Anyone who enjoys dabbling will like this post, at least the first part.

When attempting to build the creative faculty there is a lot more you can do besides mastering the first two disciplines of divergent ideation and convergent evaluation.  One of the easiest is to broaden the breadth and depth of knowledge inputs from which you can draw.

In terms of breadth, the corrolation between diverse experience inputs and creativity is pretty simple.  When attempting to develop novel and appropriate solutions (read creative solutions), the more varied a set of experiences you have, the more possible solutions you may be able to generate. 

So many examples abound . . . if you are a chef, the more cuisine types, ingredients and techniques you have experienced, the more creative you can be in creating new dishes.  Most art forms are derivatives of previous genres, whether inspired, copied or bastardized, there is no doubt that the familiarity next generation artists have with previous masters helps to shape their art.  As a working stiff, I can certainly vouch for the fact that my 20+ years of work has given me a base of experience from which I draw almost daily.

Therefore, go forth and dabble.  Visit different countries.  Listen to different kinds of music.  Live in different living situations.  Try to create different types of art.  Work at different types of companies (size, type, industry, people).  Date different people.  Attend different events.  Get to know people who are not at all like you.  Read motley media.  Broaden, broaden, broaden your experiences.

Note: just because you have these experiences doesn't guarantee you are very creative, but it will enable you to be MORE creative than you would be otherwise without these experiences.   

Now, in terms of depth, the key point is to grok an experience whether it be a person, place or thing.  I have heard it described as observation -- but using all your senses, not just sight (also hearing, touch, smell, taste, emotion, etc.).  Whereas the knowledge input of experience loads up the WHAT bank, the knowledge input of observation increases your WHY balance.  Being able to draw upon both the WHAT and WHY of any piece of knowledge will certainly enable you to better generate novel solutions as well as evaluate which ideas are most appropriate.

Observation as a discipline itself is quite fascinating.  On one level there is a very passive noting of data.  The more powerful next step, however, is concluding why things occurred.  More mastery of observation leads to the ability to predict future behavior by key participants.

An excellent exercise I have read about is when a professor asked his students to look at a fish and note observations about it FOR AN HOUR.  As you would expect after about he first 5 minutes, most of the students felt they had hit a wall for observations.  But given that the professor was adamant that they continue, most of the students slowly found more and more to note about the fish until it became easy to go for an hour.

In our hustle and bustle world, I have no doubt that if we can all slow down enough to see situations with a sharp eye, we will see details and solutions to problems which are totally unexpected (novel).

- D

Before I start going deep on some of the parts of the creative process, I realized it would probably be useful to lay out the overall framework and the components.

Key elements of creativity

1. Definition: Novel and Appropriate

2. Skills: Divergent Ideation and Convergent Evaluation

3. Knowledge Inputs: Experience and Observation

4. Environmental Inputs: Cultural Diversity, Role Models, Resources, Freedom within Limits, Judgment Free

5. Motivation Inputs: Self Development not End Development, Mastery vs. Performance orientation, Internal vs. External Stimuli

6. Genetics: Relating Intelligence, Abstraction Ability, Personality Type

7. Methods of Generating Options - Serendipity, Similarity, Meditation

8. Big C, Little C - Innovative vs. Adaptive Creativity

9. Training Techniques for divergent ideating

10. Media - words, body, sound, materials

11. Applications: problem solving, artistic expression, communication, fantasy/role playing

12. Activity Mode: Real-Time vs. Multi-stage

BTW, I will going through all twelve of these factors in this blog.

- D

Not everyone can be a writer, but everyone is an editor.

It's helpful to realize that your creative ability is really two abilities in one: Ideating and Evaluating.  Kind of like a Reese's peanut butter cup -- two great tastes that taste great together (did I get that right?).

Ideating, the ability to generate novel options, is the first skill.  Evaluating, the ability to determine the appropriateness (i.e., how well a given solution meets the constraints of the task) of an option, is the second.

What I found interesting about dissecting the creative process into these two parts is the sudden realization that 1) you can separate any creative process into two different activities, 2) any given person is likely to be stronger in one than the other, and 3) expertise in BOTH is required to generate the very best solutions.

Think writer vs. editor, entrepreneur vs. vc, painter vs. art critic --  Jackson Pollock vs. Peggy Guggenheim -- one person gifted in creating art, the other gifted in evaluating which art is truly great.  Of course, many do not have as favorable views of critics . . . "Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how he feels about dogs." - John Osborne

Of course, once I came to understand these two distinct skills, I only generated more questions including:  What does it mean to sequence these two activities?  What are the specific techniques to master in each skill?  Can you be great in both?  Why or why not?  What can you do to develop each skill?

All these questions I found answers to.  Stick with me as I head further and further down the rabbit hole.

Early last year I became fascinated by the question: what is creativity?   With the help of Larry Page I was able relatively quickly to define it:

Creativity is the ability to generate novel and appropriate solutions for a given task.  The essence of creativity lies in these two concepts of "novel" and "appropriate."

The easier one to understand is novelty.  From the Latin word "novus" meaning "new", novel simply means a new, original, even unexpected idea.  Novelty, however, is necessary but not sufficient for a solution to be creative.  For example, if I am trying to figure out what to serve my guest for dinner this Saturday a novel idea would be golf balls.  New, original and certainly unexpected.  Not appropriate, of course.

This constraint leads to the next requirement which is that the solution must be "appropriate" or said another way it must meet the constraints of the required task.  In my example the constraint would be not causing all guests to require immediate Heimlich maneuvers.

Interestingly, creativity thrives with constraints.  Think about having no budget constraints for a given task.  Without limits, it's actually harder to generate creative solutions.  Ironic.

Once I defined the general concept of creativity, I became even more curious to figure out if I could 1) dissect furthe the components of creativity and 2) understand whether it's possible to foster creativity methodically.

The answers I found were yes and yes.

This blog will be about those answers.