREPRENUERS not MANAGERS and not LEADERS over the long run.

Walt Disney
Steve Jobs
Richard Branson
Michael Dell
Mark Zuckerberg
Famous Amos
Tom Edison
Ted Turner

they may have started companies but they did end up running.

Bernard Lefokosky wrote a book in 1980, BREAKTIME. It was based on interviews with many people he met around the country who had all chased the American Dream, obtained college degrees, became licensed, passed the bar or completed Ph.D.s, MDs or whatever highest ranking of honor was in their field. But once they got to the level of leadership from middle manager to top management inside of a company (they were not entrepreneurs) they quit and walked away.

His synopsis was that they chased a dream of a stereotype for what an architect, lawyer, minister, professor, inventor, advertiser was but when they go to the level inside of companies of what they had envisioned they quit, walked away or were fired or simply let go and they changed occupations that let them do more of what they truly loved to do which did not include:

managing. leading, supervising people but rather creating, doing, dreaming

Now at the lower levels of leading from team leader to supervisor, to department manager to middle manager to top management to CEO how leaders are chosen is based on

consistency
follow through
completion
persistent focus
predictability of success

My contention is that HIGHLY CREATIVES who become leaders become leaders because they started the company or the team but they seldom stay the course. It is not their nature to stay the course

One of the groupings of traits that you seldom find in HIGHLY CREATIVES consist of

patience
emotional intelligence factors
political skills
office politics
game playing with employees or others or clients
situational ethics

My life experiences and study and work has shown me that people typically want their leaders to be

logical
focused
consistent
pragmatic
realistic even when they are being idealistic
caring about their employees, teams, customers
sensitive to how their decision impact their people

or what most style instruments (Myers Briggs, Herrmann, Human Synergistics, Neethiling and many others) describe as

upper left brain (cognitive)
and
lower right brain (limbic)

will people follow a dreamer in the beginning....yes....but not forever

if the dreamer does not produce reliable reality or consistency most people who look for a more down to earth leader.

often the dreamer, HIGHLY CREATIVE types end up icons, figureheads, names only...

Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney

Another example from American Advertising is George Lois, an extreme HIGH CREATIVE who created companies and then sold them, gave them over to some of the top people or simply left to start another one...when I interviewed one of the key people who had stayed with him for years from company to company he basically said it was the

office politics
the games
the having to be more manager like
the predictability that employees wanted

one of my local clients, a very successful highly creative real estate salesman, then broker, constantly was looking for new challenges, new things to excite him and use his creative drive. He hired me to access his staff. The highest producing were all type A's or highly creatives. He was both.

My suggestion to him was he had to find ways to help motivate the 5 biggest producers or they would leave him. At the same time his most consistent people needed to see him in person more often.

The 5 highest multi-million sales producers did leave and started their own firm called THE LEADERS. I knew one of them personally and recommended that they talk openly about their TYPE A natures and that they would no doubt burn each other out. The firm lasted just over a year before it broke up.

Be a Maverick. But I Ain't No Maverick, Don't Want to Be, and Besides I Would Lose My Job If I Was

2011-03-06T08:19:00.000-08:00
Be a Maverick.
But I Ain't No Maverick,
Don't Want to Be,
and Besides I Would Lose My Job If I Was.

Have you ever had this conversation with another employee or internally with yourself--the good faithful employee and the rebel self who wants to fly like an eagle?

I know I did several times in the earlier years of my working life in the early 60s and since occasionally.

When I was first inspired to be more creative, thanks to Edward de Bonos book, NEW THINK I began my Walter Mitty fantasy life of being or becoming the great creative person.

Within the next couple years I began to read other similar authors and discovered there were researchers, psychologists and teachers who believed people could be taught to be more creative.

The popular books then and now about how to become more creative all seem to focus on the reader becoming or being a maverick, a risk-taking, rule- challenging, dreamer, who sacrifices everything so they can create. Walt Disney, Tom Edison, Charles Goodyear, painters, sculptors, writers, designers were always used as role models for the mavericks-in-training.

Over the past few years I have begun to challenge this approach of trying to make everybody a maverick, a top or bottom 2 or 3%- er. Using the absolute tops, the most successful, the breakthrough thinker or idea finder as role models is I believe a major reason why the work of so many, many writers, researchers, teachers, trainers and consultants has produced little change in the acceptance of creative thinking or the willingness to develop and apply the creative thinking and creativeness of the typical person, the other 94%.

Scott Adams has made a fortune writing and drawing daily, example after example of how creativity and creativeness are killed or squelched in the typical workplace. Book after book has criticized managers, bosses even leaders or blaming institutions for being killers of creativity.

Simple fact, not everyone is a Micheal Jordan, Celine Dion, Bill Gates. Not everyone possesses their natural talents, skills, drive or desire or just plain good luck. While at the same time everyone of us can be and is far more creative then we are recognized for or allowed to be the 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 to 50 weeks a year, 30 to 50 years of our lives we give to our job or working. Yet watch us when we go home and see how creative we are in our hobbies, part- time jobs, volunteer work or with our families and friends.

Point 1
It is time for each of us to accept that we are more creative.

Point 2
It is time for each of us to apply our natural creativeness.

Point 3
It is time for each of us to spend some time regularly to further develop our creative thinking and problem solving skills.

Point 4
It is time for each of us to ask for more creative assignments or opportunities to be creative in our work

Point 5
It is time for each of us to ask for help and support from our fellow employees, supervisors, managers and bosses to use our creativity and further develop it at work.

For too long we have been blaming the management for not doing it for us or for doing it to us.

Do our fellow employees, supervisors, managers and bosses reject our ideas kill our ideas (deliberately or indirectly) refuse our ideas tell us to stick to the plan

do the job you are paid for stay in line

No doubt this happens.

You and I do it with our spouses, children, neighbors, friends and total strangers every day. It is natural for the greatest majority of people to prefer the status quo, the as we have always done it syndrome.

To be more creative we simply need to step out of line, get out of the box, draw outside of the lines. Yet when we do these we tend to expect things to change for the better instantaneously. We want everyone else to change. Yet we resist change. Actually we tend to resist being changed by other people, outside influences, systems, situations, bad or good luck.

That is another of the major problems with increasing the amount of creativity used in our daily lives. We expect others to change to our solutions and change instantly. Too often our ideas are simply that. Ideas. They arent solutions. They are ideas, thoughts, suggestions, opinions. They are NOT worked out ready to be applied solutions.

Therefore others who dont see, feel, smell, taste, touch, sense the same way we do resist our ideas.

What can you and I begin to do? choose to work at being more creative
choose to accept that we can improve and expand our creative abilities.
work at taking our ideas to solution more and experiment with them before we expect others to immediately accept them.

work more at doing small things more creatively

stop trying to become a MAVERICK or a GIANT and focus on becoming a more creative YOU

ask in less threatening ways for help and support in being creative

ask in less threatening ways for opportunities to work on more creative work.

work on your current job more creatively

accept that you fantasize about being a giant, a maverick, a hero/heroine,
breakthrough thinker and work at becoming a stronger, better, more creative you.

Who knows!

By doing these for 1 days, a year, 5 years you will become the next MAVERICK that we write about for others to use as a role model.

To be more creative simply choose to be. Then be. Then support everyone else in being.

Very few of us will change the world. Yet we all can change ourselves.

The funny thing is when we do that the world somehow changes too.

©2008 Robert Alan Black, Ph.D. RAB, Inc. -
Cre8ng People, Places & Possibilities
. O. Box 5805 Athens, Georgia 30604-5805
alan@cre8ng.co

Little Things Can Stop Creativity

2011-03-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

My daily life often is filled with the LITTLE THINGS that can S T O P my creative thinking.

Is yours?

Little Things Can Stop Creativity

No money can stop a creative project.
No resources can stop a creative project.
No support can stop a creative project.

Yes major things or forces can stop creativity. Yet when we look at the history of invention or in general the history of new ideas we can discover that these major forces truly do not stop the devoted, committed, dedicated creation person.

No money, resources, support did not stop:

Ghandi Mother Teresa Charles Goodyear Harriet Tubman (underground railroad during the Civil War) Henry Ford Chester Carlson (inventor of the Xerox process) nor many others from the distant or recent past.

One key difference for them was their determination. Yes eventually money, resources and support came or was acquired. They enabled the creative person to take their idea and turn it into a larger and larger solution.

Yet the little things are what stop most of us from utilizing our creativeness long before we get to tapping the big resources for future giant success or breakthrough. While reading Alexander Lockhart's book: POSITIVE CHARGES, recently I came across the following item:

#79 Understand there is only a letter difference between change and chance.
It got my attention as another small thing that often stops my creativeness or the creativeness of others I know and work with.

Being creative produces change. Many to most people resist change or at least resist being "changed". Being creative often requires that we take a chance or chances. Being creative requires that we venture into unknown territory and chance failure.

To be more creative we need to accept change and chance and that with either the other will occur. If you change something you take a chance of potential failure. If you take a chance change will normally be the result. Examine the changes your ideas will produce. Explore and test the chances you will be taking. Do not change or chance stop you.

About a 18 months ago I had an aha that came from another small difference. While teaching Fundamentals of Marketing courses for the American Management Associations one issue that I stressed, similar to many presenters, speakers, and professors; was that as Americans we tend to be REACTIVE rather than ACTIVE or better yet PROACTIVE. An emphasis and purpose of marketing and marketing plans is to help people take charge and be PROACTIVE.

Often becoming PROACTIVE requires many paradigm shifts for individuals, departments and entire corporations or even industries.

The "Aha" I had was a simple change. Instead of being REACTIVE, simply rearrange one letter in the word and become CREA TIVE or creative. I have always found it much easier for people to be creative than for them to change and stop being reactive to become proactive.

Still another simple change has to do to a major barrier to success or creativeness. That is "limitation".

I can't be creative I can't draw. I can't sing. I can't dance.
I can't understand computer software.
I can't.
I can't.
I can't.

If you are a fan or reader of motivational books you no doubt have read the quote always accredited to Henry Ford....

"If you say you can or you say you can't, in either case you will be right in the end" (paraphrased)

Making the philosophic choice could be a simple chance that would greatly affect your creativeness. That is not the simple change I am referring to related to "limitation".

Look at the word "limitation". It has 10 letters. 9 of the letters are the root cause why so many people are not creative. The 9 letters spell "imitation". Too often we copy, mimic, reproduce and do not think for ourselves and create.

Still another simple change can be discovered by examining the word

"RECREATION". Back up in linguistic history and respell the word as it would have been originally spelled as a hyphenated word...

RE-CREATION

Re creation. Creating again.

Many highly creative people discover that when they experience "a blank wall", "writer's block", "creative staleness" or other forms of creative blocks that if they simply stop and take time to recreate they will then be able to re-create and re-tap their creativeness and move on.

Graham Wallas referred to the space between the second and third stages of his creative process as a good time to relax and play or recreate. By doing this you allow your subconscious to work on the challenge and provide you an aha or enable you to be in a state that makes you open to discovering an aha.

Oz Swallow in 1978 shared a simple change that has major implications and effect on the creativeness of people. One night as a group of 100 or more people crowded into a small classroom at Buff State College during the Annual CPSI meeting, Oz encouraged us to... "Change the metaphors in your life."

He followed by explaining that all words in all languages (nouns, adjectives, and adverbs used as adjectives and possibly verbs) are metaphors. They are not the thing or action but rather a word referring to your interpretation of it. Therefore he suggested that we examine the words we use. See them as metaphors. Then change our metaphors. Or change our definitions.

An example I have used with students from elementary school to college and with participants in workshops of a range of ages was the one

"I Can't Draw"!

First we clearly defined the word draw as making lines, shapes, marks, or shaded areas. In turn the results could be used to represent existing or imaginery things. Then we would redefine the act of drawing as the making of lines, shapes, marks, or shaded areas with materials such as pencils, pens, chalk, crayons, etc using our hands, feet, arms, teeth, etc to hold them.

The simple change in this case is establishing a realistic defintion and comparison. Most people tend to compare themselves and their actions or skills with the "giants" in the particular field such as art, music, dance, engineering, etc.
To learn to draw is a simple act. To learn to draw at the level of a major artist is generally not.

