Posts Tagged ‘creativity create creativethinking thinking michalko thinkertoys author’

25 Mar

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT CREATING IDEAS FROM LEONARDO DA VINCI

Posted by imagineer7 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , .

ARCS

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). 

2 Oct

Think Like a Dog

Posted by imagineer7 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .

thinking-dog

An enlightening experiment was done by Gestalt psychologists with a group of dogs. The dogs were trained to approach something when shown a white square and avoid it when shown a gray square. When the dogs learned this, the experimenters switched to using a gray square and a black square. The dogs immediately shifted to approaching the object when shown the gray square (which had previously triggered avoidance) and avoiding the object when shown the black square (which had not previously been associated with an action). Presumably, rather than perceiving the gray, white, and black as an absolute stimuli, the dogs were responding to a deeper essence—lighter versus darker.

Many of us have lost the raw sensitivity to essences because we have been educated to focus on the particulars of experience as opposed to the universals. For example, suppose we were asked to design a new can opener. Most of our ideas would be driven by our experience and association with the particulars of can openers we’ve used, and we would likely design something that is only marginally different from existing can openers.

If we determine the essence of a can opener to be opening things, however, and look for clues in the world around us, we increase our chances of discovering a novel idea. Think for a moment about how things open. Some examples are:

  • Valves open by steam.
  • Oysters open by relaxing a muscle.
  • Pea pods open when ripening weakens the seam.
  • Doors open with keys.
  • A fish’s mouth opens when squeezed at the base.
  • A car’s accelerator opens when a pedal is pushed.

Our raw creativity allows us to make thousands of indirect associations, some of which may lead to an original, novel idea. For example, you can take the pea pod and work it into a new way of opening a can. Instead of creating a can opener, design the can with a weak seam that opens the can when pulled (inspired by way pea pods open when its seam is weakened. This novel idea results from thinking about and approaching the problem ina different way than you’ve been taught.

Creative people in the arts, sciences, and industry often use this thinking strategy. Fred Smith, founder of Federal Express, said people in the transportation of goods business never really understood why and how he became so successful. He became successful, he said, because he understood the essence of the business, which is peace of mind, and not just transportation of goods. Grasping this essence, he was the first to make it possible for customers to track packages right from their desktops

Martin Skalski, director of the transportation design sequence at Pratt Institute, teaches his students to tackle problems in terms of essences. For example, he doesn’t tell students to design an automobile or study various automobile designs on the market. Instead, he begins the design process by having them create abstract compositions of things in motion. Then by progressively making the process less abstract, he eventually has them working on the real problem—designing forms of transportation—by creating connections between the abstract work and the final model.

World-renowned architect and designer Arthur Erickson also uses this thinking  with his students to help them avoid visual and functional preconceptions and to unlock creativity. For example, if he is looking for a new chair design, he will first ask his students to draw a picture of a figure in motion. Then he will ask them to build a wood, plastic, metal, or paper model of a structure that supports that figure in motion. Finally, he will have them use the model as the basis for a new chair design.

Erickson teaches his students the importance of finding the essence of designing furniture. As he puts it, “If I had said to the students, ‘Look, we’re going to design a chair or bed,’ they would have explored the design on the basis of previous memories of chairs or beds. But by approaching the model from the essential direction, I was able to make them realize the vital essence of furniture.”

In one group exercise, Erickson had his assistants generate a list of how to store things, a list of how to stack things, and a list of how to organize large objects. Then he gave his assistants the real problem, which was to design a parking garage using the ideas and thoughts from the three different lists.

The mind gets into ruts very quickly, particularly when it stalls and spins its wheels. It gets mired in the details of some perception. Charles Darwin asked the grand question “What is life?” instead of getting mired down classifying the mite or fungus. Getting right to the essence of the problem creates space between thoughts sunken into each other. It forces you to test assumptions and explore possibilities.

Suppose you want to improve the design of the umbrella. The essence of an umbrella is protection from the rain. When you examine the essence, you are likely to explore more creative possibilities for rain protection, such as a new kind of raincoat or even a new type of town design where there are arcades everywhere and umbrellas are no longer required. Or, consider the bookstore owner who viewed himself as a seller of books—a very specific idea. The trend toward the electronic media put him out of business. However, if he had viewed himself as a “provider of information and entertainment”—a more abstract and general characterization—the switch toward electronic media would not have been threatening; it would have opened up new opportunities.

BLUEPRINT

  1. First, describe the problem and determine its essence. Ask the group, “What is the principle of the problem?” Example: Our problem is how to protect rural designer mailboxes from theft and vandalism. The essence is “protection.”
  2. Ask the group to generate ideas on how to protect things. Give the group an idea quota of thirty or more ideas. Don’t mention the real problem, which is how to protect rural mailboxes.

