CREATIVE THINKING TECHNIQUE: LOTUS BLOSSOM

by imagineer7

Creative thinking technique:  Lotus Blossom

A creative-thinking technique that will help you expand your thinking beyond your usual paths of thinking is Lotus Blossom. According to author, Michael Michalko, Lotus Blossom helps you to organize your thinking around significant themes, helping you to explore a number of alternate possibilities and ideas.

We were all born as spontaneous, creative thinkers. Yet a great deal of our education may be regarded as the inculcation of mind sets. We were taught how to handle problems and new phenomena with fixed mental attitudes (based on what past thinkers thought) that predetermine our response to problems or situations. Typically, we think on the basis of similar problems encountered in the past. When confronted with problems, we fixate on something in our past that has worked before. Then we analytically select the most promising approach based on past experiences, excluding all other approaches, and work within a clearly defined direction toward the solution of the problem.

Our rutted paths of thinking

Once we think we know what works or can be done, it becomes hard for us to consider alternative ideas. We tend to develop narrow ideas and stick with them until proven wrong. Following is an interesting experiment, which was originally conducted by the British psychologist Peter Watson, that demonstrates the way we typically process information. Watson would present subjects with the following three numbers in sequence.

2… 4… 6…

He would then ask subjects to explain the number rule for the sequence and to give other examples of the rule. The subjects could ask as many questions as they wished without penalty.

He found that almost invariably most people will initially say, “4, 6, 8” or some similar sequence. And Watson would say, yes, that is an example of a number rule. Then they will say, “20, 22, 24″ or “50, 52, 54″ and so on– all numbers increasing by two. After a few tries, and getting affirmative answers each time, they are confident that the rule is numbers increasing by two without exploring alternative possibilities.

Actually, the rule Watson was looking for is much simpler — it’s simply numbers increasing. They could be 1, 2, 3 or 10, 20, 40 or 400, 678, 10,944. And testing such an alternative would be easy. All the subjects had to say was 1, 2, 3 to Watson to test it and it would be affirmed. Or, for example, a subject could throw out any series of numbers, for example, 5,4,3 to see if they got a positive or negative answer. And that information would tell them a lot about whether their guess about the rule is true.

The profound discovery Watson made was that most people process the same information over and over until proven wrong, without searching for alternatives, even when there is no penalty for asking questions that give them a negative answer. In his hundreds of experiments, he, incredibly, never had an instance in which someone spontaneously offered an alternative hypotheses to find out if it were true. In short, his subjects didn’t even try to find out if there is a simpler or even, another, rule.

Creative geniuses think differently

Creative geniuses don’t think this way. The creative genius will always look for a multiplicity of ways to approach a subject. It is this willingness to entertain different perspectives and alternative approaches that broadens their thinking and opens them up to new information and the new possibilities that the rest of us don’t see. Einstein was once asked what the difference was between him and the average person. He said that if you asked the average person to find a needle in a haystack, the person would stop when he or she found a needle. He, on the other hand, would tear through the entire haystack looking for all possible needles.

When Charles Darwin first set to solve the problem of evolution, he did not analytically settle on the most promising approach to natural selection and then process the information in a way that would exclude all other approaches. Instead, he initially organized his thinking around significant themes, principally eight, of the problem, which gave his thinking some order but with the themes connected loosely enough so that he could easily alter them singly or in groups. His themes helped him capture his thoughts about evolutionary change by allowing him to reach out in many alternative directions at once and pull seemingly unrelated information into a coalescent body of thought.

Darwin used his themes to work through many points that led to his theory of evolution by helping him to comprehend what is known and to guide in the search for what is not yet known. He used them as a way of classifying the relation of different species to each other, as a way to represent the accident of life, the irregularity of nature, the explosiveness of growth, and of the necessity to keep the number of species constant. Over time, he rejected some of his themes— the idea of direct adaptation, for instance. Some were emphasized — the idea of continuity. Some were confirmed for the first time — the idea that change is continuous. Some were recognized — the frequency of variation. By adjusting and altering the number of themes and connections, Darwin was able to keep his thought fluid and to bring about adaptive shifts in his thinking. He played the critic, surveying his own positions; the inventor, devising new solutions and ideas; and the learner, accumulating new facts not prominent before.