Still one more simple change that can be discovered by examining the word we use. Most to all of us have problems with daily communication. The root cause for most of us is poor listening, either on our part or the other person's.

The change. To improve your communication listen. To better listen simply re-arrange the letters for the answer. listen becomes silent! Therefore to improve your creativeness. . .

1. Accept that being creative will produce change and that simple change often will produce creativity.

2. Accept that creativity requires some chance. Continually work at taking
bigger and bigger chances. One small step at a time.

3. Work at not reacting and instead work at creating.

4. Work at reminding yourself over and over "I Can, I Can, I Can" and ask
"How Might I or How Might We So That I Can or We Can?"

5. Stop imitating. Look for new ways for yourself. Examine the principle or
main idea behind successful creative ideas and adapt them rather than
simply adopting or imitating them.

6. Take time to recreate: relax, play a game, have fun at least for awhile.

7. Look for the metaphors that are stopping you and change them or your
definitions for them.

8. Take time to truly listen to others, yourself, nature, your problems. Learn
from Eero Saarinen, famous Finnish and American architect...

"The solution lies within the problem. Continue looking it will tell you."
Look for your own "small changes" that will release and expand your creativity and creativness.

Being creative is your choice!

Learning From Not Stealing From

2011-02-20T15:48:00.000-08:00

Learning From Not Stealing From

This past week I have been involved in a variety of discussions with Facebook friends, internet friends about the mis-use of copyrighted materials. Then I posted my last message about the APPLE ad theme THE CRAZY ONES where at first I captured several of the images from the commercial that can be found on YouTube completely without permission.

Then I reached out to a variety of professional sources about what is the current understanding.

The results..........without stated release or permission the answer is NO!

So I removed the images.

From now on I will use my own photos, images and those that I obtain permission from the owners and/or creators of the work.

Now onto this top..

Learning From Not Stealing From

Many years ago when I was a young architecture student I read an article by architect/philosopher Frederik Kiessler, architect of the "ENDLESS HOUSE" and the SHRINE OF THE BOOK in Israel.

He said

10% of architeccts are creative
10 to 15% of architects are innovative based upon the ideas of the creative
75 to 80% of architects (the rest) are immitative without understanding the creatives' ideas because they only copied the images of the innovatives.

My 30 years of working as a speaker, consultant, trainer, facilitator and simply living 44 more years as convinced me that these numbers apparently apply to all fields.

I read, study many sources. I experiment with many ideas until I understand the principles behind them and then I apply the principles to create my own solutions.

copy to understand
trace to understand

do not copy to immitate or duplicate.

Have a great week expanding and using your creative thinking skills.

Alan
http://www.cre8ng.com
alan@cre8ng.com

"Here's to the Crazy Ones...!"

2011-02-18T07:06:00.000-08:00
Have you ever been called CRAZY, WEIRD, STRANGE, OFF-THE-WALL, OUT-OF-THE-BOX when you first shared your new ideas or dreams?

Tom Watson, Sr motivated IBM employees with THINK
Steve Jobs motivated Apple employees with THINK DIFFERENT

I simply suggest you think DIFFERENTLY ABOUT DIFFERENT THINGS THAT MOTIVATE AND IMPRESS YOU.

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?

Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?

Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

www.Apple.com

If We Held an Innovation Revolution Who Would Show Up?

2011-02-13T08:02:00.000-08:00

Let's Hold a Revolution for Innovation

I just found this blog site by reviewing my daily GOOGLE ALERT for creativity, creative thinking and creative problem solving.

You may find it interesting to read

http://edwardboches.com/assignment-make-america-passionate-about-innovation

My question is how many design schools/departments, communications & journalism schools, business schools are now committed to SPARKING A INNOVATION REVOLUTION in the US?

2011 Florida Creativity Weekend

2011-02-11T15:36:00.000-08:00

one of the purposes of this newsletter is to share about creativity workshops, confernces, institutes, events that you may find beneficial to you

http://www.flcreativity.com/

2011 Florida Creativity Weekend
February 25-27, 2011 in Sarasota, Florida

Build connections -- to people, to ideas, to action, to ourselves, and across generations. Together we can become the bridges to creative, constructive thought and action.

Who we are:
Planning Team: Education, Business, and Not-for Profit community professionals who actively implement creative thinking and innovation to make a positive difference in people's lives and the wider world.
Attendees:
People of all ages and walks of life who want to share and explore a more creative world.

What Florida Creativity Weekend looks like:
Pick and choose or best yet, choose it all!
*Optional Friday all-day intensive sessions
*Friday evening - Official beginning - intros, activities and key note speaker
*Saturday - many wonderful and diverse sessions to explore, activities, and key note
*Sunday - more wonderful session to choose from, closing key note
*Additional program for middle and high school students to learn creative problem solving

www.flcreativity.com

What if there was a CREATIVITY REVOLUTION

2011-02-11T15:05:00.000-08:00

What if there was a CREATIVITY REVOLUTION

Watching/following the events in Egypt the past 18 days finally sparked this question in my mind at 5:30 pm today after a day of questioning of the past 30+ years of my life devoted to the development of CREATIVITY ON DEMAND in workplaces and classrooms.

Thank you again for FOLLOWING this blog.

My goal with this blog and with my CRE8NG ON DEMAND newsletter is to share information, ideas, learnings to provide you, the reader with things to think about and hopefully use and benefit from in your workplace, classroom and/or your life in general.

I remember a small revolutions from the early 1970s after I had left the employ of one of the finest modern architects in the world, Gunnar Birkerts, in search of another direction in my life. I was out walking at lunch time on Grand Boulevard in mid-town Detroit past the famous General Motors Building (world headquarters then) designed by Albert Kahn. As I walked by the GM building on the other side of the 6 to 8 lane divided boulevard I saw a group of 30 or 40 picketers.

That was not unusual in a manufacturing mecca like Detroit in the early 70s with all the unions connected with manufacturing.

What drew my attention was seeing the PICK SIGNS. They were graphically BEAUTIFUL.

It was a strike of members of the graphics guild or society against some tennats in the giant GM building.

I had seen hand made and printed signs both before but nothing like I saw that noon time. They were colorful. Their were graphically distinct and bold. They were artistic almost works of art in themselves.

CREATIVE PEOPLE WERE STRIKING FOR BETTER WORK CONDITIONS AND BETTER PAY.

What if all the creative field/industry/professions, that Richard Florida keep telling about are growing at rapid rates in the INFORMATION AGE or the INNOVATION or CREATIVITY WAVE or AGE that other writers, reporters and speakers (including me) are calling the time of the 21st century, chose to STRIKE

STRIKE
REBEL
HOLD A REVOLUTION

How might they?

Would they use the new technology, the new rapidly almost expotentially growing social media?

What if speakers, consultants, agencies, professors, classrom teachers (K-12), authors, researchers who are focused on the DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVENESS, CREATIVITY, CREATIVE THINKING chose to hold a

REVOLUTION

Would creativeness, creativity, creative thinking begin to become a serious part of our culture?

Or must we wait for a worse economy, a violent war, major natural catastropy or multiple ones to finally accept, realise and as I have been saying and writing about

SUPPORT
PROMOTE
RECONIZE/REWARD
ENCOURAGE/EDUCATE
APPLY
DEVELOP/DEMAND

creative thinking from and in ALL EMPLOYEES, ALL CHILDREN, ALL STUDENTS?

What do you think?

Ought we have a REVOLUTION instead of waiting for a CREATIVE EVOLUTION that Richard Florida claims is happening to counteract the demise of creativity that Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman wrote about last Summer?

How would you rebel or have been?

How are you evolving or have?

For more information visit my newsletter Cre8ng on Demand and my website cre8ng.com

Reviving and Rejuvenating my Create With Alan blog

2011-02-06T07:44:00.000-08:00

Creativity, Creativeness and Creative Thinking All Can Be Developed

In 1976 I read a couple articles written by a professor I had never heard of before.

His name was Dr. E. Paul Torrance, an educational psychology professor at the University of Georgia.

At the time I was working one day a week as a volunteer gifted education teacher, upon invitation by Ms Betty Duffy, the principal at my two sons: Jeff and Scott, elementary school in Delray Beach, Florida. Jeff had been labeled as academically gifte by a standardized IQ test but they did not have a teacher. Upon my repeated pesturing about what we could do at home Ms Duffy invited me to become the guest, volunteer teacher.

I did that for about 2 years and it began my journey to where I have been traveling personally and professionally ever since...the Global Creativity Movement.

Dr. T eventually became my major professor for my doctorate from 1979 to 1983 and my colleague and friend after that until he died in 2003 after spending 50 years of his professional life to researching the development and testing of creative thinking skills and abilities.

My purpose of this blog and my new ezine/newsletter (Cre8ng on Demand, Yahoo.com group) plus my long running Alan's Cre8ng Challenges Yahoo.com group is to help individuals, teams, groups, departments, entire organizations to develop their natural creative thinking skills and both their creativity and creativeness at work, at school or in their lives in general.

Beginning today I will be more regularly posting blog messages and sending out newsletters in conjunction with muy weekly Alan's Cre8ng Challenges.

I hope you find them of value to you in the development of your Creative Thinking Skills, Creativity and Creativeness whether you are a child or someone in your 80s, 90s, or beyond 100.

Also check out my main website

http://www.cre8ng.com

plus the various parts of the website in the separate menus.

http://www.cre8ng.com/about-me

Broken Crayons & Creativity

2010-12-08T12:19:00.000-08:00
Broken Crayons & Creativity

Robert Alan Black, Ph.D.

The acronym of BROKEN CRAYONS can help you spark your creativeness during non-creative times. Try one or more of these stimulants to get your creative juices flowing today.

B -- broaden your interests or explore in many areas when seeking information or to understand something new.

R -- reverse viewpoints or perspectives deliberately to see things in new or different ways.

O -- open yourself up to an infinite number of possible ideas.

K -- kick back and let your imagination float or run around.

E -- eliminate steps in procedures to discover new ways to simplify them or solve your problems.

N -- never say never. Keep yourself open to positives in all things or situations.

C -- combine ideas, new and old, tried and experimental, ones you agree with, with ones you don't think will work at first.

R -- rearrange steps, facts, data, ideas, people to create new or unique approaches to problems.

A -- adapt or alter existing ideas to produce new ones.

Y -- yield not to temptation to give up and quit.

O -- orient differently, switch, change, alter, combine, past, present, future, here, there, somewhere, nowhere.

N -- noodle around, play with ideas, look at it as a child or an animal might.

S -- sleep on it for awhile, let your intuitive or subconscious mind work on your problem or situation.

Robert Alan Black, Ph.D. is the author of Broken Crayons: Break Your Crayons and Draw Outside the Lines.

When do you ideas come?

2010-11-24T03:28:00.001-08:00
When do ideas come to you?

When do ideas come to or for you?

1. just waking up
2. just falling sleep
3. middle in the night waking you up
4. while in bath or shower?
5. while riding, driving
6. while walking
7. while jogging
8. while doing the dishes or other simple tasks at home
9. while working on something else
10. in meetings....ha ha...almost never
11. while at your desk...probably seldom
12. while swimming, exercising

When do ideas come to or for you?

Where do Ideas Come From For You?

2010-11-24T03:25:00.000-08:00
Where do Ideas Come From For You?

1. Watching television
2. watching movies
3. watching operas
4. watching plays
5. watching children
6. spending time in nature
7. spending time looking at collectibles
8. reading new books
9. reading old books
10. driving
11. riding on a train, bus, airplane, ferris wheel?

where do you ideas come from?

Traveling to Teach Again to South Africa

2010-09-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

Traveling to Teach Again to South Africa

During the next 3 weeks I will...

To workshops from 90 min to 4 hours at

1. 16th ACRE (African Creativity Conference) in Bela Bela, South Africa at Klein Kariba Spa
2. give talks from classroom presentations to 4 hour workshops at TUT (technical university) and TUK (general university.
3. visit and speak at two Toastmasters clubs in Pretoria
4. Lead a idea generating session with a group of scientists and technicians
5. and....to be arranged.

This is my 12th trip to do basically the same to South Africa, my second home.