Examples:

  • Place in a bank.
  • Rustproof, to protect from weather damage..
  • Provide good maintenance.
  • Get an insurance policy.
  • Put a chip in it so you can track its whereabouts.
  • Protect it with an armed guard.
  1. After you’ve generated a number of different ideas, restate the problem for the group so that it is slightly less abstract. For example, think of ways to protect things that are outside and vulnerable. Again, generate as many solutions as you can.

Examples:

  • Hire a guard.
  • Watch it constantly.
  • Drape it with camouflage.
  • Put a fence around it.
  • Keep it well lighted.
  • Install an alarm system.
  1. Finally, address the group with the real problem. Review and discuss the ideas and solutions to the two previous abstractions and use these as stimuli to generate solutions. Example: The real problem is how to protect rural mailboxes from theft and vandalism. The idea triggered from “get an insurance policy” is to offer an insurance policy to owners of rural mailboxes: $5 a year or $10 for three years to cover the mailbox from theft or destruction.

Scientists at Gillette wanted to develop a new toothbrush. They decided that the essence of a toothbrush is “cleaning.” Among the things studied were:

  • How are cars cleaned?
  • How is hair cleaned?
  • How are clothes cleaned?
  • How are arteries cleaned?
  • How are waterways cleaned?

They got excited when they studied car washes. Cars are washed and cleaned in a car wash. Car washes use multiple soaping and brushing actions in different directions. They incorporated the principle of multiple brushes brushing in different directions into the toothbrush known as the Oral B, which is the leading selling toothbrush in the world.

When creating ideas think of essences, principles and universals. Think abstractly.

(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. http://www.creativethinking.net)

19 Jan

Dancing in the Rain

Posted by imagineer7 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Below is a drawing.  What does it look like to you?Horse.Frog

If you said frog, you were right.  However, if you said horse, you were also right.  Can you see the horse?  (Hint: Tilt your head to the right.)

We see different things in the lines and shapes of the drawing depending on how we look at the drawing.  In a way, it is the same in the real world where we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.  If you are a happy person, the world is a joyful place.  If you are a sad person, the world is a place of despair.

A few years back, two men, a paralytic and a man with a terrible lung disease, were confined to a hospital room.  Each day, the medical staff would help the man with the lung disease sit up for an hour and, during that time, he would gaze out the window and describe what he saw to his paralyzed roommate whose bed was on the side of the room away from the window.

He’d describe children running and playing, a father walking with his child, a bluebird in a tree across the way, how the wind moved the clouds, how the rain washed the sidewalks and roads clean, and two little boys playing catch.  His descriptions gave the paralyzed man a sense of hope, a will to live.

One day, the man with the lung disease died.  The paralyzed man asked to be moved close to the window and, when the nurses obliged, asked them to help him sit up so he could see out.  Again the nurses obliged, but all that could be seen from the window was a wall.

Shocked, the paralyzed man told the nurses about the wonderful things his former roommate had described and about how those descriptions had given him hope.  The nurses were a little shook up by this and told the paralyzed man something he didn’t know about his roommate.

“He was blind,” they said.

The point is, the world is largely in your mind.  It’s how you think, how you dream, that determines how you see and perceive things.  Life is not about waiting for storms to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.

*************************************

Michael Michalko http://creativethinking.net/about/#sthash.CGesK9v4.dpbs

 

20 Aug

What the CIA Discovered about Smiling

Posted by imagineer7 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Mona LisaOur attitudes influence our behavior. But it’s also true that our behavior can influence our attitudes. The Greek philosopher Diogenes was once noticed begging a statue. His friends were puzzled and alarmed at this behavior. Asked the reason for this pointless behavior, Diogenes replied, “I am practicing the art of being rejected.” By pretending to be rejected continually by the statue, Diogenes was learning to understand the mind of a beggar. Every time we pretend to have an attitude and go through the motions, we trigger the emotions we pretend to have and strengthen the attitude we wish to cultivate. 

You become what you pretend to be. The surrealist artist Salvador Dalí was pathologically shy as a child. He hid in closets and avoided all human contact, until his uncle counseled him on how to overcome this shyness. He advised Dalí to be an actor and to pretend he played the part of an extrovert. At first Dalí was full of doubts. But when he adopted the pose of an extrovert, his brain soon adapted itself to the role he was playing. Dalí’s pretense changed his psychology. 

Think for a moment about social occasions — visits, dates, dinners out with friends, birthday parties, weddings, and other gatherings. Even when we’re unhappy or depressed, these occasions force us to act as if we are happy. Observing others’ faces, postures, and voices, we unconsciously mimic their reactions. We synchronize our movements, postures, and tones of voice with theirs. Then, by mimicking happy people, we become happy. 

CIA researchers have long been interested in developing techniques to help them study the facial expressions of suspects. Two such researchers began simulating facial expressions of anger and distress all day, each day for weeks. One of them admitted feeling terrible after a session of making those faces. Then the other realized that he too felt poorly, so they began to keep track. They began monitoring their bodies while simulating facial expressions. Their findings were remarkable. They discovered that a facial expression alone is sufficient to create marked changes in the nervous system. 