The Lotus Blossom brainstorming technique

The point is that by organizing his thinking around loosely-connected themes, Darwin expanded his thinking by inventing alternative possibilities and explanations that, otherwise, may have been ignored. A creative-thinking technique that will help you expand your thinking in a similar fashion is Lotus Blossom, which was originally developed by Yasuo Matsumura of Clover Management Research in Chiba City, Japan. The technique helps you to diagrammatically mimic Darwin’s thinking strategy by organizing your thinking around significant themes. You start with a central subject and expand into themes and sub-themes, each with separate entry points. In Lotus Blossom, the petals around the core of the blossom are figuratively “peeled back” one at a time, revealing a key component or theme. This approach is pursued in ever-widening circles until the subject or opportunity is comprehensively explored. The cluster of themes and surrounding ideas and applications, which are developed in one way or another, provide several different alternative possibilities. The guidelines for Lotus Blossom are:

1. Write the central problem in the center of the diagram.

2. Write the significant themes, components or dimensions of your subject in the surrounding circles labeled A to H surrounding the central theme. The optimal number of themes for a manageable diagram is between six and eight. If you have more than eight, make additional diagrams. Ask questions like: What are my specific objectives? What are the constants in my problem? If my subject were a book, what would the chapter headings be? What are the dimensions of my problem?

3. Use the ideas written in the circles as the central themes for the surrounding lotus blossom petals or boxes. Thus, the idea or application you wrote in Circle A would become the central theme for the lower middle box A. It now becomes the basis for generating eight new ideas or applications.

4. Continue the process until the lotus blossom diagram is completed.

An example: How to add value to your organization

Suppose, for example, you want to create more value for your organization by increasing productivity or decreasing costs. You would write “Add Value” in the center box. Next, write the eight most significant areas in your organization where you can increase productivity or decrease costs in the circles labeled A to H that surround your central box. Also write the same significant areas in the circles with the corresponding letters spread around the diagram. In my example, I selected the themes “suppliers,” “travel expenses,” “partnerships,” “delivery methods,” “personnel,” “technology,” “facilities,” and “evaluation.” Also write the same significant areas in the circles with the corresponding letters spread around the diagram. For instance, in the sample diagram, the word “technology” in the circle labeled A, serves as the theme for the lower middle group of boxes. Each area now represents a theme that ties together the surrounding boxes.

For each theme, try to think of eight ways to add value. Phrase each theme as a question to yourself. For example, ask “In what ways might we use technology to increase productivity?” and “In what ways might we use technology to decrease expenses?” Write the ideas and applications in the boxes numbered 1 through 8 surrounding the technology theme. Do this for each theme. Think of eight ideas or ways to make personnel more productive or ways to decrease personnel expenses, eight ideas or ways to create more value for your delivery methods, your facilities and so on. If you complete the entire diagram, you’ll have 64 new ideas or ways to increase productivity or decrease expenses.

When you write your ideas in the diagram, you’ll discover that ideas continually evolve into other ideas and applications, as ideas seem to flow outward with a conceptual momentum all their own.

An important aspect of this technique is that it shifts you from reacting to a “static” snapshot of the problem and will encourage you to examine the significant themes of the problem and the relationships and connections between them. Sometimes when you complete a diagram with ideas and applications for each theme, a property or feature not previously seen will emerge. Generally, higher level properties are regarded as emergent — a car, for example, is an emergent property of the interconnected parts. If a car were disassembled and all the parts were thrown into a heap, the property disappears. If you placed the parts in piles according to function, you begin to see a pattern and make connections between the piles that may inspire you to imagine the emergent property–the car, which you can then build. Similarly, when you diagram your problem thematically with ideas and applications, it enhances your opportunity to see patterns and make connections. The connections you make between the themes and ideas and applications will sometimes create an emergent new property or feature not previously considered.

Michael Michalko is author of Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, Creative Thinkering,  and Thinkpak: A Brainstorming Card Deck.

HOW DO WE THINK? WHY DO WE BELIEVE WHAT WE BELIEVE

by imagineer7

How do we think? Why do we believe what we believe. Einstein intuitively knew that thinking is speculative and how personal beliefs and theories distort what we observe. Once he observed jokingly, “If the facts don’t confirm your theory, change your facts.”

Einstein explained that psychologically, our beliefs and axioms rest upon our experiences. All experiences are neutral, you give it meaning by how you choose to interpret it. There exists, however, no logical path from experience to an axiom, but only an intuitive connection based on our interpretation of the experience, which is always subject to revocation. These interpretations shape our beliefs and perceptions which determine our theories about the world. Finally, our theories determine what we observe in the world and, paradoxically, we only observe what confirms our theories.Bottom of Form

At one time, ancient astronomers believed that the heavens were eternal and made of ether. This theory made it impossible for them to observe meteors as burning stones from outer space. Although the ancients witnessed meteor showers and found some on the ground, they couldn’t recognize them as meteors from outer space. They sought out and observed only those things that confirmed their theory about the heavens.

We are like the ancient astronomers and actively seek out only that information that confirms our beliefs and theories about ourselves and the world. Religious people see evidence of God’s handiwork everywhere; whereas, atheists see evidence of the absence of God everywhere. Conservatives see the evils of liberalism everywhere and liberals see the evils of conservatism everywhere. In fact, you do not need to watch and listen to either Fox or MSNBC because you already know what their position will be on any given political issue.