Change from the INDUSTRIAL MODEL TO AN ORGANIC ONE

2010-09-05T20:41:00.000-07:00
Change from the INDUSTRIAL MODEL TO AN ORGANIC ONE

Thanks to CA Hurst, a fellow Facebooker I just watched the 2nd Ken Robinson TED Talk.

CA yes I saw that in February and probably watched it two or three times.

funny, interesting, not necessarily new

simple what

where are his how's?

Notice the quote. J. P. Guilford who spent many years on his work with Dr. Mary Meeker into what they called THE STRUCTURE OF THE INTELLECT, which highlighted over 160 forms of intelligence in their model. Following them there have been many critics and researchers who have challenged the minimal model of IQ Tests. Then over the last 15 to 20 years has been the work of Howard Gardner and hundreds to thousands of teachers who have used his basic model of MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES.

Yet here is Sr. Ken Robinson being quoting saying in 2010...

"Human Intelligence is richer and more dynamic than we have been led to believe by formal academic education."

The first books on education, the first courses I took in education at Florida Atlantic University taught me that. Then further books I read that were written decades before said much the same thing.

Here is my response to Sir Ken Robinson's 17:45 min TED Talk

Where are the politicians, school board chairs, school board members, parents, typical classroom teachers that are behind such MAJOR CHANGE?

Some to many teachers over the past 50 or 60 years have tried and some keep trying inside their classrooms even with the FORCED "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" approach of the past decade.

Hopefully the 4,000,000 or 20 times that 80,000,000 people who watched and listened to his first TED Talk in the past 4 years are doing something or will do something to help the CRITICAL MASS finally happen.

I chose to focus on the workplace 30 years ago because I did not see how I might make a difference in the Educational System. As a classroom teacher, K-12, I probably would have been fired many times or I would have quit several times out of frustration.

When I first got involved with 22 elementary school, academically chosen GIFTED Children, one my oldest son, Jeff, I became hooked on reading books about teaching and education.

I bought many paperback books by rebels of education. I checked other such books out of university libraries. I took all the Gifted Ed classes at FAU and then enrolled in a B.Ed program in order to move onto a M.Ed. Then I went on to complete my PhD with the leading and most published educational psychologist focused on creativity and Gifted Ed: Dr. E. Paul Torrance. One of his hundreds of studies was quoted in the recent CREATIVITY CRISIS IN THE US article in Newsweek, which many of us have challenged and criticised thoroughly since its publication in July.

All that said....

John Dewey
Maria Montessori
Sommerhill
Sylvia Ashton Warner
Jaime Escalante
Marva Collins
John Holt
and many others have been trying to change the INDUSTRIAL MODEL (designed to prepar children to be good reliable citizens and workers)

In the 50s along came J. P. Guilford, E. Paul Torrance, Calvin Taylor, Morris I. Stein, all who researched and worked and wrote until their deaths.

In the 60s another group

In the 70s another group, including Edward de Bono focused on thinking, lateral thinking which he named.

80s, 90s, 00s

Now Ken Robinson has the big stage thanks to TED

Hmmm?

Will there finally be a CRITICAL MASS?

Will now starting in 2010 will there be a major effort to change education systems in the US, UK, Europe, Asia, Austalia, Africa, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America because Sir Ken Robinson has given two humorous thought provoking type speeches.

I keep believing there will be and continue to devote most of my wakening hours to doing that as a speaker, writer, consultant.

Some Ideas for a Teacher in Malaysia

2010-09-05T15:01:00.000-07:00

Some Ideas for a Teacher in Malaysia

Dear Khoo

I am just wondering whether you would guide me on the following:

how to teach creative thinking skill in my pupils

There are many, many ways. Here are a few to start...

(a) when writing essays - for example description of a person

I have been part of several creative writing classes and the growing Writer's Groups of Athens, Georgia. One message continually is shared with writers or among writers...show do not tell the reader

have them write many different descriptions of their characters:

good person, bad person, young person, child, when they are happy, when they are sad, when they are silly

they instead of description have them SHOW their character through their actions and their dialog with other characters or their thoughts inside their heads.

(b) how to make my pupils think creative

my master teacher, major professor, long-time colleague and friend Dr. E. Paul Torrance began with 4 ways to help children to regain and expand their creativity

Fluency...create exercises and problems where they generate many possible answers not just ONE CORRECT ANSWER

uses of a brick other than for building
uses of a paperclip other than holding sheets of paper together
new uses for empty used water bottles other than holding liquids

Flexibility...encourage various types of ideas not just multiples of the same idea

Bob Eberle's creative thinking tool created for teaching children to think again more creatively can help.

S.C.A.M.P.E.R.

SUBSTITUTE...what can we substitute about something: materials, size, parts?
COMBINE....what things or actions can we combine to create new ones
ADAPT....how might we make changes to improve or change something
MODIFY, MINIFY, MAGNIFY...change, make smaller, make larger
PUT TO OTHER USES...what else might we use something for
ELIMINATE...what can we remove or get rid of to improve something
REVERSE ....what can we do backwards

(c ) make my pupils realise the importance of being creative

EXAMPLES, EXAMPLES, EXAMPLES

find them in books, magazines, on television shows, in movies, in stories that are popular or traditional in Malaysia

have a display board that shows examples of thinking creatively
have the students bring in their own examples to display and talk about in class in a SHOW AND TELL session maybe once a week

(d) how to spread this importance to members of the school - teachers, principal and community

usually increased postive attitude among students
increased grades
increased involvement
saved time
saved money
saved resources

Most people have to experience the value of creative thinking. Seldom can anyone TELL SOMEONE ELSE that being creative is valuable.

Most people are comfortable doing what they know works, they know is acceptable.

anything that is unique, novel, unusual is usally suspected, seen as strange, weird, risky, unacceptable.

Being creative and producing results often will get others around you to ASK WHAT ARE YOU DOING that is causing your students to

Do better on tests
Do better work
Behave better
Be friendlier, kinder, happier

Hope these ideas are helpful

Also...

You can find much, much more on my website under the CREATIVE MATLS menu. Especially look at the section labeled Learn 2 B More Creative where I talk about my 32 Traits of Highly Creative People and Paul Torrance's 20 traits that his tests have been measuring for 50 years.

http://www.cre8ng.com/about-me/learn2bmorecreative

Perhaps choose one trait per week and provide exercises or problems in the subjects the students are studying that help them practice that trait and encourage them.

For example

Curious....help encourage the use of their natural curiousity and help them increase the tendency to be curious about things.

Future Focused...help them spend time thinking about the future and how what is done right now can impact the results in the future.

I am going to be in Kuala Lumpur speaking at a conference in November.

http://www.cre8ng.com/photos/kuala-lumpur-creativity-conference

I was in K-L and P-K twice in 2001 during my first Global Creativity Tour.

Best wishes and thank you for your questions. May you always find more ways to help your students become more and more creative each day.

Alan

Blogs of Creativity and Creative Thinking

2010-09-05T14:50:00.000-07:00
Blogs of Creativity and Creative thinking

A creativity colleague from the Buffalo State University Creative Studies program, Dr. Cyndi Burnet lists her 36 favorite creativity focused blogs (sadlly none of mine are the list yet).

Creativity blogs

Applied Imagination
Fresh Takes on Innovation
Fast Company Now
Creativity And Innovation Driving Business - The Innovation Index
Creativity Central
Current Issues in Creativity Research
ICSCreativity
Creative Think
the Idea Shower
Lateral Action
Creative Creativity: A Daily Guide To Creativity And New Ideas
Springwise: Promising new business ideas for entrepreneurial minds
Business Innovation Speaker and Consultant Stephen Shapiro
trendwatching.com
Innovation with New & Improved
Innovationedge
Creativity & Innovation
IDEO Labs
New Ideas. New Decisions. Creativity.
innovation playground Idris Mootee
Open Source Innovation
Outside Innovation
Russ Schoen
SUCCEED Blog
Good Morning Thinkers!
Unusual Businesses Ideas That Work
Blueberry Pizza
Blogging Innovation
Center for Creative leadership: leadership at CCL.org, leadership ...
Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook
The Heart of Innovation
I New Idea Homepage
Creativity Research Journal
Recent Issues of Creativity and Innovation Management RSS Feed
NPR : Creativity, Learned or Innate?
Killer Innovations

Take some time each day to read one or two blog messages to get your mind working in the morning.

Alan
http://www.cre8ng.com

4, 6, 12 or More Ps of Creativity

2010-09-05T14:45:00.000-07:00

4, 6, 12 or More Ps of Creativity

Thank you Paul Rosseau for sharing Robert Sternberg's list of 6 factors behind creativity and I just ran with it connecting it to Mel Rhodes 1961 4 Ps of Creativity.

Sternberg and Luba's 6 Factors

intellectual abilities, (Potential)
knowledge, (Preparedness)
styles of thinking, (Preference)
personality, (People)
motivation, (Purpose, Passion)
and environment. (Place, Psychology)

not as catchy as the famous 4 Ps by Mel Rhodes in 1961 in his book An Analysis of Creativity (1961)

Process
Product
People
Press (Place & Psychology) - at least I have always heard academics say he called these PRESS

which are missing?

PURPOSE
PASSION (Motivation - Desire, Drive)
PREPAREDNESS
POTENTIAL (Talent: born or acquired or developed)
PREFERENCE (for how to think and create)
PERSONALITY (lumped under PEOPLE)

and not doubt many other P words....

what would you add to the list?

Answering a Teacher's Questions about Creativity

2010-09-05T05:03:00.000-07:00

Answering a Teacher's Questions about Creativity

Dear Khoo

Very good questions.

Just to ask whether creative thinking is synonymous with innovative thinking.

Since I became involved with creativity and the creativity movement I have come across many definitions for the word creativity and more recently many definitions for the word innovation as well.

Both words: creativity and innovation have grown to have many different meanings and definitions over the years.

A friend/colleague Dr. Andreiv "Andy" Aleinikov edited a book 101 Definitions of Creativity by collecting definitions that many of his colleagues and authors used. He included definitions from the famous and the not so famous (included 2 of my own).

I just did two Google.com searchers
1) definitions of creativity
2) definitions of innovation

and received

1) creativity (over 120,000 responses)
2) innovation (over 110,000 responses)

I explored a few of the hits for each and have attached pdf files of a sampling of them to illustrate that there are many definitions for both words.

This is one reason why creativity and innovation are confusing to most people.

One time I co-wrote an article with Dr. E. Paul Torrance based upon work that the two of us independently had done using some of Edward de Bono's CoRT materials for teaching thinking skills to children. In the article I said that Dr. Torrance measured creativity with his TTCT, tests.

He quickly corrected me.

"No the TTCT tests do not measure creativity. They provide indicators about whether the test taker uses some creative thinking skills and to what degree in comparison with the other people who have completed the test."

When I asked him to explain further he said what I have never forgotten...

"There is no clear, specific, unifornly accepted definition for the word creativity and you can not measure what you can not clearly, distinctly and uniformly define."

In simpler words

if you can not define it you can not measure it.

Dr. Torrance focused on CREATIVE THINKING SKILLS using definitions he clearly, suscinctly and uniformly defined. The results of his TTCT are all based upon probability using a vast reserve of previous test scores.

Creative thinking equals
a) the generation of new, novel, unique, original ideas or
b) is the combination of old ideas in new ways.

That is the definition I have used now for over 30 years since he said that to me.

As to innovation...

My working definition is that innovation is the taking of something that exists and improving or merely changing it in new ways to produce better outcomes.

Many times I see people defining innovation as the productive implementation of creative ideas.

Generally based upon my experience, study and interviewing of many people...most people are afraid of the word creativity, they see being creative as risky, dangerous, potentially leading to failure. At the same time they see Innovation or being innovative as being safe, more logical, less threatening or dangerous or with potential for failure.

Is the task of making origami an innovation?

My western and naive understanding of the ART OF ORIGAMI is that it is a finely honed craft developed through the learning and practicing of highly refined skills and practices to produce specific forms and shapes.

Origami has no doubt been innovated over centuries of practice to what it is now.

Are there Origami artists or practitioners who are further innovating the ART FORM? I can only imagine that there are.

Is it important for a paradigm shift before the pupils can have the right mindset?