In one exercise they raised their inner eyebrows, raised their cheeks, and lowered the corner of their lips and held this facial expression for a few minutes. They were stunned to discover that this simple facial expression generated feelings of sadness and anguish within them. The researchers then decided to monitor the heart rates and body temperatures of two groups of people. One group was asked to remember and relive their most sorrowful experiences. The other group in another room was simply asked to produce a series of facial expressions expressing sadness. Remarkably, the second group, the people who were pretending, showed the same physiological responses as the first. Try the following thought experiment. 

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT

  • Lower your eyebrows.
  • Raise your upper eyelids.
  • Narrow your eyelids.
  • Press your lips together. 

Hold this expression and you will generate anger. Your heartbeat will go up ten or twelve beats per minute. Your hands will get hot, and you feel very unpleasant. 

The next time you’re feeling depressed and want to feel happy and positive, try this: put a pen between your teeth, in far enough so that it stretches the edges of your mouth out to the left and right without feeling uncomfortable. Hold it there for five minutes or so. You’ll find yourself inexplicably in a happy mood. You will amaze yourself at fast your facial expressions can change your emotions. 

In a further experiment, the CIA researchers had one group of subjects listen to recordings of top comedians and look at a series of cartoons. At the same time, each person held a pen pressed between his or her lips — an action that makes it impossible to smile. Individ­uals in another group each held a pen between his or her teeth, which had the opposite effect and made them smile. 

The people with the pens between their teeth rated the comedians and cartoons as much funnier than the other group did. What’s more, the people in neither group knew they were making expressions of emotion. Amazingly, an expression you do not even know you have can create an emotion that you did not deliberately choose to feel. Emotion doesn’t just go from the inside out. It goes from the outside in. 

HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN MOOD 

Psychologist Theodore Velten created a mood induction procedure in 1969 that psychologists have used for over forty years to induce a posi­tive mind-set, especially in psychology experiments. It’s a simple approach that involves reading, reflecting on, and trying to feel the effects of some fifty-eight positive affirmations as they wash over you. The statements start out being fairly neutral and then become progressively more positive. They are specifically designed to produce a euphoric state of mind. 

Velten’s Instructions: Read each of the following statements to yourself. As you look at each one, focus your observation only on that one. You should not spend too much time on any one statement. To experience the mood suggested in the statement, you must be willing to accept and respond to the idea. Allow the emotion in the statement to act upon you. Then try to produce the feeling suggested by each statement. Visualize a scene in which you experienced such a feeling. Imagine reliving the scene. The entire exercise should take about ten minutes. 

VELTEN MOOD INDUCTION STATEMENTS 

  1. Today is neither better nor worse than any other day.
  2. I do feel pretty good today, though.
  3. I feel lighthearted.
  4. This might turn out to have been one of my good days.
  5. If your attitude is good, then things are good, and my attitude is good.
  6. I feel cheerful and lively.
  7. I’ve certainly got energy and self-confidence to share.
  8. On the whole, I have very little difficulty in thinking clearly.
  9. My friends and family are pretty proud of me most of the time.
  10. I’m in a good position to make a success of things.
  11. For the rest of the day, I bet things will go really well.
  12. I’m pleased that most people are so friendly to me.
  13. My judgments about most things are sound.
  14. The more I get into things, the easier they become for me.
  15. I’m full of energy and ambition — I feel like I could go a long time without sleep.
  16. This is one of those days when I can get things done with practically no effort at all.
  17. My judgment is keen and precise today. Just let someone try to put something over on me.
  18. When I want to, I can make friends extremely easily.
  19. If I set my mind to it, I can make things turn out fine.
  20. I feel enthusiastic and confident now.
  21. There should be opportunity for a lot of good times coming along.
  22. My favorite songs keep going through my mind.
  23. Some of my friends are so lively and optimistic.
  24. I feel talkative — I feel like talking to almost anybody.
  25. I’m full of energy, and am really getting to like the things I’m doing.
  26. I feel like bursting with laughter — I wish somebody would tell a joke and give me an excuse.
  27. I feel an exhilarating animation in all I do.
  28. My memory is in rare form today.
  29. I’m able to do things accurately and efficiently.
  30. I know good and well that I can achieve the goals I set.
  31. Now that it occurs to me, most of the things that have depressed me wouldn’t have if I’d just had the right attitude.
  32. I have a sense of power and vigor.
  33. I feel so vivacious and efficient today — sitting on top of the world.
  34. It would really take something to stop me now.
  35. In the long run, it’s obvious that things have gotten better and better during my life.
  36. I know in the future I won’t overemphasize so-called “problems.”
  37. I’m optimistic that I can get along very well with most of the people I meet.
  38. I’m too absorbed in things to have time for worry.
  39. I’m feeling amazingly good today.
  40. I am particularly inventive and resourceful in this mood.
  41. I feel superb! I think I can work to the best of my ability.
  42. Things look good. Things look great!
  43. I feel that many of my friendships will stick with me in the future.
  44. I feel highly perceptive and refreshed.
  45. I can find the good in almost everything.
  46. In a buoyant mood like this one, I can work fast and do it right the first time.
  47. I can concentrate hard on anything I do.
  48. My thinking is clear and rapid.
  49. Life is so much fun; it seems to offer so many sources of fulfillment.
  50. Things will be better and better today.
  51. I can make decisions rapidly and correctly, and I can defend them against criticisms easily.
  52. I feel industrious as heck — I want something to do!
  53. Life is firmly in my control.
  54. I wish somebody would play some good, loud music!
  55. This is great — I really do feel good. I am elated about things!
  56. I’m really feeling sharp now.
  57. This is just one of those days when I’m ready to go!
  58. Wow, I feel great! 