Many of us are taught that belief is the result of reasoned thought which informed you and then you chose to believe or not believe. But actually, your beliefs are shaped by your subjective interpretations of your experiences. When you are thinking something, you have the feeling that the thoughts do nothing except inform you, and then you choose to do something and do it. But actually, the way you think and what you think is determined by your theories about yourself and life. Thought controls you more than you realize.  

The following story illustrates how a person’s theory determines what is observed and how what is observed is interpreted according to the person’s theory.

Religious beliefs polarize many humans. Some will say there is no scientific evidence that God exists, therefore there is no God. Others say the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; therefore we must have faith that God exists to give meaning to our existence.

The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists? A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!"

      "God created everything? The professor asked. "Yes sir", the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil". The student became quiet before such an answer.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?"

“Of course", replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?"

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."

The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?" The professor responded, "Of course it does." The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?" Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil." To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The young student's name purportedly was— Albert Einstein. Einstein, himself, neither confirmed nor denied he was the student.

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Michael Michalko is the author of Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work, Thinkertoys: Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques, Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius, and ThinkPak: A Brainstorming Card Deck. 

http://www.creativethinking.net

THE EXQUISITE CORPSE

by imagineer7 THE EXQUISITE CORPSE It is not possible to think unpredictably by looking harder and longer in the same direction. When your attention is focused on a subject, only a few patterns dominate your thinking. These patterns produce predictable ideas no matter how hard you try. In fact, the harder you try, the stronger the same patterns become. If, however, you change your focus and combine your subject with something that is not related, different, unusual patterns are activated. Try an experiment. Pick eight random words and give the list to someone or to a small group (for example: flower pot, baby, glass, grasshopper, coffee pot, box, toast and garage). Ask them to divide the words into two groups without giving them any rationale for the division. You will discover that people will come up with some very creative classifications. They will group them according to “words with the letter o”, “things that touch water,” “objects made in factories,” and so on. No one ever says there is no connection, they invent them. Though we seldom think about it, making random connections in such a manner are conceptual creative acts. In my years of studying creativity I discovered numerous techniques that creative geniuses used throughout history to create random conceptual acts to create novel and original ideas. Making random connections were popular techniques used by the extraordinary artist Jackson Pollock to create conceptual combinations in art. One of his favorite techniques was named “The Exquisite Corpse” after a session that contained those words during a session. Each person in a group would take turns, each contributing any word or phrase that occurred to them without seeing what the others had written. They would then mix and remix the words and phrases into various combinations of concepts. In one session they explored new ways to make statements with paint. The word “drip” was  among the words the group suggested that intrigued Pollock. This resulted in a new style of what he called “drip” painting that made him world famous. His signature style involved laying a canvas on the floor and pouring paint onto it in continuous, curving streams. Rather than pouring straight from the can, he applied paint from a stick or a trowel, waving his hand back and forth above the canvas and adjusting the height and angle of the trowel to make the stream of paint wider or thinner. Pollock created a tension between the dynamics of the paint and the message of the painting. BLUEPRINT Have the group bounce ideas and thoughts about the subject off each other for five to ten minutes. Then, ask the participants to think about what was discussed and silently write one word that occurs to them on a card. Collect the cards have the group combine the words into a sentence (words can be moved and added by the group to help the sentence make sense). Then invite the group to study the final sentence and build an idea or ideas from it. Chemist Karl Kreckman was assigned to work on various ways to protect seed corn from the elements. Karl was a fan of abstractionist art and decided it would be fun to try Pollock’s technique. He collected a small group of friends and told them to think about how to protect plants and trees from the elements. Some of the words they contributed were fur, sun lamp, indoors, tents, covering, clothing. The person who offered the word “fur” said he imagined making fur coats and hats for all the trees to wear in winter. They laughed at the image. Days after the meeting Karl was thinking about the words fur, covering and clothing. This got him thinking about synthetics, including polymers that make clothing, which triggered his idea to create intelligent polymer seed coatings, which shift properties as conditions change. The seeds can be planted in any weather or season. They lie protected and dormant when it’s cold outside and sprout as soon as the soil reaches the right growing temperature. OUT OF THIN AIR An Alzheimer’s organization planned to have an auction to raise money for their cause. They planned an elaborate, sophisticated evening and looked for unusual items they could auction. They tried the “exquisite corpse” technique. Some of the words they came up with were people, cruises, creative, furniture, charity, designer, custom, art, thin air, and celebrities. One of the connections was: create----art----thin air. This triggered their idea which was the sensation of the auction. They sold an idea for an artwork that doesn’t exist. They talked a local conceptual artist into describing an idea for an artwork. The idea was placed in an envelope and auctioned off for $10,000. Legal ownership was indicated by a typed certificate, which detailed how the artwork was to be produced by the owner which includes consultation with the artist. The owner has the right to reproduce this piece as many times as he likes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why isn’t everyone creative? Why doesn’t education foster more ingenuity? Why is expertise often the enemy of innovation? Best-selling creativity expert Michael Michalko shows that in every field of endeavor, from business and science to government, the arts, and even day-to-day life — natural creativity is limited by the prejudices of logic and the structures of accepted categories and concepts. Through step-by-step exercises, illustrated strategies, and inspiring real-world examples he shows readers how to liberate their thinking and literally expand their imaginations by learning to synthesize dissimilar subjects, think paradoxically, and enlist the help of the subconscious mind. He also reveals the attitudes and approaches diverse geniuses share — and anyone can emulate. Fascinating and fun, Michalko’s strategies facilitate the kind of light-bulb moment thinking that changes lives — for the better. Michael Michalko is the author of the highly acclaimed Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques; Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius; ThinkPak: A Brainstorming Card Deck and Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work. creativethinking.net/#sthash.SXV5T2cu.dpbs