When children were free to do, to be, to play, to think before they were
TOLD, SHOWN, REQUIRED, and MADE to THINK (this is an oxymoron...made to think? think implies individual, self- action)

Children are told by their parents, siblings, friends, other adults, teachers, etc. how to think, act, feel or behave and how not to think, act, feel or behave.

Their mindsets are a combination of those of OTHERS mixed in with some of their OWN. Some children, the minority, maintain much of their OWN mindsets.

Yes for children to return to being the creative individuals they were before they were TOLD, SHOWN, REQUIRED and MADE to THINK by parents, relatives, friends, other adults and teachers they often need to be given the opportunity to learn about, experience, believe and use other MINDSETS.

One is....yes they can be, may be, possibly are many answers to any question and not just the one in the answer book or the back of their teacher's book.

Hope these responses are of value to you Khoo.

Alan

Being and Becoming Creative is a Choice

2010-08-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

Being and Becoming Creative is a Choice

Each day from when I wake up I have dozens to hundreds of opportunities to use my creativity, to practice becoming more creative.

What I create, choose or assemble for breakfast?
Where will I walk for exercise?
What will I listen to: cd, dvd, audio tape, iPod or nature as I find it.
What I think throughout my walk?

When I return from my walk my next creative opportunity is what will I work on first that will help me move closer to one of my chosen goals?

Such is my day.

What is your day like?

Do you make choices or are they made mostly for you by others?

Think of using Bob Eberle's helpful creative thinking tool: S.C.A.M.P.E.R.

Substitute often
Combine ideas, 2 or 3 or more
Adapt, Alter
Minify, Magnify, Modify
Put to Other Uses
Eliminate
Reverse

apply these 7 ways for generating new ideas to several things today. Each time strive to be more creative than you were last time.

Best wishes

Visit my new website

http://www.cre8ng.com

read an article
visit another website that I link to.

Alan

9 Dot Puzzle and its Many Possible Answers

2010-08-18T09:52:00.000-07:00
9 Dot Puzzle and its Many Possible Answers

The 9 Dot Puzzle has been around since the 30s according to legend. It was supposedly created by gestalt psychologists and used to examine whether people taking it were OUT OF THE BOX thinkers or CONVENTIONAL THINKERS limited by the virtual box that the puzzle virtually formed.

here are many examples. John Adams who taught his creative thinking class to engineering and science majors at Stanford for over 20 years claimed that he had collected thousands of answers by merely challenging his students to

connect the 9 dots with 4 or less straight lines.

Here are a sample I have collected over the past 30 years.

To see a larger image go to

http://69.89.31.143/~creeigng/?page_id=786

and scan down the page to find the 9 Dot Puzzle sheet.

or write to me and I will email you a full-size jpg of it.

The goal is to connect the dots not use 4 straight lines.

Alan
http://www.cre8ng.com
alan@cre8ng.com

Creativity Crisis in the US...who's kidding who

2010-08-04T09:20:00.001-07:00

Creativity Crisis in the US...who's kidding who

314,004,432 hits for creativity on Yahoo http://bit.ly/diZusL

39.3000,000 hits for creativity on Google http://bit.ly/bWy0po

CREATIVITY BOOKS search on Amazon.com books 9,589 Results

too bad NEWSWEEK magazine claims that the US is suffering from a CREATIVITY CRISIS.

Alan

OUT, IN, ALONG SIDE, WITHOUT THE BOX AT ALL

2010-08-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

Out-of-Box, In-the-Box, New-Box, Other-Box, No-Box Thinking

Number 11
For years supporters and detractors of creative thinking in the workplace have talked about Out-of-the-Box Thinking.

The supporters, often consultants and researchers, have stressed the easiest way for people to be creative was to think out-of-the-box, to break their paradigms or mindsets, their ways of thinking.

The detractors have pointed out often the damage such thinking can produce and stressed the counteractive effects upon the total organization and its more global goals and mission.

Within organizations particular departments have been labelled out-of-the-box: R&D, Marketing, Human Resource Department and Creative Services and resisted by the finance, purchasing, administration, shipping, and other departments who prefer to stay in their carefully constructed boxes or the boxes provided for them.

As a consultant, speaker and college professor I have promoted the development of out-of-the-box thinking in all people, all departments for about 20 years, normally to a thundering thud of silence.

Occasionally creative type departments will entertain the idea of learning how to leave boxes but generally they already know how. Their problems center on the debris, anger, frustration they leave in their wake when they do tear done or damage boxes.

Recently in an email message, Chris Barlow, Ph.D., professor at IITs Management Department and long-time fellow CPSI faculty member and colleague challenged me on an apparent emphasis on out-of-the-box thinking as the primary source of creative thinking.

Instantaneous flash of the obvious occurred. An Aha!

Stressing mainly or even only out-of-the-box thinking excludes a wealth of other sources of creativity:

in-the-box, no-box, new-box, other-box thinking
Immediately jumping out of a box or tearing it down eliminates many possibilities of ideas and solutions that can come from staying in-the-box. If we stay in our box we can examine what has worked?, what hasnt worked?, what might work if we only....?, how can we capitalize on what is working while still changing or improving it?

By forcing ourselves to leave our box we cut ourselves off from the not-yet-understoods or not-thoroughly communicated or experienced existing knowledge within our existing box. Or as Sid Shore has tried to teach us for many years, Whats Good About It (our box)?

By using new box thinking instead of out-of-the-box thinking we provide ourselves with controllable and measurable limits or useful restraints.

New Box Thinking is a controlled form of out-of-the-box thinking. The best analogy is one that Edward de Bono has used often to describe the difference between vertical thinking (box) and lateral thinking (out-of-the-box, actually new box). He has written that vertical thinking is comparable to digging the same hole deeper to find the treasure and horizontal or lateral thinking is digging new holes in many locations (new boxes).

Out-of-the-box thinking would go beyond simply digging new holes it might involve looking in the air, under the sea or using other tools or methods beyond simply a shovel As Abraham Maslow has told us, If you see your only tool as a hammer (shovel), then you will see all your problems as nails (holes to be dug).

Other-Box Thinking involves leaving yours and entering someone elses once again with the Whats Good About It? philosophy. An example might be for the creative department to send people to work in the finance, purchasing, shipping, manufacturing departments to learn what the grass on the other side of the fence is really like in the other boxes. Benefits might be: 1) greater understandings of the benefits of the other boxes,

2) a sharing of commonalties within boxes,

3) ways to integrate and interlock boxes.

Another example often used in todays business and industry is for employees from a manufacturing company to visit and work with people in their various supplier or vendor companies to understand their boxes and to share about their own with them.

No-Box Thinking might mean complete open thinking with no limits or Virtual/Transparent-Box Thinking. No-Box thinking challenges the greatest majority of people because of the tremendously potential risks involved. Anything can wrong at any time. There is no box to provide any protection. No fortress or castle walls. Yet if people are encouraged to use out-of-the-box thinking as part of their job, a small percentage at first expanding as they are ready.

3M is reported to encourage their research people to spend up to 15% of their time on exploratory projects, thinkingout- of-the-box, while still accomplishing the 100% of their work they have contracted to complete within the other 85% of their time. Post-It notes are but one example of this approach.

Its interesting that in elementary schools and some middle schools across the country teachers have been using this reward approach to provide students with time during their school day for out-of-the-box thinking time and projects of their own choosing, if and only if they complete their required work early.

Virtual/Imaginary Box thinking may provide the best of both in and out thinking. The box is there in the form of policies and principles yet the employees are allowed to look out of their box or even venture out knowing that they can always return to the security and safety of their box.

Next time you consider breaking out of your box consider these other options.

Re-look at the box you think you are in. It may actually not have permanent, impregnable walls as you current believe or think.
Look within to solutions you have never considered or can reconsider from the past. Work within the box.
Visit other boxes, within or without your organization. Much can be learned and shared with the inhabitants.
Experiment at least part of the time with having no boxes. Perhaps keep a tether attached back to your box just in case. Even the most experienced mountain climbers rarely climb unattached.
Encourage the use of virtual or transparent wall materialfor your box.
Gradually teach others the benefits of out-of-the-box thinking, while you learn the benefits you have never considered that lie within the boxes where you already are.
Remember our boxes are in our minds most of the time.

©1990 Robert Alan Black, Ph.D.
RAB, Inc. - Cre8ng People, Places & Possibilities
P. O. Box 5805 Athens, Georgia 30604-5805
alan@cre8ng.com -- www.cre8ng.com
1-706-353-3387

Accelerated Learning and how we Really Learn

2010-05-17T08:27:00.000-07:00
Accelerated Learning and how we Really Learn

Here is a short message about Super Learning/Accelerated learning shared with permission from

"Gail Heidenhain"

Every model (Teaching/Learning/Coaching/Counseling), method or philosophy has its presuppositions, a certain filter through which the world is viewed. Accelerated Learning is no exception, and since it is a method that focuses on the influence of a learner’s cognitive belief system on learning, it is important to reflect on those beliefs about learning that underlie the AL model and the way we do things. Some of those beliefs are:

· You have to be present to learn. This means more than physically present, it means that the learner is also mentally and psychologically present as well.

· Learning is not about memorizing lots of information, it is about transforming how we think and act.

· The trainer’s role is not to “spray and pray” or “cover the content”. In other words, the teacher, trainer, facilitator’s job is not to instruct, solely present information, or deliver content; it is to facilitate learning. When learning has happened, our job is done, not before.

· Each person brings their cognitive belief systems, their previous “learnings” and their hopes and aspirations with them. The facilitator designs experiences to help learners tap into what they know, potentially unlearn what is not helpful, engage fully in the process of learning, experience things that provide an opportunity to re-think, unlearn, and transform what is possible. Both during and after the process, learners are encouraged to notice what they are experiencing, reflect on its meaning, and as a result, add to or change how they think.

Creative Leading in the 21st Century

2010-05-17T06:39:00.000-07:00
You can be, become, choose to be a creative leader by mostly being yourself, using your unique strengths and developing those who you have the opportunity to lead.

Alan

Think different

2010-05-17T06:32:00.000-07:00
Do you think DIFFERENT?
Do you lively DIFFERENTLY?
Do you choose to be DIFFERENT?

Then you will enjoy this video.

Alan

NEVER GIVE UP, Nick Vujicic in a School

2010-05-17T06:24:00.000-07:00
Let this video touch your heart while Nick touches others through his story and life lessons

Happy Holidays

2009-12-23T04:35:00.000-08:00
Happy Holidays to you as a follower.

I will be more regularly posting in 2010.

You can access much more material on my website at http://www.cre8ng.com

Scan down to the CREATIVITY RESOURCES and click on articles, books, coaching, counseling, etc.

Best wishes to you.

Thank you for following this blog.

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com

Tools, Tools and Even More Tools

2009-09-17T19:55:00.000-07:00
Last weekend I presented a 1/2 day program on Meeting Tools and Creative Thinking Tools at the 7th Mindcamp at Cedar Glen WMCA camp northwest of Toronto.

I spent many hours collecting, editing, pulling together material for my session and the supportive ppt that I was going to make available to all those who attended my session and to all those who attended Mindcamp but chose other sessions to go to at the same time.

cie le vie

I was hoping for 20 to 40 people to show up.

cie le vie

8 people showed up initially. Then a 9th came in about 30 minutes later and left about 5 minutes after that. Then one of the original 8 left after the break because they were not feeling well.

Bummer! I was hoping for an active, reactive, highly interactive group of people with varying degrees of experience and knowledge of Meeting and Creative Thinking Tools and Techniques.

cie le vie

Those who came were eager to learn.

I changed my program on the spot, not unusual for me to do and focused most of the time on meeting tools for welcoming, ice breaking, bonding, challenging people to think and get active in meetings. During the last 35 to 40 minutes I did an overview of 3 divergent and 3 convergent creative idea generating and selecting tools.

As a commitment to fulfill the desires of those who come to my sessions wherever I go and speak I promised to create a website that would grow and fulfill all of their goals.

You can enjoy it too at your convenience at...

http://www.cre8ng.com/2009mindcamptools.htm

I have been collecting, using and creating tools for over 30 years now and continue to every week through my Yahoo.com group titled: Alan's Cre8ng Challenges as I have since January 1997.