You’ll find yourself feeling good about yourself and thinking harmonious thoughts. When you are in a good mood, you find your body exhibiting it in your behavior. You’ll smile, and you’ll walk briskly. 

MONA LISA’S SMILE 

Leonardo da Vinci once observed that it’s no mystery why it is fun to be around happy people and depressing to be around depressed people. He also observed a melancholy atmosphere in many portraits. He attributed that to the solitariness of artists and their environment. According to Giorgio Vasari, Leonardo, while painting the Mona Lisa, employed singers, musicians, and jesters to chase away his melancholy as he painted. As a result, he painted a smile so pleasing that it seems divine and as alive as the original. 

………………………………

To discover the creative thinking techniques creative geniuses have used throughout history in the arts, sciences and business read CRACKING CREATIVITY by Michael Michalko. http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Creativity-Secrets-Creative-Genius/dp/1580083110/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=16NCRBEMHRCEQ1RAZG5VCRACKING CREATIVITY.2

 

 

 

 

2 Jul

Creative Geniuses Are Geniuses Because They Know How To Form Novel Combinations Between Dissimilar Subjects

Posted by imagineer7 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

woman.flower

Creative geniuses do not get their breakthrough ideas because they are more intelligent, better educated, or more experienced, or because creativity is genetically determined. Psychologist Dr. Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California researches a diversity of topics having to do with genius and creativity. One of his major conclusions is that geniuses are geniuses because they form more novel combinations than the merely talented. Creative thinkers form more novel combinations because they routinely conceptually blend objects, concepts, and ideas from two different contexts or categories that logical thinkers conventionally consider separate.

It is the conceptual blending of dissimilar concepts that leads to original ideas and insights.
In nature, a rich mixture of any two forces will produce patterns. For example, pour water on a flat, polished surface. The water will spread out in a unique pattern of drops. The pattern is created by two forces: gravity and surface tension. Gravity spreads the water, and surface tension causes the water molecules to join together in drops. It is the combination of the two different forces that creates the unique, complex pattern of drops.

Similarly, when two dissimilar or two totally unrelated subjects are conceptually blended together in the imagination, new complex patterns are formed that create new ideas. The two subjects cross-catalyze each other like two chemicals that both must be present in order for a new concept, product, or idea to form. This strongly resembles the creative process of genetic recombination in nature. Chromosomes exchange genes to create emergent new beings. Think of elements and patterns of ideas as genes that combine and recombine to create new patterns that lead to new ideas.

Educators could better help students understand the nature of creative thinking by offering examples of how creative thinkers actually created their ideas. Take, for example, Jake Ritty’s invention of the simple cash register we all take for granted. Jake Ritty’s invention is an example of combining two elements from two totally unrelated fields into an insightful solution. In 1879, Jake, a restaurant owner, was traveling by ship to Europe. During the voyage, the passengers took a tour of the ship. In the engine room, Jake was captivated by the machine that recorded the number of times the ship’s propeller rotated. What he saw in this machine was the idea of “a machine that counts.”

Ritty was thinking inclusively. His goal was to make his work as a restaurant owner easier and more profitable. Looking at his world, he examined it for patterns and for analogies to what he already knew. When he saw in the engine room the machine that counted the number of times a ship’s propeller rotated, he asked, “How would the process of mechanically counting something make my restaurant more profitable?” A mental spark jumped from his thinking about the ship to his thinking about his restaurant business when he conceptually combined a machine that counts propeller rotations with counting money.

He was so excited by his insight that he caught the next ship home to work on his invention. Back in Ohio, using the same principles that went into the design of the ship’s machine, he made a machine that could add items and record the amounts. This hand-operated machine, which he started using in his restaurant, was the first cash register. Understanding how Jake got his idea is understanding the process of creative thinking.

To say that the lawn mower was invented in the cloth-making industry may sound absurd, but that is precisely where it was invented. Edwin Budding worked in a cloth factory in England in the early part of the nineteenth century. During those days, the surface of the cloth produced by the factory was fuzzy and had to be trimmed smooth. This was done by a machine with revolving blades fixed between rollers.