BRAINSTORMING WITH THINKPAK

by imagineer7

A Brainstorming Card Deck

What Is THINKPAK?Thinkpak is a brainstorming tool. It is designed to break you out of your habitual way of thinking and produce a wide variety of fresh thoughts that will lead to new insights, original ideas, and creative solutions to problems. It will change the way you think.

SCAMPEREverything new is really just an addition to or modification of something that already exists. Whenever you want to create a new idea, product, service, process, breakthrough, or whatever you need, Thinkpak will help you take your subject and change it into something else. Alex Osborn, a pioneer teacher of creativity, first identified the nine principle ways of manipulating a subject. They were later arranged by Bob Eberle into the mnemonic SCAMPER:

• Substitute something.
• Combine it with something else.
• Adapt something to it.
• Modify or Magnify it.
• Put it to some other use.
• Eliminate something.
• Reverse or Rearrange it.

Suppose you wanted to improve the ordinary metal paper clip. You could substitute plastic for metal and add color, creating plastic clips that would allow clipped papers to be color-coded, thereby putting the clips to another use.

THINKPAK contains idea-triggering questions based on these nine principles. The questions are designed to focus your attention on your subject in different ways and give you different means of interpreting what you are focusing on. These different ways of focusing will break your habitual thought patterns and let you look at your subject in fresh ways. You’ll generate a quantity of ideas quickly, including ideas that you wouldn’t have otherwise considered. Once you apply the THINKPAK questions to your subject or situation, ideas begin to appear almost involuntarily. 

Applying SCAMPER to a HamburgerRay Kroc was a middle-class high-school dropout, a former piano player, and a real-estate salesman who sold paper cups for seventeen years. In his fifties, Ray Kroc left the paper cup business and hit the road selling a little machine called the Multimixer, which could make six milkshakes at a time.

One day in 1954, a hamburger stand in California ordered eight Multimixers. Curious, Kroc drove his dusty little car out to investigate. He was stunned by the volume of business that Dick and Maurice McDonald were doing. They had unwittingly hit on the concept of fast food–homogenized, predictable items that are quick and easy to prepare. The McDonalds had simplified, economized, and minimized the hamburger stand.

Kroc and the McDonalds formed a partnership that allowed Kroc to find new sites, and open and run them. What followed was not instant success but obstacles and challenges. Ray Kroc became a billionaire because he identified the right challenges and manipulated existing information into new ideas to solve them.

Following are some of the challenges he faced and how the SCAMPER principles helped to shape his ideas.

SUBSTITUTE

Problem: The McDonalds proved to be lethargic business partners. Kroc was worried that they might sell out to someone who didn’t want him around.

SCAMPER Solution: Substitute a different partner. Kroc was cash poor, but he was determined to buy out the McDonalds. Kroc raised the $2.7 million asking price from John Bristol, a venture capitalist whose clients (college endowment funds) realized a $14-million return on their investment. The next substitution was to go public, which he did in 1963, making many investors rich. 

COMBINE

Problem: Ray Kroc’s first hamburger stand was planned for Des Plaines, Illinois, but he couldn’t afford to finance construction.

SCAMPER Solution: Combine purposes with someone else. He sold the construction company half-ownership in return for constructing his first building. 

ADAPT

Problem: Ray Kroc was interested in developing a new twist on the food business, but he lacked ideas.

SCAMPER Solution: Adapt someone else’s idea. Kroc was amazed at the volume of business the McDonalds were doing by selling a hamburger in a paper bag here, or a helping of french fries there. Kroc’s big idea was adapting the McDonalds’ simple merchandising methods to create a brand new concept–fast food. 

MODIFY

Problem: The french fries made in Kroc’s first stand in Illinois didn’t taste like the originals; they were tasteless and mushy. He tried the McDonalds’ recipe again and again, to no avail. A friend finally solved the mystery–Kroc stored his potatoes in the basement, while the McDonalds kept theirs outside in chicken-wire bins, exposed to desert winds that cured the potatoes.

