3-Cs of Thinking: Creative Thinking
Diverging Your Water Wings
This article is about Creative Thinking, arguably the most important skills of the 3-Cs. We’ve actually already done a bit of creative thinking with the Five Hats of Thinking technique I introduced you to in a previous article, but … there’s so much more to creative thinking than that.
Before I explain more about the art of creative thinking, I’d like to start with a bit of maths. Play the video in the header of this article and follow along. Don’t worry it’s nothing complex.
Be honest, did you think of the obvious answer or are you one of the more creative 20%? If you found yourself being part of the non-creative majority, don’t worry, the statistical reality is that most of us just don’t think very creatively. So why is that and how do you become a better creative thinker?
What is Creative Thinking & How to Do It?
Upon hearing the phrase Creative Thinking, the overused concept of out-of-the-box thinking or perhaps creative geniuses like Mozart or Picasso or even a popular K-pop band or other talented people might have popped into your mind. And as a result of this, you might not think of yourself as being very creative. This might be true, of course, but creativity is just a skill like any other and can be learnt by anyone.
What creative thinking really entails is the ability to combine opposites and the way to do this is to diverge and then converge. Divergent thinking means expanding ideas, the sky’s the limit and the box doesn’t exist. Then, with convergent thinking you’ll bring those ideas back to reality. Creativity is striking a balance between these contrasting ways of thinking. But before we dive into diverging and converging, I’d like to talk you through the different levels of our thinking because not all thinking is the same.
To do this, I’d like to take a look at the hierarchical model known as Bloom’s Taxonomy which provides us with excellent descriptions of the different levels of thought from the least complex to the more complex forms of our thinking.
At the bottom there is remembering which is just our ability to memorize and recall factual information. Above that there is understanding which refers to our ability to classify, discuss and explain the ideas we memorized. The next level up is applying which is the level of thought we use to use the things we know to understand and interpret new information. Next we have analyzing which refers to our ability to differentiate, organize and examine. Then evaluating which allows us to critique and make recommendations. And finally creating, which is the highest level of human thought and the place where divergent and convergent thinking live.
All of our thinking goes through the different stages of the taxonomy but most of us don’t often venture above analyzing. This is because when we initially try to work something out, we kind of go through a brain dump and think of the things that have already been thought of. We really need to push ourselves to continue to our higher levels of thinking.
Diverge Your Thinking
Now let’s have a look at how to diverge your thinking. There are basically four principles for divergent thinking. First and foremost you should defer judgment. If you aren’t able to silence your inner critic, there’s no point in even attempting to think creatively.
Next you need to go for quantity because the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of them. You’d be tempted to think that quality goes over quantity, which is true. But it is also true that quantity will lead to quality. The more options you have the more probable you are to have a breakthrough. A recent study has shown that, on average, it takes over 3,000 initial ideas to develop one successful new product or service.
Then making connections. Our brains are hard-wired to make associations. We continuously and automatically link ideas and this is a powerful source for creativity. As a quick example, I’d like you to take a look at the following. On the screen you see three words, ball, shoes and table. Now I’d like you to make connections by thinking of one word that you can either add before or after these three to extend on the ideas of the original words.
I don’t know what you’ve come up with, of course, but the word I was thinking of is tennis. With this word I can create the combinations tennis ball, tennis shoes and table tennis. Not too difficult right? Give it another try with the two sets below (hoover over or click/tab the image to reveal the answers).
Maybe the best example of something new created by making connections is Star Wars. Inspired by Japanese Samurai traditions and stories of the American Wild West, George Lucas used elements of these and created a new kind of Samurai Western Sci-Fi movie.
And finally, seek novelty. This fourth and final divergent thinking principle is about having dreams and trying out new things. What seems impossible today might be reality tomorrow. Just think of the amazing gadgets of old sci-fi movies which today don’t even come close to the smartphone you have in your pocket right now. So, dare to dream and think big.
Those are the four principles of divergent thinking, defer judgement, go for quantity, make connections and seek novelty. Making these principles part of your day-to-day thinking and making them habitual will help you think of creative new ideas in a more effortless way.
Converge Your Thinking
So divergent thinking is all about creating as many new creative ideas as possible, but you can’t use all of them. Life’s too short for that. Therefore, after diverging you’ll need to converge. And like divergent thinking, there are some principles to guide your convergent thinking.
The first of these is to use affirmative judgement. What this means is that, although you are critically evaluating your idea, you need to do this with an affirmative, open-minded approach. First looking for the positives and then for shortcomings. In other words, first you wear the blue hat and then the black one, even though most of us tend to think the other way around.
The second principle is to keep novelty alive. This is really about forcing yourself to leave your comfort zone and embrace the unknown.
Third, we have to check your objectives. With divergent thinking we deferred judgement and dared to think big, escaping reality. But once you start to converge, you need to bring the ideas you created back to reality. You’ll need to evaluate them against realistic success criteria.
And the final principle is to stay focussed. Divergent thinking can be fun and playful but creative ideas rarely emerge complete and well formed. As you converge, you’ll need to evaluate and use critical thinking skills to test and refine them.
SCAMPER Your Thinking
Now that you know the theories behind divergent and convergent thinking, let’s have a look at how to apply these techniques. First diverging. In the supplemental readings of this lesson you’ll find a number of innovative techniques that will take you beyond the kind of brainstorming I assume you are already familiar with.
The one I would like to highlight here is the SCAMPER technique which comes from the book Games for Imagination Development. This technique will enable you to create, develop or improve products and/or services. The acronym SCAMPER stands for: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify and Magnify, Purpose, Eliminate and Rearrange. These are the seven question topics that make up this technique.
Applying SCAMPER is fairly easy. First you choose an existing product or service as a starting point. Next you generate questions based on the seven SCAMPER topics.
For substitute you ask yourself which materials can be changed in order to improve the product, which other product can be used, which parts can be replaced and if the product has other possible applications?
For combine you’d wonder what would happen if the product was combined with another product or if the product could also be used for another purpose? And what could the product be combined with to maximize its use?
Then adapt. Can the product be adapted to other uses? In which different contexts can the product be placed? And how can the product be adapted to make it function even better?
For modify and magnify you’d ask, How could the shape or appearance of the product be changed? What can be added to the product? Which parts could be emphasized to add value? Which part of the product can be changed in order to create something new?
Purpose in this context means other possible uses, for which you might ask, Can the product be used for a different purpose? Who else could use this product? How would the product behave in a different context? Can the product’s waste be reused or recycled?
To eliminate you’d wonder What the product would look like if you were to simplify it? What components could be left out? How the product could be made smaller, faster, cheaper or more efficiently? And what if we remove parts of the product?
Finally, to rearrange, ask yourself if it would be possible to interchange components? What other patterns or layout could be used? And if it would be possible to transpose cause and effect?
Once you’ve got your answers, it’s time for the final step in the SCAMPER approach. You need to converge on your answers. As with diverging, you’ll find a number of techniques to do this in the supplemental readings of this lesson. For now, I’d like to introduce you to a simple one often used by comedians, the XXO technique.
The XXO Technique
The way comedians use this technique is that they first brainstorm as many jokes as they can imagine. Then they read through the written out jokes and put an X behind the ones that make them laugh out loud. Next a new list is created containing only the X-marked jokes. After a break they read through this new list and put another X behind the jokes that still make them laugh. The process is then repeated one more time but now the comedians will circle the X of the jokes that still put a smile on their faces. These are the ones they will go with. It’s a simple and straightforward technique. Obviously it’s far from perfect but it will get you going. And, to be honest, that’s very the real secret of creativity lies, getting started.
[T]here you are.