Budding loved the outdoors and maintained a lawn on his property. What he found tiresome was trimming the grass, which had to be done with a long, heavy handheld tool called a scythe. Making a analogical connection between trimming the cloth and trimming the lawn, he built a machine with long blades and two wheels. He also attached a shaft to this machine so that one could push it without bending down. And so, in 1831, the first lawn mower was built.

Mixing ideas from unrelated domains energizes your imagination and lets you think of possibilities you would otherwise ignore. How are industrial management techniques related to heart by-pass surgery? Heart surgeons in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont reduced the death rate among their heart bypass patients by one-fourth by incorporating the business management techniques of W. Edwards Deming, a leading industrial consultant. His techniques emphasized teamwork and cooperation over competition. Doctors usually function as individual craftspeople without sharing information. Following Deming’s industrial model, they began to operate as teams, visiting and observing each other and sharing information about how they practiced.

Combining the patterns of two dissimilar concepts in your imagination transcends logical thinking and makes the creation of novel combinations possible. This is creative thinking.

…………………………
Read Michael Michalko’s Creative Thinkering: Putting Your Imagination to Work to learn more about how creative geniuses get their ideas.http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Thinkering-Putting-Your-Imagination/dp/160868024X/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0AZ4HDTTG40XHBRPX22Q

10 Jun

Are You Following the Calf’s Trail Imbedded in Your Mind?

Posted by imagineer7 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Newborn Hereford Calf

One day thru the primeval wood
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail, all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do.
Since then 300 years have fled,
And I infer the calf is dead.
But still, he left behind his trail
And thereby hangs my mortal tale.

The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way.
And then, a wise bellwether sheep
Pursued the trail, o’er vale and steep,
And drew the flocks behind him too
As good bellwethers always do.
And from that day, o’er hill and glade
Thru those old woods, a path was made.

And many men would in and out
And dodged, and turned, and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because ‘twas such a crooked path
But still they followed; do not laugh
The first migrations of the calf.
And thru the winding woods they stalked
Because he wobbled when he walked.

This forest path became a lane
That bent, and turned, and turned again.
This crooked lane became a road
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled beneath the burning sun
And traveled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.

The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street.
And thus, before men were aware,
A city’s crowded thoroughfare.
And soon the central street was this
Of a renown metropolis.
And men, two centuries and a half
Trod the footsteps of that calf.

Each day a 100 thousand route
Followed the zigzag calf about.
And o’er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A 100 thousand men were led
By one calf, near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way
And lost 100 years per day.
For thus such reverence is lent
To well established precedent.

A moral lesson this might teach
Were I ordained, and called to preach.
For men are proud to go it blind
Along the calf paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out, and in, and forth, and back,
And still their devious course pursue
To keep the paths that others do.

They keep the paths a sacred groove
Along which all their lives they move.
But now the wise old wood gods laugh
Who saw that first primeval calf.
Ah, many things this tale might teach,
But I am not ordained to preach.

http://www.creativethinking.net

27 May

DISCOVER WHAT YOUR MINDSET IS

Posted by imagineer7 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Q factor.1

First, please take a few moments to complete the following experiment before you read this article. Using the first finger of your dominant hand, please trace the capital letter “Q” on your forehead. There are only two ways of doing this experiment. You can trace the letter “Q” on your forehead with the tail of Q toward your right eye or you draw it with the tail toward your left eye.Some people draw the letter 0 in such a way that they themselves can read it; that is, they place the tail of the Q on the right-hand side of the forehead. Others draw the letter in a way that can be read by someone facing them, with the tail of the 0 on the left side of the forehead.

What an odd thing to ask someone to do. This is an exercise that was popularized by University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman who concentrates on discovering big truths in small things. For instance, Wiseman explains that the Q test is a quick measure of “self-monitoring” which is a theory that deals with the phenomena of expressive controls. Human beings generally differ in substantial ways in their abilities and desires to engage in expressive controls.

Fixed mindset. People who draw the letter Q with the tail slanting toward their left so that someone facing them can read it tend to focus outwardly. Wiseman describes them as high self monitors. Their primary concern is “looking good” and “looking smart.”They are concerned with how other people see them, are highly responsive to social cues and their situational context. Psychologist Carol Dweck describes such people as having a “fixed” mindset. Some of the characteristics of people with a fixed mindset are:

• They have a fixed mindset about their abilities and the abilities of others. E.g., all talent is innate and static. You are either born intelligent or you are not. They do not believe people can change and grow.
• They enjoy being the center of attention and adapt their actions to suit the situation. Ability is something inherent that needs to be demonstrated.
• They are also skilled at manipulating the way others see them, which makes them good at deception and lying.
• They offer external attributions for failures. They are never personally responsible for mistakes or failures. To them, admitting you failed is tantamount to admitting you’re worthless.
• They are performance oriented and will only perform tasks that they are good at. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat. So they pursue only activities at which they’re sure to shine—and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor.
• From a fixed mindset perspective, if you have to work hard at something, or you learn it slowly, you aren’t good at it, and are not very smart. Performance is paramount. They want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process.