SCAMPER Solution: Modify the storage area. Kroc cured the potatoes by installing large electric fans in the basement. 

MAGNIFY

Problem: A number of franchise owners wanted to expand the basic menu.

SCAMPER Solution: Magnify the burger and add new items to the menu. He created the popular Big Mac by way of a $10 million “Build a Big Mac” contest. Later additions included the Egg McMuffin, Filet-o-Fish, and Chicken McNuggets. 

PUT TO OTHER USES

Problem: Kroc needed to develop other sources of income.

SCAMPER Solution: Put McDonald’s to use in the real estate business. Kroc’s company would lease and develop a site, then re-lease it to the franchisee, who would have to pay rent as well as franchise fees. Today, 10 percent of the company’s revenue comes from rentals. In the 1960s, Kroc also bought back as many of the original sites as he could. While this policy initially accrued huge debts, it gave McDonald’s the upper hand against competitors, who periodically faced massive rent hikes. 

ELIMINATE OR MINIFY

Problem: Hamburger patty distributors packed their burgers in a way that was efficient for them, but that also meant McDonald’s employees had to restack them to keep the bottom patties from getting crushed.

SCAMPER Solution: Eliminate the problem. Kroc refused to do business with packagers unless they shipped fewer burgers in each stack. Employees no longer had to restack burgers, saving McDonald’s time and money. He also eliminated the middleman by buying entire crops of Idaho Russet Burbank potatoes. 

REARRANGE

Problem: Kroc wanted to differentiate his establishments from the competition.

SCAMPER Solution: Rearrange the architecture. Kroc kept changing the original red-and-white, box-shaped prototype into the Golden Arches and added drive-throughs in the 1970s. 

Even the hot dog, as we know it, is the result of asking the right question at the right time. In 1904, Antoine Feutchwanger was selling sausages at the Louisiana Exposition. First, he tried offering them on individual plates, but this proved too expensive. He then offered his customers white cotton gloves to keep the franks from burning their fingers. The gloves were expensive, too, and customers tended to walk off with them. Antoine and his brother-in-law, a baker, sat down to figure out what inexpensive item could be added (modify) to the frankfurter to prevent people from burning their fingers. His brother-in-law said something like “What if I baked a long bun and slit it to hold the frank? Then you can sell the franks, and I can sell you the buns. Who knows, it might catch on.”

Every new subject or idea produces a host of creative by-products, initially seen many times as irrelevant, but available for fashioning in novel new directions. Think of all the entrepreneurs who visited the McDonald’s hamburger stand and did not see the latent potential. The McDonald brothers had unwittingly hit on the concept of fast food, but Ray Kroc took the concept and moved it into a novel new direction.

Consider the Walkman radio. Sony engineers tried to design a small, portable stereo tape recorder. They failed. They ended up with a small stereo tape player that couldn’t record. They gave up on the project and shelved it. One day Masaru Ibuka, honorary chairman of Sony, discovered this failed product and decided to look for its potential. He remembered an entirely different project at Sony where an engineer was working to develop lightweight portable headphones. “What if you combine the headphones with the tape player and eliminate the recorder function altogether?”

Ibuka was mixing up functions. The idea that tape players also record was so well established that no one had considered reversing it. Even after Ibuka made his creative association, no one at Sony believed they could market it. Ibuka was not discouraged and plowed ahead with what he called a new concept in entertainment. Ibuka took a failed idea and, by combining, eliminating, and reversing, found the latent potential and created a brand new product. The Walkman radio became Sony’s leading selling electronic product of all time and introduced all of us to the “headphone culture.”

Ibuka took what existed (a failed product) and recycled it into something new. Similarly, Michelangelo’s masterpiece, David, was the result of another sculptor’s failed attempt. Back in 1463, the authorities of the cathedral of Florence acquired a sixteen-foot-high chunk of white marble to be carved into a sculpture. Two well-known sculptors worked on the piece and gave up, and the badly mangled block was put in storage. Other sculptors were brought in and asked to carve a statue. They refused to work with the mangled block and demanded a new block. They said they couldn’t possibly produce art out of the mangled block. Their demands were not economically feasible, so the project was scrapped by the cathedral. Forty years later, Michelangelo took the mangled block of marble from storage and carved it into the youthful, courageous David within eighteen months. He took what existed and sculpted it into the world’s greatest statue.

You can recycle any subject or idea into something else by transforming it in some fashion using the SCAMPER questions. Isolate the subject you want to think about and ask the questions to see what new ideas and thoughts emerge.

 (Michael Michalko is the author of Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques; Cracking Creativity: The Thinking Strategies of Creative Geniuses;  Thinkpak: A Brainstorming Card Deck, and Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work.)