I have developed a working habit of using tools from the planning stage of a meeting or event to just before it begins, when it begins throughout the entire meeting and as follow up and follow thru following the meeting.

Obtaining people's attention, to learn their intention and increasing their retention is an ongoing and ongrowing desire of mine and focus.

I hope you find material of value to you at this new website and the various websites it links you to.

Best wishes,

Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

Robert Alan Black, Ph.D., CSP

Nottingham Creative Business Awards

2009-05-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

Nottingham celebrates its creativity and innovation

An inspirational event at Nottingham's Council House on Tuesday June 2nd 2009 from 5-7pm
Nottingham Creative Business Awards 2009

Nottingham is once more celebrating its vibrant and creative community as the Nottingham Creative Business Awards 2009 is launched.

Now in its third year, the awards will celebrate the city's creative sector which enhances Nottingham's profile as a creative city of national and international importance. They aim to recognise and celebrate the successes achieved by businesses and individuals working in the city's creative industries and raise Nottingham's profile as hotbed of globally influential talent.

The city is bursting at the seams with the most amazing musicians, photographers, graphic designers, writers, fashion designers, advertising agencies, interior designers, performers, dancers, artists and film makers.

The innovation of these businesses and the international recognition many of them have has helped put Nottingham on the creative map and begun to be recognised as a highly credible cultural capital.

Representatives from the creative sector, including past award winners, will come together under the grand setting of Nottingham's Council House on Tuesday June 2nd 2009 for the launch of this year's awards.

Nottingham Trent University 's choir will be performing Abba hits and other surprising numbers at the start of the launch at 5pm during the arrival of guests.

Guests will hear from past winners Maber (acclaimed Nottingham Architects) and Eternal Spirits (Internationally recognised corsetry specialists) about their experiences, the benefits of winning a creative business award and the positive impact it has on businesses.

Guests will also be told about the application process and how to enter and how applicants are judged on their work.

Simon Green, The Director of Sustainable Development at Nottingham City Council, said: "We want to continue with the success of previous years by encouraging as many people as possible to enter for awards

"These awards are our opportunity to show the world how much excellent creative work is going on around the city and are a great tribute to all the established and emerging creative individuals and businesses our exciting city has.

"As a council we are committed to promote and develop the creative industries as a key sector of the city's economy and this is why we are a candidate city for the World Design Capital in 2012."

Ann Priest Pro Vice-Chancellor and Head of College, Art and Design and Built Environment at Nottingham Trent University said: "Nottingham Trent University, College of Art Design and Built Environment is delighted once again to support the Nottingham Creative Business Awards. The College has been central to developing and sustaining the creative community and creative entrepreneurs of Nottingham for over 150 years. The considerable creative influence and business impact of their enterprises is demonstrated year on year through these Awards; and we are looking forward once again to showcasing and celebrating the best of Nottingham Creative Businesses'.

The awards ceremony will be held on Wednesday 7th October at The Council House.

Deadline for entrants is Friday 31st July 2009 at 5pm. PLEASE NOTE the deadline for the Writing and Publishing award, Film and TV award and Music and Performing Arts award is Wednesday 1st July 2009 at 5pm and may relate to work created or designed in the previous two years. Self-nomination or nominations by a third party are acceptable.

Confirmed sponsors for the awards are:

Architecture, Urban & Interior Design – Greater Nottingham Partnership

Music & Performing Arts – New College Nottingham

Product Design – Nottingham City Council

Writing & Publishing – The Arts Council

Graphics & Advertising – St Tropez

Fashion & Textiles – Nottingham Trent University

Digital Media – South Nottingham College

Visual Arts – One nottingham

For further information on the categories and application process then please visit Nottingham Creative Business Awards 2009

All media are welcome to attend the launch event at the Council House, Old Market Square, on Tuesday 2nd June from

Creativity step child to Innovation???

2009-05-28T15:34:00.000-07:00

Creativity seems to be
a poor stepchild
to innovation these days.

Sorry you see it that way Chuck.

Innovation has become a SAFE term, a BUZZWORD for those who are afraid to actually think creatively or let their employees be creative and not robotic innovators.

Are all those companies that are claiming to be now focused on Innovation truly innovative or has it become the BENCHMARK, BEST PRACTICES, RE-ENGINEERING of today.

Are supervisors, managers, team leaders, CEOs, owners of companies truly

Supporting the creative thinking of their employees
Promoting them
Recognizing them
Encouraging or Educating them
Applying them
Developing them

or are them simply using INNOVATION as their slogan of today?

I wonder?

Most innovation consultants whose websites I visit appear to be selling \
their formulas,
their systems,
their structures,
their LEAN MANAGMENT,
their SIX SIGMAs

while not long after the consultant leaves the premises most are going back to their usually uninnovate, uncreative habits and methods?

I wonder?

Robert Alan Black, Ph.D., CSP
http://www.cre8ng.com

Creativity Conferences: US & Around Globe
http://www.ifoco.org

We Are All Born Creative-Yet we don't all use it!
We Can Improve Our Creative Skills Daily
Learn to S.P.R.E.A.D. C,r,e,8,N,G, & Creative Thinking thruout
Alan's Cre8ng Challenges (weekly)
total collection
http://www.cre8ng.com/CC/index.shtml

Taught to Seek Solutions

2009-05-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

Taught to Seek Solutions

We are taught through our school systems, our workplaces and our families to discover, find, create, stumble upon solutions.

Always solutions.

Yet what does the word solution really mean?

Solution

The method or process for solving a problem.

The answer to a problem.

Answer

A solution or a result of solving a problem.

Solve

To find a solution to a problem.

Solution = Answer

Now I ask…

Are solutions finite?

Are solutions final?

Are solutions/answers only temporary at best?

Are there only single solutions or answers to problems?

Class what is the answer to 1 + 1?

In the minds of the teachers who ask this question there is only one answer, one correct answer.

What is the capital of Georgia?

When was “X” fought, born, discovered, published…….?

To these questions SINGLE ANSWERS/SOLUTIONS are implied.

Life Questions, Questions in REAL life
Problems outside of school, in the home, at work, in life

None of these have single solutions/answers most of the time.

Today’s correct answer may be wrong tomorrow.

Today’s solutions, generally will create tomorrow’s problems.

Maybe you can discover, create, produce, find, stumble upon, agree upon a solution/answer that appears to be a CORRECT ANSWER/SOLUTION at a specific time. Yet soon after you or someone else will discover, create, produce, find, stumble upon, agree upon another solution/answer that appears to be more CORRECT at that moment.

None of the definitions for answer, solution, solve include the word CORRECT.

CORRECTNESS is implied, demanded, expected, infurred.

Productive
Efficient
Effective
Successful
Improved
Innovative
Creative
New
Original
Unique
Novel
Weird
Strange
Unusal
Doable
Better
Workable

Answer
Solution
Result

Solutions
Ideas
Answers
Resolutions
Possibilities
Probabilities
Designs
Creations
Sketches
Thoughts
Concepts
Guesses
Estimations
Innovations
Creations

Thinking
Rethinking
Studying
Analyzing
Synthesizing
Understanding
Belief
Philosophy
Assumption
Premise
Theory
Hypothesis

When something is first invented it is THE SOLUTION
Then over time we keep improving, innovation, recreating, creating anew, changing, adjusting modifying, advancing

1968 solution
not equal to
2009 solution

are they both solutions, answers,

are either truly the correct answer/solution

or simply chosen solutions/answers/resolutions

Meditative an answer/solution
Intuitive one possible answer / one from many ideas
Negotiative our idea/answer
Directive ‘THE’ ANSWER

Today’s great medicines may become useless or poisons in the future

Today’s beautiful cars, designs, buildings
Maybe seen as dated or ugly tomorrow or in the future

Any Human Activity Can Help Develop Creative Thinking

2009-05-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

Any Human Activity Can Help Develop Creative Thinking

Like Mr, Miyagi (spelling?) in Karate Kid shown his student painting a fence, washing a car and many other activities can teach, prepare, rehearse someone in the skills of karate, such can happen through many activities including

video games

can prepare someone to become more creative.

see the attached sheet that shows the 32 traits I focus on. Also there are the 20 that E. Paul Torrance's famous Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking focus upon. That is a total of 52 and those are not the only skills and traits involved with creatively thinking, creatively solving problems, finding problems....

when the student is ready the teacher will appear.

whether it is a question from Socrates while sitting on the grass at his feet
writing or drawing on a chalkboard
an overhead projected image
a video
a dvd or cd

we can learn and develop many skills

the medium is simply that the medium

Alan

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES KEEP CREATIVITY ALIVE

2009-05-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES KEEP CREATIVITY ALIVE

Lists of traits of highly creative people mostly all contain

fluent
flexible
elaborative
original

school systems, cultures, families, religions, groups, perhaps systems in general tend to reduce the need for being

fluent
flexible
elaborative
original

so when we are born we are born with many capacities that support and cause us to be creative by nature

yet then we grow up and are educated not to be

fluent
flexible
elaborative
original

for those of us whose lives involved much change, variety, moving from place to place, town to town, state/province to state/province or country to country

we were exposed to high degrees of difference
we observed people being

fluent
flexible
elaborative
original

for me it was my parents' annual FAMILY VACATION,
only once did my two older brothers go
I went every year for 13 or 14 years and experienced all 48 mainland US states, 4 provinces and one Mexican state.

during the first 6 years after graduating from architectural school I worked in 9 different architectural firms and my own (10th)....and had to learn almost 9 completely systems and sets of working happens and approaches to doing the same work.

In total since I started working part-time as a freelance artist at 16 I have had 47 jobs in 8 professions.......a source of learning many different ways of doing things.

what about for you?

has there been much change in your environments: personal, professional, family?

physical, psychological, visual, social, emotional?

Alan

Breaking Crayons to create

2009-04-15T18:24:00.000-07:00

Breaking Crayons Produces Creativity

Class now take out your pretty crayons. Remember we want to keep them neat. Handle them carefully. We don't want to break them.

Across the United States school teachers continually tell their students this daily. But why? Are they trying to teach them orderliness or how to use some wonderful tools.

Keeping crayons neat, not peeling them (because children will not know the names of the colors), and not breaking them limits the creativity of the children and eventually diminishes their natural creativity as adults.

Crayons can be seen as metaphors for tools. Too often teachers, parents, even employers or friends and fellow managers or workers squelch natural creativeness by emphasizing neatness, orderliness, and limited, selected use of tools.

For instance, what are crayons? They are simply portions of colored wax. Why are they pointed? Because Binney & Smith, the Crayola™ manufacturers, thought they would look and work better if they were shaped like pencils? The pencil shape restricts the possibilities of line widths and shapes. Why do they have wrappers on them? Perhaps the manufacturers wanted the children to remember the colors name (in small print) and also to reinforce the brand name (in very large bold print)? Rarely do children or artists refer to colors by the manufacturers chosen names. Plus the name is not important. While the visual recognition of the color is.

If the inference of the teachers crayon lessons is taken literally, we need to learn to use our tools only in the manufacturers prescribed ways. If we do this we will only limit our potential capabilities as tool users, problem solvers and creative human beings. This is also true of the greatest number of our rules, policies and traditions in the common workplace. Breaking crayons symbolizes the need and act of change that is especially needed in todays medical profession.

What policies have you been following without question? What procedures have you not analyzed or challenged for relevancy today? What job assignments have you reviewed for their necessity recently? What work tasks have you reviewed for responsibility placement this year to better serve your patients? Break your crayons!

Perhaps you have a policy requiring multiple signatures for purchases over $100. Perhaps the policy was put into effect in 1963. Break this crayon. Can you raise the dollar value to $250 or more in todays dollars? Re-examine what time and steps are required for the signatures to be collected or who is actually collecting the signatures. Perhaps in 1963 the three or four people who then signed the requisition were located near each other but now are in varied locations at your facility? Back in 1963 it took a few minutes to collect the signatures. Today it might take 3 or 4 days using inter-department mail. Break this crayon!

Have you examined the locations of your equipment, department by department, use by use, shift by shift recently? The locations may be based on decisions made in 1978? When you think about it you may realize you have had 5 separate renovation projects since then. Break these crayons!