Growth mindset. People who draw the letter Q with the tail slanting toward the right so they can read it tend to focus inwardly. In contrast, low self-monitors come across as being the “same person” in different situations. Their behavior is guided more by their inner feelings and values, and they are less aware of their impact on those around them. They also tend to lie less in life, and so not be so skilled at deceit.”Carol Dweck would describe such people as having a “growth” mindset.

Q factor.2

Among the characteristics of people with a growth mindset are:
• They tend to exhibit expressive controls congruent with their own internal states; i.e. beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions regardless of social circumstance.
• They are often less observant of social context and consider expressing a self-presentation dissimilar from their internal states as a falsehood and undesirable.
• They are generally oblivious to how others see them and hence march to their own different drum.
• They believe the brain is dynamic and develops over time by taking advantage of learning opportunities and overcoming adversity.
• They offer internal attributions to explain things by assigning causality to factors within the person. An internal explanation claims that the person was directly responsible for the event.
• They take necessary risks and don’t worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn.
• The growth mindset is associated with greater confidence, risk-taking, and higher academic and career success over time. Ability can be developed.
• High achievement comes from hard work, dedication and persistence to meet a goal.
“If you want to demonstrate something over and over, it feels like something static that lives inside of you—whereas if you want to increase your ability, it feels dynamic and malleable,” Carol Dweck explains. People with fixed mindsets think intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a growth mind-set about intelligence, believing it can be developed.

In one notable experiment, Dweck gave a class of preadolescent students a test filled with challenging problems. After they were finished, one group was praised for its effort and another group was praised for its intelligence. Those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks, and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer.

Then Dweck asked the children to write a letter to students at another school, describing their experience in the study. She discovered something remarkable: 40 percent of those students who were praised for their intelligence lied about how they had scored on the test, adjusting their grade upward. They weren’t naturally deceptive people, and they weren’t any less intelligent or self-confident than anyone else. They simply did what people do when they are immersed in an environment that celebrates them solely for their innate “talent.” They begin to define themselves by that description, and when times get tough and that self-image is threatened, they have difficulty with the consequences. Politicians and businesspeople with fixed mindsets will not stand up to investors and the public and admit that they were wrong. They’d sooner lie then confess up to problems and work to fix them.

Michelangelo’s mindset. A great example of a growth mindset is the mindset of Michelangelo. When Michelangelo turned 13-years old, he enraged his father when he told that he had agreed to apprentice in the workshop of the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. His father believed artists were menial laborers beneath their social class. Michelangelo defied his father and learned art and then went on to study at the sculpture school in the Medici gardens. During the years he spent in the Garden of San Marco, Michelangelo became interested in human anatomy. At the time, studying corpses was strictly forbidden by the church. You were threatened with damnation and excommunication. He overcame this problem by making a wooden Crucifix with a detail of Christ’s face and offered it as a bribe to Niccolò Bichiellini, the prior of the church of Santo Spirito, in exchange for permission to secretly study corpses.

Michelangelo’s masterpiece, David, revealed his ability to do what others could not: if other artists required special marble and ideal conditions, he could create a masterpiece from whatever was available, including marble already hopelessly mangled by others. 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 mangled block was put in storage. They did not want to admit to failure. Forty years later, Michelangelo took what was left of the marble and sculpted David, the world’s most famous sculpture, within eighteen months.

Michelangelo’s competitors persuaded Junius II to assign to him a relatively obscure and difficult project. It was to fresco the ceiling of a private chapel. The chapel had already been copiously decorated with frescoes by many talented artists. Michelangelo would be commissioned to decorate the tunnel-vaulted ceiling. In this way, his rivals thought they would divert his energies from sculpture, in which they realized he was supreme. This, they argued, would make things hopeless for him, since he had no experience of coloring in fresco he would certainly, they believed, do less creditable work as a painter. Without doubt, they thought, he would be compared unfavorably with Raphael, and even if he refused to do it, he’d make the Pope angry and suffer the consequences. Thus, one way or another, they would succeed in their purpose of getting rid of him.

In every way it was a challenging task. He had rarely used color, nor had he painted in fresco. He worked hard and long at studying and experimenting with colors and in fresco. When ready, he executed the frescos in great discomfort, having to work with his face looking upwards, which impaired his sight so badly that he could not read or look at drawings save with his head turned backwards, and this lasted for several months. In that awkward curved space, Michelangelo managed to depict the history of the Earth from the Creation to Noah, surrounded by ancestors and prophets of Jesus and finally revealing the liberation of the soul. His enemies had stage managed the masterpiece that quickly established him as the artist genius of the age.