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT CREATING IDEAS FROM LEONARDO DA VINCI

by imagineer7

If one particular thinking strategy stands out about creative genius, it is the ability to make juxtapositions that elude mere mortals. Call it a facility to connect the unconnected that enables them to see relationships to which others are blind. They set their imagination in motion by using unrelated stimuli and forcing connections with their subject. 

In the illustration, Figure B appears larger than Figure A. It is not. They are both the same size. If you cut out Figure A, you will find that fits exactly over Figure B.  Juxtaposing the smaller arc of A to the larger arc of B makes the upper figure seem smaller.  The juxtaposition of the arcs creates a connection between the arcs that changes our perception about their size. We perceive the arcs in terms of thought patterns that are triggered by what is in front of us. We do not see the arcs (equal in size) as they are but as we perceive them (unequal). 

In a similar way, you can change your thinking patterns by connecting your subject with something that is not related. These different patterns catch your brain’s processing by surprise and will change your perception of your subject. Suppose you want a new way to display expiration dates on packages of perishable food and you randomly pair this with autumn. Leaves change color in the autumn. Forcing a connection between “changing colors” with expiration dates triggers the idea of ‘smart labels’ that change color when the food is exposed to unrefrigerated temperatures for too long. The label would signal the consumer–even though a calendar expiration date might be months away. Our notion of expiration dates was changed by making a connection with something that was unrelated (autumn) which triggered a new thought pattern which led to a new idea. 

In order to get original ideas, you need a way to create new sets of patterns in your mind. You need one pattern reacting with another set of patterns to create a new pattern. Recently, an engineer needed to place a large generator into an excavated area. The usual way to do this was with a heavy crane, which costs $8,000 to lease. Randomly leafing through a National Geographic magazine, he read about Eskimos and the construction of igloos. He connected igloos made of ice with his problem and came up with an ingenious solution. He trucked in blocks of ice and placed the ice in the excavated area. Next, he pushed the generator onto the ice and placed the generator over the location for it. When the ice melted, the generator settled perfectly into the location. 

I first learned of the “connecting the unconnected” thinking process from Leonardo Da Vinci who wrote how he ‘connected the unconnected’ to get his creative inspiration in his notebooks. He wrote about this strategy in a mirror-image reversed script ‘secret’ handwriting which he taught himself. To read his handwriting, you have to use a mirror. It was his way of protecting his thinking strategy from prying eyes. He suggested that you will find inspiration for marvelous ideas if you look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or the shape of clouds or patterns in mud or in similar places. He would imagine seeing trees, battles, landscapes, figures with lively movements, etc., and then excite his mind by forcing connections between the subjects and events he imagined and his subject.

Da Vinci would even sometimes throw a paint-filled sponge against the wall and contemplate the stains. Once while thinking of new ways to transport people, he threw a paint-filled sponge against the wall which produced a scattering of irregular shapes. Trying to make sense out of the meaningless shapes, he imagined one group of shapes to resemble a rider on a horse. He perceived the bottom half of the horse’s feet as resembling two wheels. Thinking of a horse on wheels, then of a structure that resembles a horse on wheels he realized people could be transported on two wheels and a frame that resembles a horse. Hence, the bicycle which he invented.

The metaphors that Leonardo formed by forcing connections between two totally unrelated subjects moved his imagination with a vengeance. Once he was standing by a well and noticed a stone hit the water at the same moment that a bell went off in a nearby church tower. He noticed the stone caused circles until they spread and disappeared. By simultaneously concentrating on the circles in the water and the sound of the bell, he made the connection that led to his discovery that sound travels in ‘waves.’ This kind of tremendous insight could only happen through a connection between sight and sound made by the imagination. 

Da Vinci’s knack to make remote connections was certainly at the basis of Leonardo’s genius to form analogies between totally different systems. He associated the movement of water with the movement of human hair, thus becoming the first person to illustrate in extraordinary detail the many invisible subtleties of water in motion. His observations led to the discovery of a fact of nature which came to be called the ‘Law of Continuity.’ 

Da Vinci discovered that the human brain cannot deliberately concentrate on two separate objects or ideas, no matter how dissimilar, without eventually forming a connection between them. No two inputs can remain separate in your mind no matter how remote they are from each other. In tetherball, a ball is fastened to a slender cord suspended from the top of a pole. Players bat the ball around the pole, attempting to wind its cord around the pole above a certain point. Obviously, a tethered ball on a long string is able to move in many different directions, but it cannot get away from the pole. If you whack at it long enough, eventually you will wind the cord around the pole. This is a closed system. Like the tetherball, if you focus on two subjects for a period of time, you will see relationships and connections that will trigger new ideas and thoughts that you cannot get using your usual way of thinking.