Have you purged your record storage recently? Break your crayons! Research continues to report that very few stored records are ever used again, even though they are required by law. Verify whether you could lessen your record storage without sacrificing completeness. Verify whether you have duplication or not. Ask, Can we store these records more efficiently or more effectively. Break these crayons!

Department by department, job by job, shift by shift examine equipment storage locations. You may even check to see if you have acquired multiple tools or materials that duplicate each other. Break your crayons!

Each of these may be crayons at your medical center, hospital or clinic. Each might function better or be better performed if they were broken and examined to be made more efficient and effective.

Is your floor plan layout like a box of unbroken crayons--limited in its flexibility and outdated for todays needs? Are doorways in their best locations? What about the placement of lighting? What about the type of lighting? Does it suit your needs in 1993? Are the colors of your walls, floors, ceilings, equipment, uniforms effective for today?

Each of these also may be crayons at your medical center, hospital or clinic. Each may be vastly improved if they were broken and examined and then replaced or modified to suit the 90s.

Change and flexibility are the greatest strategies and tools of the 1990s in the medical field. By learning to break our crayons. By training your staff to break their crayons you can discover and develop more efficient and effective policies, procedures, tools, methods, and systems. Each of these can benefit all aspects of the medical field.

So! Peel your crayons. Then break them. Then experiment making as many different kinds of lines as you can with the broken ends, the unbroken ends, the sides. Hold several different pieces at one time and discover what you can create. Challenge your rules, policies, procedures and traditions (paradigms). Try doing things differently, at least in small ways.

Using our tools as prescribed, teaches us only to follow instructions, not to think, not to create and therefore limits the possibility of discovery.

So what might you do? Go break a crayon today. Have fun. Discover as much as you can. Encourage employees to break crayons. In fact you may have a staff meeting and have everyone break crayons together. Remember those who see their tools only as hammers will only see their problems as nails. Instead see your hammer, your crayons, your tools as objects that may have endless uses when you apply your natural imagination and intelligence to challenges you choose.

©1990, 2009 Robert Alan Black, Ph.D.
RAB, Inc. - Cre8ng People, Places & Possibilities
P. O. Box 5805 Athens, Georgia 30604-5805
alan@cre8ng.com -- www.cre8ng.com
1-706-353-3387

Being Creative is Always Your Choice

2009-04-06T20:58:00.001-07:00

When we all wake up we have the choice each day to be creative. We can choose to take time to list many ways to do everything we need or want to do any day. If we choose novel things our lives will be different each day.

My recommendation for you today is to read a book you have never read before today.

Perhaps read one of the books in the photo above.

Go walk somewhere you have never walked in your town or city.

Go spend time in a park, zoo. Volunteer at a kindergarten or pre-school. Spend time with young children

Choose to be an open-thinker without immediate answers that someone else gave you.

Have fun being creative in many ways today.

Wandering ALan

http://www.cre8ng.com

Creativeness in the US

2008-08-09T06:41:00.000-07:00
Creativeness in the US

Many years ago, thanks to Paul Torrance and many others, I accepted that all human beings are born with the capacity to be creative. Also since I have accepted that all living things have some degree of cabilities to be creative.

Though seeds are supposedly identical no two plants end up exactly the same.

As I continue to travel I find more and more creativity in every country.

Not of the same type necessarily.

Westernized / modernized countries seem to have become technical freaks

not so modernized countries still create at a slower pace

When I was in Taipei the first time by host had two of his students take me wherever I wanted to go during those few days. One place was to the Chinese history museum located outside of the city.

From the beginning when Chiang Kai-shek 1887–1975, Chinese Nationalist leader and his followers fled mainland China to Formosa creating Taiwan the followers took with them, stole and took with them arts, crafts, and other things representing the best of their thousands of years of culture.

When I was at the museum I took the ENGLISH TOUR and afterward wandered some.

I found an exhibit of arts and crafts over thecenturies that I will never forget.

It started out with examples from about 10,000 years ago in China. As I walked around each room, each wall progressively I was seeing examples from 10,000, 9,000, 8,000.....to the last room that represented about 3,000 from the Egyptians to the final wall, the final few feet of the final wall that represented the time from the Italian Renaissance to 2003.

Hmmmm 500 years of creativity compared to 9,500 years of creativity.

Two wonderful British television documentary type shows both by James Burke: CONNECTIONS and THE DAY THE EARTH STOPPED

both stressed the connections and histories of inventions.

watching those helped start my growing awareness of the global connectedness of invention and creativeness of all countries.

My comments about the US and creativity are based upon the comments I hear from most other people around the world's view of the US as the most creative nation.

To me having lived here for 63 1/2 years is a misconception, a generalization, a stereotype.

Yes we appear as highly creative but most people do not use theirs

a smaller example is the Disney Corporation

most people from the outside see it as a highly creative company

when in reality their greatest strengths are in MARKETING and buying other people's creativity.

Walt Disney almost never wrote a creative, new story.

He took existing, copyright free, public domain, classic or ancient stories and made things from them.

PIXAR, DREAMWORKS, SPEILBERG, APPLE....now those are CREATIVE COMPANIES

I have read authors who typically say that

the US CONCEIVES and sometimes INVENTS other countries take those concepts and makes them work then the US (used to) MASS PRODUCES THEM

now we seem to buy/steal from around the world

our cars are supposedly some of the best in the world in quality yet most people do not know or believe that because of the paradigm or mindset that develped when the US Auto companies focused on

cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, more profit, more profit

quality be damned

We I grew up the paradigm was

MADE IN JAPAN meant junk

by the 1980s

MADE IN JAPAN meant the best in the world

much like the image of Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, even Germany for years

In the 1980s quality became the BUZZWORD many of our companies became OBCESSED WITH QUALITY

now it is PROFIT again.

Creativity is still SCAREY to management

Innovation is the latest BUZZWORD

but the real focus is still SELL, SELL, SELL and PROFIT AT ALMOST ANY COST

Heaven forbide that a supervisor or manager would encourage employees to be creative.

Willingly Wondering Wandering in search of Wisdom Alan

Visualizing for Me

2008-08-09T06:32:00.000-07:00
Visualizing for Me

When I first went to CPSI in Buffalo many of the session leaders used GUIDED IMAGERY from mildly controlling to nearly complete control.

"see a white ball"

"see a yellow motorcycle"

What I see is a blank black screen

When my wife, Merry's partner, Carleen, a massage therapist and psychotherapist, gave me massages I would see wonderful images that I wish I could capture to paint or draw but they continually flowed by.

I can not close my eyes and SEE anything usually.

I dream in images and actions.

Originally I thought there was something wrong with me because

I could not SEE IMAGES like everyone else claimed they could.

So I stopped going to any sessions that used guided imagery

I read several books about Guided Imagery. One helped because she talked about not trying to control it. Simply suggest and invite people to SEE, SENSE, IMAGINE, THINK about the objects, experiences.

One day I asked Paul Torrance about it and he directed me to an article in the Journal of Creative Behavior. The author talked about many ways of SEEING or VISUALIZING including my own....impressions, thoughts, details, memories but not images.

I can not see Merry's face or anyone's face by simply closing my eyes and thinking about it.

I can SENSE their face or the place or ojbect but yet not see it.

After awhile I began asking other art faculty about whether or not they SAW IMAGES in their minds or 3rd Eyes. Out of the 58 highly respected: regionally, nationally and in some cases internationally; artists most of them said they did NOT SEE IMAGES.

A few of us one day sitting around the faculty lounge theorized that perhaps is why we became artists or designers and began recording our images, thoughts, imaginary impressions in our chosen media.

We imagine intuitively, abstractly. We sense it.

While many others see the whole picture like a movie set any time they want to.

I only wish it were that easy.

Nicholai Tesla claimed he could see complete movie images, real seeming images that he could put away in his mind to look at later to examine them for any wear and tear.

Alas I only sense things in my mind that I will only see if I physically create them in 3 or 4 dimensions of space.

Willingly, Wondering, Wandering in search of Wisdom Alan

Stimulating Your Creativity

2008-08-09T05:55:00.000-07:00

STIMULATING YOUR CREATIVITY

A book I just became aware of and ordered arrived yesterday and I started reading it this morning as a daily read/study for the next few days to a week or so.

STIMULATED!
BY Andrew Pek and Jeannine McGlade

I became aware of them over the internet as creativity consultants: product design/problem solving focus.

Stimulation is one of the factors

Timing is another
Need/Desire...
Challenge
and many other factors

...all come into play to yield, produce, spark, explode our creativity: amount, level, type, energy etc.

These are some of the variables I have discovered, learned and experienced over the 30 years I have CONSCIOUSLY explored, examined and focused on creativity and creative thinking.

Some times it is just DUMB LUCK!

One of the early writers about creativity and creative processes described a 4-step process being required for creativity

Graham Wallas

Preparation....prepare....work, work, work until you can't seem to work any more or you don't feel/believe/think you are getting anywhere

Incubation....then you walk away, go to sleep, travel, work on something totally different.

Inspiration/Eureka!...then the AHA!, the breakthrough happens...such as when I work up this morning with my mind flying in multiple ways simultaneously.

Implementation...then you apply the new concept, the idea, the new information, the new answers or simply another concept, idea, info, answer you hadn't tried before

working definition...

creativity...equals the generation/discovery of new ideas or the combination of old ideas in a new way

At CPSI/CEF/ACRE and other conferences that have spun off or been created by alumni of CPSI/CEF where we teach the Osborn-Parnes 6 step Creative Problem Solving Process we attempt to help people become CREATIVE WHEN THEY NEED TO BE/BECOME by following the six steps...

1. objective finding/discovering/creating
2. fact finding/discovering/creating
3. problem finding/discovering/creating
4. idea finding/discovering/creating
5. solution finding/discovering/creating
6. action/acceptance finding/discovering/creating

In other words....causing that creative spark happen more often when you want it to not when it JUST HAPPENS.

There is not guarantee with all our processes, tools, techniques, tricks or stimuli that a GREAT BREAKTHROUGH will be SPARKED. At least you can cause yourself to be more creative like than you may feel by using the processes, tools, techniques, tricks or stimuli.

I feel an article, blog, book escaping through my fingers.

this has been fun

time to go for a walk for fresh air, exercise and to help spark my sluggish body to burn more fat while strengthening some muscles or creating new ones.

Best wishes from

Willingly Wondering Wandering in Search of Wisdom Alan

Being More Creative is a Daily Choice

2008-01-23T06:34:00.001-08:00
Being More Creative is a Daily Choice

Each day you have the choice to think creatively morning when you wake up until you go to sleep.

Start today!

Every time you have to make a decision simply ask the following questions.

What else might I do?
What else is done by others?
Where else might I apply this?
How else might I apply this?

What resources might I Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Minimize, Magnify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, Reverse or Remove?

What systems or methods might I apply SCAMPER to in order to generate new ideas or methods?

S.C.A.M.P.E.R. a Checklisting Creative Thinking Tool created by Bob Eberle based upon Alex Osborn's 83 Questions.

Alan
http://www.cre8ng.com

Choose to Be Creative Daily

2007-11-30T06:18:00.000-08:00

We all can choose to be creative daily. From when we wake up until we fall or go to sleep each night we have hundreds to thousands of opportunities when we can choose to be creative

to think more creatively

to think more uniquely

to think more diverently.

Have you thought creatively today?

When you did how did it feel to you?

How did you feel afterward?

From A to Z you can do everything you do more creatively.

How have you been more creative today?

Alan
http://www.cre8ng.com

Naysayers are Usually Non-Thinkers

2007-11-30T05:23:00.000-08:00

My general observation of most people is that their 12, 16, up to 20 years in their school systems they have become...

'RIGHT ANSWER' PEOPLE

not Thinkers, rational or creative, divergent or really convergent

most people are regurgitators of facts or answers that are in books or some expert's mind.

Fortunately I spend most of my waking hours alone or with people who are divergers, idea generators, open-to-the-wildest-idea people.

Every once in awhile I am around one of those

naysayers
idea killers
closed minds
non-thinkers

I try to jokingly move them from their rigid non-thinking. If they don't get the point easily I move on and leave them to their very narrow, limited, black and white world.

The world and universe is unlimited in colors and unlimited in potential ideas.