Michelangelo is a wonderful example of a person with a growth mindset. He ignored his father and marched to his own drum to become an artist; overcame the church’s adversity to studying corpses, took the risk of sculpting mangled marble into the world’s finest sculpture; and with hard work, dedication and persistence, painted the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.
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To learn more about the creative thinking habits of Michelangelo and other creative geniuses read Michael Michalko’s Cracking Creativity (Secrets of Creative Genius).
http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Creativity-Secrets-Creative-genius/dp/1580083110/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=16NCRBEMHRCEQ1RAZG5V

23 May

25 SURE-FIRE WAYS TO KILL CREATIVITY IN YOUR EMPLOYEES

Posted by imagineer7 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

 

kill creativity

1) Never, ever examine yourself or your company.

2) Whatever it is you do, do it over and over and over and over again.

3) Never look at what your business, market, or competition is doing.

4) Never tolerate any suggestion that implies that you or your management system may contribute to a problem.

5) Never change your plans.

6) Keep company goals vague.

7) Do not be accessible to your employees. Always keep your door closed. Use body language to show that you’re not to be disturbed.

8) Never wander around the company to see how people are doing.

9) Never hire smart people. Turn down all applicants who are curious or who are looking for challenges. Instead look for applicants who are good-looking, make good impressions, and are looking for a steady paycheck.
10) Discourage all questions.

11) Have lots of structured meetings. Kill ideas immediately as they are offered with comments like: “It’ll never work,” “It cost too much,” “It’s been tried before,” “If it was any good, someone else would have done it, “Get a committee to look into it,” I’ll get back to you,” “Yes, but…,” or try giving dirty looks or silence. If a meeting should produce an idea that you can’t kill, demand instant documentation and cost estimates. Require prior assurance that the idea will succeed and let everyone know that their career is “on the line.”

12) Never offer meaningful incentives or rewards for new ideas.

13) Never allow people to loosen up. Something happens when people arouse their playful sides, they start coming up with ideas. Keep things solemn.

14) Discourage all initiative. Tell people exactly how to do their jobs. If you hire the right people, you won’t have this problem. The right applicant is one who is most comfortable working within the “box.”

15) Put up a “suggestion” box, and then do not provide any feedback whatsoever.

16) Cultivate blandness. Discourage anything that might excite employees about their work.

17) Promote your most obedient company men and women as high and as fast as you can. Make them highly visible by awarding them company cars, titles, parking spaces, special bonuses, and other perks.

18) If someone offers an idea, tell them it’s irrelevant.
If they prove it’s relevant, tell them it can’t work.
If they prove it can work, tell them it’s dangerous.
If they prove it’s safe, tell them it’s unsellable.
If they prove it’s sellable, tell them you’ll create a committee to study it. Make sure no one with real power is on the committee. This way no one with real clout will push it.

19) If someone wants to try something new, remind them of all their past failures and mistakes.

20) If you notice someone becoming preoccupied with a problem, tell them to think about it on their own time, but not yours.

21) Laugh at anyone who says they have a gut feeling, intuitive sense, or hunch about something.

22) Send lots of memos and copies to everyone about the importance of playing it safe. When you play not to lose, you don’t have to worry about taking risks, innovating or confronting challenges.

23) Attend outside seminars that are designed to change the way you think. Then hold a meeting with your employees, and make noises about the need for innovation, creative-thinking, and risk-taking. Praise these as abstract “notions,” and, then don’t change a thing about the way you manage or reward people.

24) Do not buy or read my book Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques).
http://www.amazon.com/Thinkertoys-Handbook-Creative-Thinking-Techniques-Edition/dp/1580087736/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0T6TTX3RDA7VQ9NEJR5C If an employee mentions it, walk away, without comment, as fast as possible.

25) When your company is no longer competitive, make sure your employees realize that the collapse of the company was beyond your control. Blame it on the recession, the global economy, the government, unfair practices of suppliers, unethical customers or global warming.
…………………
Michael Michalko

Creative Thinking Expert
http://www.creativethinking.net

10 Mar

The Main Ingredient in the Recipe for Corporate Innovation Successes

Posted by imagineer7 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

INNOVATIVE WORKER3M’s legendary Dick Drew invented many products, including the ubiquitous masking tape. Stories about him and his incredible creativity and drive are often told at 3M gatherings to inspire new employees. These stories are actually more than stories; they are important ingredients in 3M’s recipe for achieving innovation. Drew is 3M’s personal example of how individual creativity generates corporate accomplishment. Former 3M Chairman and CEO, Lewis Lehr, said, at a creativity awards ceremony, that if Dick Drew had not worked at 3M, 3M might not exist today or, if it did, it would be a lot smaller than it is.

Drew was a consummate risk-taker, constantly pushing to and beyond the edge the envelope. He ignored his boss when he was summarily ordered to quit working on masking tape and get back to work on improving a brand of Wet-or-Dry sandpaper. That Drew ignored management and wasn’t fired, speaks volumes not only about Drew but about 3M’s management philosophy even back then. It tells you that Drew would pursue his belief in the face of any obstacle, and it tells you that 3M’s management genius included an intuitive understanding of the need to let creative talent alone and to gamble on their ideas.

