creative thinking

There have been many different approaches to creativity. Artists produce something that is of value. That is a definition of creativity. So creativity is often associated with art. Unfortunately the relationship is not symmetrical. Art is creative, but creativity is not (solely) art. Failure to make this distinction has serious consequences in the field of education. Schools teach art in the form of music, dancing and painting and then believe that they are teaching 'creativity'.

People who have no artistic ability also come to feel that they are not creative. Artistic 'creativity' includes many things such as emotional resonance, power of expression, and aesthetic judgement. There may be very little 'change' element. Picasso was all about change, but artists like Braque, Chagall and Mondrian (in the second part of his life) were much more productive stylists.

It was because of this confusion and the very broad scope of the word 'creative' that it was necessary to create the term 'lateral' thinking. This is specifically concerned with changing perceptions, ideas and concepts. There is no artistic connotation. Interestingly, many people in the art world (especially in music) do use some of the lateral thinking processes.

CREATIVE PEOPLE
There are many, like Tom Peters, who believe that the best way to get creativity is to employ creative people. There is much sense to that. But it is also very wasteful. If the skill of creativity can be added to the other skills of non-creative thinkers, then those talents get enhanced. Creative people have the motivation to be creative. They want to challenge existing ideas. They want to think of new approaches. So they spend more time trying to be creative. The result is that they are indeed more creative than those who spend less time trying to be creative.

In addition, there is some confidence in their creative ability. Success enhances that confidence. The process is one of positive feedback. Creative people enjoy being creative and enjoy trying to be creative. Some creative people have developed for themselves certain habits of thinking which resemble the formal tools of lateral thinking, but in a less precise and less deliberate way: provocations, concept extraction, etc.

What has interested me is that many people who are successfully creative in their professions have told me how useful they find the formal processes of lateral thinking. These make more available things they feel they have been doing instinctively.

STATE OF MIND
From time to time there are suggestions that drugs may enhance creativity. This does not seem to be the case. There may indeed be a feeling of creativity, but the output is not impressive. If you disrupt normal nerve co-ordination, you will certainly see things differently - but the same disruption will prevent putting together a valuable new idea. Bizarre is bizarre and not creative.

There are suggestions that being in a 'theta' (or some other) mental state helps creativity. This may be true to some extent, but is quite weak. Meditation may free the mind from being trapped in certain ideas and approaches, but it does not seem to have the provocative element that is so necessary for constructive creativity. It is not enough to escape from prison - you also need to have somewhere to go.

There are many attempts to design 'creative environments' and special rooms. These have a dual value. They are a signal that you should seek to be creative when you are in that environment. They also signal that the usual constraints that shape ideas do not apply in that environment. The effect is, however, weak. The danger is that people come to believe that you can only be creative in that environment.

LIBERATION AND BRAINSTORMING
A person tied up tightly with a rope cannot play a violin. But cutting that rope does not make that person a violinist. An inhibited person is unlikely to be creative. But liberating that person does not necessarily make that person creative.

This 'liberating' assumption has held back creativity for many years. So many practitioners wrongly believe that it is enough to 'liberate' people for them to be creative, that it is enough to mess around and ideas will flow. This liberation, as in brainstorming, has some effect, and more ideas will be produced. But many of these ideas will be fluffy and peripheral. Many will fall into the category of 'crazytivity'.

It should also be noted that advertising has creative needs that are different from most other fields. In advertising it is often enough to be 'different', because this attracts attention and may be memorable. In most other fields, however, being different is not itself a value. Brainstorming came from the field of advertising, but has less value elsewhere - especially if really new concepts are needed.

ANALYSIS
There have been attempts to analyse the creative thinking of people who have been very creative - with a view to extracting some key points. If a financier has two boiled eggs for breakfast, though, it does not mean that by having two boiled eggs for breakfast will make you a financier. Different behaviours may all be based on some fundamental principles. Unless you already know those principles, you are very unlikely to detect them in behaviours which seem very different. For example, there are many different ways in which creative thinkers can set up provocations for themselves.

EXHORTATION
Exhorting people to be creative will have only a very short-term effect. They will try to be creative, only to find that they do not know how. So they give up. Attitudes are not very powerful determinants of behaviour.

FORMAL TOOLS
It is because of the deficiencies of the above approaches that it was necessary to create some formal creative tools. These tools could be learned, practised and used deliberately. In this way, a formal and deliberate skill in creativity could be developed. Where do these lateral thinking tools come from?

We can at last move forward from psychological descriptions to consider the nature of the brain as an information system. In my book The Mechanism of Mind (now a Penguin book) I describe how neural networks operate as a self-organising system to allow incoming information to organise itself into patterns.

An examination of the nature of such systems indicates their strength (as in pattern-making) and their weaknesses (as in pattern-changing). Such considerations are the basis for the design of the formal creative tools of lateral thinking. These include such processes as provocation, movement and random entry. All this is rather different from just messing around with brainstorming.

Through a network of licensed trainers, these methods can be taught and learned. The formal skills of creative thinking can be used even by those who have not hitherto considered themselves to be creative.