Like you said I believe in the concept that the WILDEST IDEAS can lead to perspectives, angles, directions of thinking I might not have considered if I hadn't heard the wild, weird, whacky, strange ideas.

52-20 Severely Critical

2007-06-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

Severely Critical

Severely critical of self,
their work,
potential of area of focus and
the potential of other people

This is one of the 32 personality traits I discovered in 1980 doing my study of what the experts thought were the traits of HIGHLY CREATIVE people. Ever since I have been interviewing, surverying and often researching HIGHLY CREATIVE people in every group I have worked with.

The trouble with being severely critical of these 4 HIGHLY CREATIVE people are often seen as critical of other people (a general human trait), which usually ends up with them be pushed out of groups or causing them to lose friends.

This week analyze your CRITICAL NATURE. What are you critical of? How critical are you? Do you think that your critical nature gets in the way or hurts you personally and professionally?

Each day take your CREATIVITY DEVELOPMENT time to explore your CRITICAL NATURE in different areas of your life.

MONDAY
Hobbies and fun things you do

TUESDAY
Your work

WEDNESDAY
Society in General

THURSDAY
What is happening around the world now

FRIDAY
The future for all of us, humankind and the world in general

CRITICISM OFTEN LEADS TO CREATIVITY
YET CAN ALSO LEAD TO DESTRUCTION OR DISASTER.

Remember that to critique does not mean the same as being critical to most people, at least in the US.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-19 Multiple Idea Combination

2007-05-30T06:11:00.000-07:00

Car-radio, wrist watch, iPhone, iPod, and the list goes on of examples of where people have combined ideas to create new ideas that have led to new products, services, solutions.

Car radio led to radio car.

Drive In Restaurant, restaurant drive in, drive in theater, theater to drive in.

Forced Relationships is a creative thinking tool that you will find written about in many books on creativity over the past 50 top 60 years. Simply take two separate objects, things, ideas, concepts and combine them to discover what might come from it.

If you start with 10 ideas and create a 10 x 10 grid using those ideas as the x and y columns and rows then combine each x idea with each y idea you immediately have 100 ideas.

Deliberately practice combining ideas to kick start and refresh your thinking.

Bring boxes or bags of unrelated small items into a meeting and randomly place them on a table. Ask each person to pick up two items and generate lists of possible combinations. Then strive to turn the random combinations into potential products or services.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-18 Sense Feelings and Emotions

2007-05-30T05:59:00.000-07:00

Sensing Feelings and Emotions of people, a room, a company, a product, a situation seems to be a trait of highly creative people and a skill that can be developed.

Each day for the next week deliberately choose to focus on feelings and emotions you sense in the people around you, the situations, in yourself.

Also while watching a movie or television show focus only on feelings and emotions you pick up on using your senses. Explore body language, facial expressions, hand movements, location or positioning of people, ambiance (lighting, coloring).

Another way emotion and feelings can help us is for us to gradually become aware how our feelings and emotions impact our creativeness and creativity.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-17 Breakthrough from Current Limits

2007-05-28T16:45:00.000-07:00

Breakthrough from Current Limits

Think of any new idea, invention, accidental discovery you think is really important.

Chances are it is a breakfrom, breakthrough, run around, an avoidance of Currrent Limits at the time.

Daily spend time what might currently be limits in your life, your work, your mind.

Then spend time thinking about how you might breakfrom, breakthrough, run around or simply avoid them in order to accomplish greater results.

Apple computers cost thousands.

Apple computers costing $100.

Clothes that change colors, textures, pattersn.

No need to drive.

No need for wiring for distributing electricity.

May you break, go beyond, around, under, over limits to achieve more creativeness in your daily life.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-16 Perspective, Micro or Nano Scale (seeing close up to microscopic and closer)

2007-05-27T08:46:00.001-07:00

What is one thing that many artists and scientists often have in common?

They easily change their perspectives from normal to macro to micro to now "nano" or sub-atomic particle.

When you explore a problem what scales or perspectives do you use?

Most of us stay or hover at "normal" human scale.

Architects think at larger and spatial scale.

Land or Master Planners think at larger scales.

Biologists, Chemists generally think at micro scale.

Computer engineers and scientists now think at nano scale in 4 dimensions: height, width, depth, time.

Are you?

Practice exploring photographs and paintings at very close scale. The French Impressions played with scales, especially the pointilists like Serat. They dabbed paint on their canvases that close up looked abstract yet at the distance of 20 or 30 feet aware took on a realistic look.

Think about how many of your daily challenges could be dealt with more effectively if you took closer and closer looks and thought at the macro to nano scale.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-15 Perspective, Macro Scale [seeing from larger view]

2007-05-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

Higher degrees and wider expanses of creativity can be more easily achieved by changing our perspectives from normal to micro to macro.

This message is about striving towards macro scale thinking.

Take your current situation or current problem and deliberately put it into macro perspective. How does it relate to

your entire life

your city or town

your state, provence....

your country, hemisphere...

your hemisphere, the whole world, the whole solar system

Less extreme macro perspective thinking might involve relating one product to an entire line of products produced by your company, your industry, your culture.

Macro perspective thinking can involve: scale, size, amount, time, location...

Next time you are exploring for ideas change your perspective to more macro scale in 3 to 4 or more scales or sizes.

Once you have chosen your creative idea to use as a solution or part of a solution take some time to explore the macro perspective impacts or potentials.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-14 Learning Always

2007-05-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

Learning, learning, learning seems to be a way of life for highly creative people for a variety of reasons:

wide interests
exploring knowledge for potential links
discovery of ideas from other fields
forcing connections
strengthing knowledge
widening skills

Consider spending a set amount of time learning new knowledge, skills, tools in areas relative to you, your profession and your life.

Also randomly learn some things you know nothing about during "quiet or dead times", waiting room time, etc.

The more you use it you more you will have.

Alan

alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-13 Curiosity Leads to Creativity

2007-05-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

52-13 Curiosity Leads to Creativity

"Curiosity is the dynamic portion of the mind that provokes the questions that release creativity."
Robert Schuller, author, preacher

"For millenia people sat under trees,
only to have apples fall and hit them on the head."

Along came Newton

Highly creative people tend to keep their radar, sonar, and other senses at high receptivity most of the time.

They ask questions that cause them to tweak their curiosities.

Why is ____ impossible?
What would it take to make it possible?
What else might work?
Why does ____ not work?
Who might be able to make it happen?

Who? What? Why? Why Not? When? Where? How? How might?

Each day practise and strengthen your virtual curiosity muscles.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan

alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-12 Change of Context (cross-interpretation)

2007-05-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

Band: watch band, rock band, marching band, rubber band, etc.

Change of Context (cross-interpretation)

One way I have discovered throughout my life for sparking my creative thinking has been to deliberated change the context. I do this so often I have to be careful because some people have a low tolerance for it when it is used to generate humore.

So many words in English and I understand in other languages around the world have multiple meanings: real, slang, idiomatic.

To practice listen for words that have multiple meanings or can be interpreted in other ways. Many comedians have become famous for this skill/habit.

Also deliberately change contexts of problems: workplace to home, workplace to hobby, sports to work, play to work, work to play, history to modern, one culture to another. The potential list is enormous or very large.

52-11 Creative People are Non-conforming

2007-05-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

52-11 Creative People are Non-conforming

Now that is an overly obvious statement.

Yet so often in all societies or cultures I have visited or read about tend to expect, demand, almost forced conforming in order to survive in them. This also tends to fit occupations and professions as well.

Frederick Kiesler, architect/philosopher from the 1960s wrote once then referring to architects and artists...

5 to 10% are creative
10 to 15% are innovative....people who understand what the creatives say and then apply those ideas successfully
75 to 85% are immitative...people who merely copy the innovatives without understanding the initial ideas of the creatives.

My nearly 50 years of working has indicated to me that these ratios unfortuantely appear to fit most occupations and professions almost the way the Pareto Rule fits (20% do 80% etc.).

Yet I have also discovered by asking people to take time to explore 1) how they have become conforming, 2) how they non-conform and when, 3) how and when they might deliberately non-conform to free up their restricted or resisted creative natures.

So take some this week to think about conformity and non-conformity in your life and work.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

PS it seems like the word "conform" is an oxymoron. Con means to oppose therefore wouldn't conform mean to oppose forming?

52-10 Always Learning

2007-05-21T06:19:00.000-07:00

Highly creative people are continuously learning. Some have very specific interests. Others have varied yet still itegrated interests or continuously see, discover or create connections between and among their varied interests.

Today read for 30 to 60 minutes in a subject you enjoy.

Today read for 30 to 60 minutes about a subject related to your job, occupation, profession.

Put together a reading/studying/learning area in your home or your workplace. Assemble 2 or 3 magazine articles and books related to your favorite topics.

Deliberately read for 15 to 30 minutes about a random topic.

When you have "waiting time": doctor's office, bus/train ride, sitting waiting for your spouse or children....always carry something you can read.

Strive to read a book a week for the next year.

Read to learn and for fun.

Best wishes for your continal creativity growth.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-09 Let Your 5 Physical Senses Spark Your Creativity

2007-05-20T09:09:00.000-07:00

Today I am posting my weekly Cre8ng Challenge as an example of another trait of highly creative people that we all can further develop to enhance and expand our individual creativity.

Alan's Cre8ng Challenges 2007-21
Beauty of Nature Inspires & Sparks Creativity

This morning during my morning walk came the inspiration for this week's CC.

I took a route I have not take for several weeks. It takes me through two fairly exclusive neighborhoods filled with very, very large, expensive homes set in forest areas. Throughout the 2 1/2 miles of the 4 mile walk I was in the woods where this homes have been built.

Typically I walk listening to the sounds of the birds, while trying to blank out the road sounds. I sometimes focus on home many different flowers and colors of flowers I can find.

These week let nature and your 5 physical senses inspire and spark your creativity. Each day spend time focusing on one of your senses more than the other 4. You can do this in nature, in human environments, interior or exterior or combination of 2 or more of these.

MONDAY
VISION/SIGHT

TUESDAY
SOUND/HEARING

WEDNESDAY
TASTE

THURSDAY
SMELL

FRIDAY
TOUCH

Today while focusing on sound and sight my heart was also touched. As I rounded one of the last turns returning to my home in the distance I saw a man walking towards me. I immediately knew who is was. Locally and among University of Georgia fans he is a celebrity, a legend, Larry Munson, the announcer of the UGA Bulldogs games for many, many years. Larry's well into his 80s now. Over the past 3 to 5 years we have passed often during our morning walks. He lives in a neighborhood about 1/2 a mile from me that I have to pass if I head northward out of my neighborhood to go anywhere in that direction. The last time I saw him was as I passed his home one morning. He was sitting in the shade by his open garage door. We exchanged hellos. I said I hadn't seen him walking for awhile. "Doctor has told me I shouldn't any more because of my legs and joints."

My heart was filled because this morning he was walking even against his doctor's warnings.

His face was beaming and so was that famous voice of his.

Best wishes for an inspiring, awe filled week enjoying your senses.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-08 Fantasy life when young

2007-05-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

Did you have a rich fantasy life as a child?

Did you have an imaginary friend or friends?

Most highly creative people have written about their fantasy lives in their childhoods.

Did you go on imaginary journeys, play imaginary baseball games where you played as your heroes, play cowboys and indians, spaceman, etc.?

Take some time once in awhile and revisit your childhood fantasies and recall what was great about them.

Do you take fantasy trips today?

Nichoai Tesla, one of the most famous electrical inventors, who created alternating current had a very rich eidetic memory, which he often used to store and recall from storage machines he invented to watch the wear and tear on them.

Often inventors and problem solvers use fantasy to imagine their goals and end results as already existing.

Try fantasizing the results you want next time to determine how you will make them real.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-07 From Idealism Comes Creativity

2007-05-18T14:25:00.000-07:00

Idealism often yields high degrees of creativity. Most highly creative people never lose their youthful idealism.

Each day for a week take time to explore your life for examples of your own idealism.

Also explore your heroes, heroines and make a list of those that were idealistic much of the time.

For me it was artists, designers, architects: van Gogh, Saul Bass, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Too often when we lose our idealism our creativity dulls down.