This is what happened to NASA engineer James Crocker when the Hubble telescope failed and embarrassed NASA. In the shower of a German hotel room, NASA engineer James Crocker was contemplating the Hubble disaster while showering and absentmindedly looking at the adjustable shower head that could be extended and adjusted in various ways for personal comfort and cleanliness to the user’s height. He made the connection between the shower head and the Hubble problem and invented the idea of placing corrective mirrors on automated adjustable arms that could reach inside the telescope and adjust to the correct position. His idea turned the Hubble from a disaster into a NASA triumph. 

It is not possible to think unpredictably by looking harder and longer in the same direction. When your attention is focused on a subject, a few patterns are highly activated in your brain and dominate your thinking. These patterns produce only predictable ideas no matter how hard you try. In fact, the harder you try, the stronger the same patterns become. If, however, you change your focus and think about something that is not related, different, unusual patterns are activated. If one of these newer patterns relates to one of the first patterns, a connection will be made. This connection will lead to the discovery of an original idea or thought. This is what some people mistakenly called ‘divine’ inspiration or “out of the blue.” 

DuPont developed and manufactured Nomex, a fire-resistant fiber. It’s tight structure made it impervious to dye. Potential customers (it could be used in the interior of airplanes) would not buy the material unless DuPont could manufacture a colored version. A DuPont chemist read an article about gold mining and how the mines were constructed. This inspired the chemist to compare Nomex to a ‘mine shaft’ in a gold mine’ a subject that had nothing to do with Nomex. What is the connection between a ‘tight structure’ and a ‘mine shaft?’ To excavate minerals, miners dig a hole into the earth and use props to keep the hole from collapsing. Expanding on this thought, the chemist figured out a way to chemically ‘prop’ open holes in Nomex as it is being manufactured so it could later be filled with dyes. 

When we use our imagination to develop new ideas, those ideas are heavily structured in predictable ways by the properties of existing categories and concepts. We have not been taught how to process information by connecting remotely-associated subjects through trial and error. This is true for inventors, artists, writers, scientists, designers, businesspeople, or everyday people fantasizing about a better life. DaVinci’s thinking process provides a means of producing blind variation of ideas through the use of unrelated stimuli, such as random words, random objects, pictures, magazines and newspapers to produce a rich variety of unpredictable ideas.  

CONNECTING THE UNCONNECTED 

The ‘random object’ technique generates an almost infinite source of new patterns to react with the old patterns in your mind. Random words are like pebbles being dropped in a pond. They stimulate waves of associations and connections, some of which may help you to a breakthrough idea. There are several ways to select a random object. You can retrieve random words from a dictionary by opening it, by chance, at any page, closing your eyes and randomly putting your finger on a word. If the word is not a noun continue down the list to the first noun, Another way is to think of a page number (page 22) and then think of a position of the word on that page (say the tenth word down). Open the dictionary to page 22 and proceed to the tenth word down. If the word is not a noun continue down the list until you reach the first noun.  You can use any other resource (e.g., magazine, newspapers, books, telephone yellow pages, etc.). Close your eyes and stab your finger at a page. Take the noun closest to your finger. 

EXAMPLE: I usually retrieve five random words when I use this technique. Suppose our challenge is to improve the automobile. The group of random words we blindly drew from the dictionary are:

nose

Apollo 13.

soap

dice

electrical outlet

 (1) LIST CHARACTERISTICS. Work with one word at a time. Draw a picture of the word to involve the right hemisphere of your brain and then list the characteristics of the words. Think of a variety of things that are associated with your word and list them.

For example, some of the characteristics of a nose are:

Different shapes and sizes

Sometimes decorated with pins and jewels

Has two nostrils

Can be repaired easily if broken

Hair inside

Decays with death

 (2) FORCE CONNECTIONS.  Make a forced connection between each characteristic and the challenge you are working on. In forcing connections between remote subjects, metaphorical-analogical thinking opens up new pathways of creative thinking. Ask questions such as:

– How is this like my problem?

– What if my problem were a…?

– What are the similarities?

-….is like the solution to my problem because…?

– How …like an idea that might solve my problem? 

EXAMPLE. Connecting ‘nose has two nostrils’ with ‘improving the car’ triggers the idea of building a car with two separate power sources; a car with battery or electric power for city driving and liquid fuel for long distances.

(3) WHAT IS ITS ESSENCE? What is the principle or essence of your random word? Can you build an idea around it? For example, the essence of a nose might be ‘smell.’ Forcing a connection between ‘smell’ and ‘improving the automobile’ inspires the idea of incorporating a cartridge in the auto during manufacturing that warns the driver of malfunctions with various odors. If you smell orange blossoms, for example, it’s time to have your brakes checked, or if you smell cinnamon, you might have a gasoline leak and so on. 

For each random word, list the principle or essence, characteristics, features and aspects and force connections with the challenge. Another example is derived from the random word ‘Apollo 13.’  Astronauts used the LEM as an emergency alternative power source in Apollo 13 in order to return to earth. Connecting this thought with the automobile led to the redesign of the automobile engine so that it can be used as an emergency power generator for the house during power failures. E.g., plug the house into the car. 

