Creativity

What is creativity?

•A way of thinking and doing that brings about unexpected and original ideas.

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of them.

-Linus Pauling (2-time Nobel prize winner)

1 minute class assignment(take out paper and a pencil)

List as many uses as you can for a paper cup.

Focus

Depth

Skills

Hard Work

Experience

Growth

Expansion

LinearCreativity

Lateral Creativity

Breadth

Analogies

Uniqueness

Non-Logic

Innovation

Out-of-the-Box

(Intuitive/Imagination)

(Logic/Knowledge)

Fluency

Flexibility

Two minds

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."

– Albert Einstein

How the Mind Works

• Creative thinking occurs when previously unrelated ideas are linked– Lateral thinking means making

connections between different ideas – Humor – Art is felt (aesthetics) and that is the

combination thoughts that evoke feelings

Creativity and Aesthetics

Perhaps what differentiates highly creative ideas from ordinary ones is some combined sense of beauty, simplicity, and harmony.

– Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach

Increasing Personal Creativity

• Ability to choose or balance attributes– Depth/breadth– Focused/relaxed– Smart/uncertain– Disciplined/playful– Realistic/imaginative– Introverted/extroverted– Humble/proud– Traditional/rebellious– Objective/passionate– Pain/pleasure

Types of Creativity

• Small c (Personal) creativity – new and useful only to or primarily to the individual creator.

• Big C (Recognized creativity) – valuable to a group as a whole. May transform society or group.

Fox, Jon Michael and Ronni Lea Fox, Exploring the Nature of Creativity,

Kendall/Hunt, 2000, p.14.

The creative individual is a person who regularly solves problems, fashions products, or defines new questions in a particular field in a way that is initially considered novel but that ultimately becomes accepted in a particular cultural setting.

– Gardner, Howard, Creating Minds, Basic Books, 1993, p.35.

Creativity needs:Skill, Talent, Personality

Are they in-born or learned?

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

— Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

Making Unusual and Unexpected Mental

Associations

Making Unusual and Unexpected Mental

Associations

Creativity doesn’t create something out of nothing but, rather, recombines ideas that already separately exist.

— Arthur Koestler

Increasing Personal Creativity

• Ability to choose or balance attributes• Practice making unusual and

unexpected mental associations• Acquire information in many areas

Acquire information in many areas

• Travel• Appreciation and study of the arts• Appreciation of education • General inquisitiveness – work hard

and develop a passion for your studies, work, life

Be Confident

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

--Albert Einstein

Be prepared for criticism

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself; therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.

— George Bernard Shaw

Why aren’t we creative?

• Anxious to get the “right” answer• Become less creative with age• Willing to reject “bad” ideas• Do not seek alternative ideas• Doubt that a solution exists• Stopped asking discovery questions

– What if, why not…

• Developed habits• Hard to suspend logic