Search for new role models, examples, mentors who maintain their idealism

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-6 Unique Sense of Humor

2007-05-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

Laughing, find the funny, making the funny, the humorous seems to be one of the strongest strength of many highly creative people in all walks of life.

Each highly person I have met has had a unique sense of humor.

Their favorite humorists or comedians varied most of the time. Some had favorites that were totally different.

Become more aware of your own sense of humor. Who do you like the most? Story tellers, pranksters, joke tellers.

Experiment with your sense of humor. Rent several dvds or tapes of a mix of comedy: the latest or hotest now, recently hot, past.

When you find yourself not FEELING creative or simply BLOCKED,
then
GO FOR FUNNY
and watch your creativity sensors rise and the BLOCKS go away.

Collect cartoon books of different types.

Spend time occasionally if not regularly seeing, finding, creating humor in every day things, events, people.

I have always found it far more productive to go from SILLY TO SERIOUS to generate creative ideas than staying SERIOUS or going from SERIOUS to Silly.

It always seems much easier to TAME DOWN A SILLY DUMB IDEA than it is to make a DULL SERIOUS IDEA EXCITING.

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-05 Provocative Point of View

2007-05-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

To become more creative work at asking PROVOCATIVE QUESTIONS.

Start by asking WHY?, WHY?, WHY?, WHY?, WHY?

Of course be prepared that you may ANNOY & FRUSTRATED FELLOW WORKERS, FRIENDS, FAMILY MEMBERS.

Then begin asking WHAT ELSE?

Then begin asking WHAT WOULD BE GOOD ABOUT FAILURE?

Imagine that you already have solved the problem. Use your abilities to image things in your mind or 3rd eye.

Experiment seeing things from many different points of view.

Read books or watch movies and deliberately root for the antagonist or bad guy/girl.

When people find fault in your ideas ask them what would make it better.

When someone says "it won't work" ask them what would they do if the boss or the government said it had to be done that way, what would they do.

Practice being provocative a little at a time not as a way of life.

Willingly Wondering Wandering Alan

alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-4 Becoming Original is a Personal Choice

2007-05-16T12:41:00.001-07:00

The 4th of the original 4 variables or traits that were explored to determine creative thinking abilities was 'ORIGINALITY'. The testors collected vast examples of results and through statistical analysis determined what were the MOST OIRGINAL answers in order to give a person an ORIGINALITY score. If one out of a 100 or 1000 people generated a particular answer it got one score. If one out of 10,000 or 100,000 generated a specific answer the person would be given a higher ORIGINALITY score.

My life has shown me that "Highly Creative People" in any field deliberately, either consciously or subconsciously strive to generate or discover original ideas, probable solutions or accurate answers. I remember an advertising art director saying he always wrote down the first 12 ideas he could think of and then would file those away. Then he would start over.

My work has shown over the 30 years I have been involved in creative thinking and the previous 17 years while I was working in creative fields: design, architecture, interiors, etc. that the most "highly creative people" generally work to produce multiple possible ideas before choosing one to work on to turn it into a solution. My experiences with a typical group has shown that after they have generated 144 ideas more original ideas begin to be created or discovered.

Today choose to be original as often as you can.

Every time you have to generate ideas make an on-going list and continually ask, "which of these are the most original?"

Then ask how might I/we make it even more original.

One easy "tool" of "system" to practice generating more original ideas is to use Bob Eberle's S.C.A.M.P.E.R.

SUBSTITUTE
COMBINE
ADAPT, ALTER
MODIFY, MINIFY, MAGNIFY
PUT TO OTHER USES
ELIMINATE, ERASE
REVERSE, REVISE, REFIGURE

Choose to be ORIGINAL deliberately.

Willingly Wandering and Wondering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-3 Ways to Expand Creativity: Elaborate, Elaborate, Elaborate

2007-05-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

Elaborate, Elaborate, Elaborate

In the 1950s the first tests for evaluating creative thinking potential focused on 4 traits:

1. fluency
2. flexibility
3. elaboration
4. originality

Today let's focus on ELABORATION

I. pick up an object and mentally list 12 details about it
II. pick up another object and create a list of 12 different people who might use it.
III. pick up a third object and generate a story of how it might be used by a MARTIAN. Be detailed. Include all the senses. Details, Details, Details.

Take some time today to create stories in your mind using people you see on busses, trains, in malls, at your office or school.

a. think about their childhoods
b. think about their best vacations
c. think about their futures as senior citizens
d. create fictitious families or pets

Ask yourself simple questions to generate more details to elaborate:

who, what, when, where, why, why not, how, how many, etc.

Ask a friend to help you create an elaborative story about something.

Watch "WHO'S LINE IS IT ANY WAY?" and watch them elaborate.

Have fun.

Willingly Wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-2 Flexibility is a Creative Tool

2007-05-13T06:35:00.000-07:00

Day Two of Fifty-Two

Day One I encouraged you to practice your FLUENCY muscles by continually striving to generate more and more ideas. Start generating at least 6 for everything you need ideas for. Once that becomes a habit start generating 12. Then 24. Then 36. Hopefully some day you will reach 144 as a habit.

Day Two FLEXIBILITY is a Creative Thinking Tool

In addition to generating many ideas strive to generate many, many different ideas.

Practice by using an exercise that my greatest mentor, "Creativity Man": Dr. E. Paul Torrance devised in the 1960s. Create a sheet with 30 blank circles on it. Then create something different using each circle: balls, end of the barrel of a gun, point of an arrow, globe, face, hole from above, from below....

Then take simple objects that you can find around you and list 12, 24, 36 different possible uses for it.

One way to do this more easily is to...

1. write the letters of the alphabet, a to z, or any other alphabet with more or less letters from your language.
2. then write down names of famous people: living or dead, real or fictional using the letter as the beginning letter of the individual person's first name or family name: Alda Alda (coincidentally both names start with the letter), Bob Newhart, Chevaz, Dion Celine, etc.....
3. then imagine that each individual was trying to solve the problem you are working on. What might they do?

Another approach to practice FLEXIBILITY is to take multiple viewpoints, similar to the previous "famous person name list".

Look at things from the customer's viewpoint, the manufacturer's, the competitions, a government inspector's, a child's, a senior citizen's, a homeless person, a very wealthy person, a kindergartener's, 3rd graders, 10th graders, a college sophmore, a doctoral candidate, etc., etc.

Each day practice being flexible in your thinking and idea generating.

Willingly wandering Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

52-1 Ways to Become More Creative

2007-05-12T17:45:00.000-07:00
52 Ways to Become More Creative

For the next 52 days I will be posting ways that we all can improve our creativity.

One of the first traits that was explored of creative people in the 1950s was FLUENCY, the ability or tendency to generate many ideas while other people only generate 1, 2, maybe 6 ideas.

Today practice increasing your number of ideas.

First, what are a dozen uses for paperclips other than to hold sheets of paper together?

Second, what are a dozen uses for glass marbles other than to play the game "Marbles"?

Third, now what are 24 uses for a common building brick other than to build walls, floors, wallways?

Fourth, now what are 36 uses for empty plastic water bottles?

To learn about almost 700 different ways to improve your creativity go to my ALAN'S CRE8NG CHALLENGES on my website at...

http://www.cre8ng.com/CC/index.shtml

Have a CREATIVE DAY!! It's your choice

Alan

http://www.cre8ng.com
alan@cre8ng.com

ZAP OUT OF THE BLUE

2007-04-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

Zap Out of the Blue

"I was taking a shower
when the idea came to me!"

"I was just waking up
when the idea came to me!"

"I was jogging
when the idea came to me!"

"I was drinking
my 9th cup of coffee when the idea came to me!"
Have any of these happened to you?
Have you been walking, jogging, showering, dreaming, driving when "Zap! Out of the Blue" came an idea, a solution, a hint of an idea?
Most of us have these things happen to us. Some of us pay attention to them and some of us turn them into solutions that often lead to great success and possibly fame. Yet the greatest percentage of us say "ho hum another strange idea" and let them go.
There are many theories about why these happen...
a. our muse(es) give them to us
b. God gives them to us
c. our sub-conscious gives them to us after we have consciously worked very hard on a problem and finally have let it go.
Are you taking advantage of your "Zaps From Out of the Blue"? Do you write them down immediately? Do you put them into action immediately or reprioritize and set them into your plans for that day or soon?
If you aren't, why aren't you?
If you are how are you capturing them?
Do you write them down on anything that is handy: a piece of paper, an index card, a Post-It™ note, the shower stall glass, the mirror? Do you then plan for when you will do something about them?
These are your sub-conscious creative mind helping you. Let it help you while you work with it.
First for the next 7 to 14 days take 15 minutes each day to think about what are your "Zaps!" Write them down. Examine them to see if their is a pattern, a specific time, any specific conditions. Are you always relaxed? Are you working on other things unrelated to the problem the ideas come for at the time? Are you practicing any ritual or habit...yoga, walking, exercising, drinking coffee, sipping on a glass of wine?
The answers to these questions very well may give you clues for how to deliberately cause more "Zaps!" to happen for and to you.
Second, develop a system(s) or method(s) for recording the "Zap!" ideas when they happen. Make sure you have the necessary tools and resources to collect the ideas.
Third, take a few moments when they happen to jot down one to 3 to 5 steps of how you will take the idea(s) further towards solutions. Perhaps you might take a moment to think about the resources you will need. Or you might take a moment or two to visualize or imagine yourself doing the idea and look for the resources you will need including the people.
Fourth, DO IT!!!
An example of using this plan happened the morning I wrote this article. I was practicing one of my morning rituals/habits reviewing over-night email messages, downloading overflow from my server's computer to mine while I am reading from a book on creativity.
This morning I was reading Paul Plsek's new Creativity, Innovation and Quality published by ASQ while my computer was downloading files. One phrase "Zap!"-ed from the page "Zap from the Blue" at me. I had just been reading a message from the editor of CIA, Andy van Gundy, who was asking about an article for the February issue.
The "Zap!" jumped right at me. Here was the idea that sparked this short article. I wrote down a Post-It note to use later. Took a couple moments to think when I would use it and when I would write the article.
I chose to push things aside because I was leaving to go out of town for a few days to work with a client and probably wouldn't be able to get to it for a few days. I immediately started writing down my thoughts into an email message to Andy. I got it about 3/4's done when I hit a bad combination of keys and disconnected myself from my internet server...............and lost everything I had written.
I then quickly made a couple notes about what I had already written and decided I would do it later after I got a few things that had to be done during the next two hours and could not be done at any other time.
In other words, writing this article was an example of practicing what I am "preaching". Learn how you get your "Zaps!". Capture them. Then use them.
The result? You'll be using much more of your creativeness and working much less. Best wishes for a creative month.

SPRING YOUR CREATIVENESS

2007-03-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

This morning while walking for exercise, to clear my head and provide myself with an hour of intuitive time I found 4, 4-leaf clovers and 1, 5-leaf clover.

Sooooooooooooo! I went and laminated them with business cards to give as gifts and reminders of GOOD LUCK and Creative Thinking.

On a website I found this poem:

Four-leaf Clover Poem
Author: Ella Higginson
I know a place where the sun is like gold,_And the cherry blooms burst with snow,_And down underneath is the loveliest nook,_Where the four-leaf clovers grow.
One leaf is for HOPE, and one is for FAITH,_And one is for LOVE, you know,_And GOD put another in for LUCK --_If you search, you will find where they grow.
But you must have HOPE, and you must have FAITH,_You must LOVE and be strong -- and so --_If you work, if you wait, you will find the place_Where the four-leaf clovers grow

You can also see 4 leaf clovers as reminders to creatively think in 4 different ways.

1. rationally, logically
2. systematically, using tools and techiques such as de Bono's 6 Hats
3. with a group of "close friends" using Bob Eberle's S.C.A.M.P.E.R.
4. expotentially in an exploratory, experimenting open ended collection of ways using pure imagination

Let nature remind you that we all can be more creative any time we choose.

Alan
http://www.cre8ng.com
alan@cre8ng.com

PS Remember CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION DAY is coming up around Leonardo da Vinci's birthday, April 15th.
Join with thousands around the world as we celebrate

CREATIVITY & INNOVATION DAY
http://www.creativityday.ca/

createwithalan

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