(4) CREATE MANY CONNECTIONS. When using the “Random Word” list, use all five words in the group and force as many connections as possible. Allow yourself five minutes for each word when you try it. Five minutes should be ample time to stimulate ideas. You should find that long after the fixed time period of five minutes, further connections and ideas are still occurring. 

Using this model, it is possible to see what can be done about randomly connecting unrelated subjects in thinking. The first step is to be aware that there is the possibility of this thinking strategy. The second step is to learn how to do it. The third step is to use this strategy as often as you can and to get rid of any inhibitions which interfere with your using it. The more times you use it and the more different ways you use it, the more you increase your chances of coming up with original ideas and creative solutions to problems.

 ……………………………………………..

 Michael Michalko is a highly-acclaimed creativity expert and author of the best-seller Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity), ThinkPak (A Brainstorming Card Deck), Cracking Creativity (The Secrets of Creative Genius), and Creative Thinkering (Putting your Imagination to Work).

LET’S RE-IMAGINE OUR WORLD AND OUR PLACE IN IT

Our world has changed immensely in the last few weeks but amid the upheaval and distress, there are reasons to believe we can emerge from the crisis with some human qualities enhanced, writes Matthew Syed on BBC.  Matthew Syed acknowledged one of my ideas that I wrote about in my book THINKERTOYS (A HANDBOOK OF CREATIVE THINKING TECHNIQUES). He wrote “A few years ago, Michael Michalko, a former US army officer, came up with a fascinating idea to sharpen creativity. He called it "assumption reversal". You take the core notions in any context, subject, discipline and then, well, turn them on their head.

So, suppose you are thinking of starting a restaurant (obviously not possible right now!). The first assumption might be: "restaurants have menus". The reversal would be: "restaurants have no menus". This provokes the idea of a chef informing each customer what he bought that day at market, allowing them to select a customized dish. The point is not that this will turn out to be a workable scheme, but that by disrupting conventional thought patterns, it might lead to new associations and ideas.

Or, to take a different example, suppose you are considering a new taxi company. The first assumption might be: "taxi companies own cars". The reversal would be: "taxi companies own no cars". Twenty years ago, that might have sounded crazy. Today, the largest taxi company that has ever existed doesn't own cars: Uber. Now we are living through a disruption (you might even call it a reversal) of unprecedented scale.

The coronavirus has turned our lives upside down and, although we hope to return to some version of normality in the coming months, it is probable that nothing will quite be the same again. Many have lost their livelihoods and businesses, and there is no diminishing the difficulties - emotional and financial - this has brought in its wake. But amid the darkness, there are also opportunities. Opportunities to reimagine the world and one's place within it.

Reversal techniques are typically used by creative people working to come up with new products or innovations. I wonder if we can all use it to seek out a silver lining or two amid the grey clouds.

For years, bankers assumed that their customers preferred human tellers. In the early 1980s, Citibank concluded that installing automatic tellers would help them cut costs. However, the Citibank executives did not imagine that customers would prefer dealing with machines, so they reserved human tellers for people with more than $5,000 in their accounts and relegated modest depositors to the machines. The machines were unpopular, and Citibank stopped using them in 1983. Bank executives took this as proof of their assumption about people and machines.

Months later, another banker challenged this assumption and looked at the situation from the customer’s perspective. He discovered that small depositors refused to use the machines because they resented being treated as second-class customers. He reinstituted the automatic tellers with no “class distinctions,” and they were an instant success. Today, even Citibank reports that 70 percent of their transactions are handled by machine.

Henry Ford tried to get into the automobile industry for years and failed. The industry believed you had to bring people to the work at a tremendous cost. One day Ford was visiting a pig slaughterhouse and watched a line of butchers each cutting off a portion of the pig as the pigs moved on a conveyor belt in front of the butchers. He got his Eureka! The way to manufacture autos was to bring the work to the people. He did this by manufacturing assembly lines and changed the nature of automobile manufacturing forever.

Alfred Sloan took over General Motors when it was on the verge of bankruptcy and turned it around. His genius was to take an assumption and reverse it into a “breakthrough idea.” For instance, it had always been assumed that you had to buy a car before you drove it. Sloan reversed this to mean you could buy it while driving it, pioneering the concept of installment buying for car dealers.

Reversals destabilize your conventional thinking patterns and free information to come together in provocative new ways. For example, one town reversed drivers control the parking time of cars to cars control parking times. This triggers the idea of parking anywhere as long as you leave your lights on.

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stair, spray all the monkeys with ice cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result-all the monkeys are sprayed with ice cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and will want to climb the stairs. To his surprise, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third monkey with a new one. The new one goes to the stairs and is attacked. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing the fourth and fifth monkeys with new ones, all the monkeys that have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been around here.