After creating the initial version of masking tape, Drew asked an executive for permission to buy a thirty-seven thousand dollar paper maker. He said it would help improve the masking tape, which has a crepe-like paper backing. The executive, Edgar Ober, told Drew to hold off for a while because finances were tight, and he didn’t feel the paper maker was worth the expenditure. Six months later, Drew took Ober into the laboratory and there was the paper maker, working away productively, turning out a vastly improved backing for the masking tape. Ober was flabbergasted and angry! He asked Drew where the hardware came from. Drew explained that he simply submitted a blizzard of 100 dollar purchase orders over a six-month period of time. The machine was paid for in the small amounts he was authorized to spend on his own. The paper maker helped make masking tape into a phenomenal commercial success for 3M.

Drew also encouraged his own workers to attack their goals as relentlessly as he pursued his own. One day, one of his subordinates went to Drew with an idea he was very excited about. He presented his idea enthusiastically and sat back to wait for Drew’s response. Drew paused thoughtfully and then he replied, “Your idea leaves me colder than a Billy goat in hell.” Before disappointment could set in, however, he told him, “You obviously believe in your idea so strongly that I’ll fire you if you don’t continue to work on it, regardless of what I or anyone else here think.”

Dick Drew’s basic beliefs about creativity were:
• He believed in serendipity, the gift of finding something you’re not looking for.
• He favored the concept of “constructive ignorance.” By that he meant that you only needed to know enough to start something, but not so much that you know it can’t work.
• He intuitively understood that management can’t order creativity. Management can only create the environment where creativity can flourish.

3M once undertook a study of creativity and innovation. The study revealed these facts about innovation:

• Do it now, innovation must be timely, or it won’t get done.
• Keep the process going. Innovation is like riding a bicycle; you’ve got to keep pedaling, or you will coast. And the only way you can coast is downhill.
• Teach innovation. Not everyone will be a Dick Drew, but most people can improve their level of innovation.
• Hire creative people. Look for people who want to do something with their careers rather than merely securing a comfortable job.

The most important conclusion of 3M’s study was simple. Find people like Dick Drew, and figure out how to cultivate them, even though they may appear, at times, to be the weed in the flower garden. 3M has long understood that true innovation is not found in the middle of the status quo. Innovation always starts at the edge where the landscape is uncertain and unstable and rife with risks. But, the edge is also home to the beginning of the future.

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For more articles about creativity and innovation, visit http://creativethinking.net/articles/

7 Jan

What I Have Learned about Creative Thinking from Henri Matisse

Posted by imagineer7 in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

matisse

The French artist Henri Matisse argued, in writing about painting portraits, that the character of a human face is seen in the whole and not in the particular and, in fact, may not be captured by particular features at all. The whole captures the essence of a face. To make his point, he drew four self-portraits of Matisse.

These drawings are remarkable. The features are different in each drawing. In one he has a weak chin, in another a very strong chin. In one he has a huge Roman nose, in another a small pudgy nose. In one the eyes are far apart, in another they are close together. And yet in each of the four faces, when we look at the whole we see the unmistakable face and character of Henri Matisse.

If we studied the drawings logically, we would separate out the different features (the chins, noses, eyes, glasses, etc.) and compare them for similarities and differences. We would eventually become expert in separating and defining the differences between the various noses, chins, eyes, and other features. Our understanding of what the drawings represent would be based on the particulars of the four different sketches, and we could not realize that all four are of the same man.

Robert Dilts, an expert in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), wrote about another enlightening experiment which was done by gestalt psychologists with a group of dogs in Anchor Point magazine. The dogs were trained to approach something when shown a “white” square and avoid it when shown a “gray” square. When the dogs learned this, the experimenters switched to using a gray square and a black square. The dogs immediately shifted to approaching the object in response to the gray square (which had previously triggered avoidance), and avoiding the object when shown the black square (which had not been conditioned to anything). Presumably, rather than perceive the gray as an absolute stimulus, the dogs were responding to the deeper essence of “lighter versus darker” as opposed to gray, white or black as being properties.

You can train a human to approach something when shown a white square and avoid it when shown a gray square. When the squares are switched to gray and black, the human will still avoid the gray square. Once gray has been defined in our minds, we see the gray as independent and entirely self-contained. This means nothing can interact with it or exert an influence on it. It, in fact, becomes an absolute.

We have lost the sensitivity to deeper relationships, functions, and patterns because we are educated to focus on the particulars of experience as opposed to the universals. We see them as independent parts of an objective reality. For example, if the average person were asked to build automobiles, that person would undoubtedly study how cars are made and then reproduce the same system without looking for alternatives. Opposed to this kind of thinking is the risk-taking thinking of creative thinkers whish is richer and curiously sounder than elaborate reasoning. Many more dimensions, beneath and beyond words, vague, volatile complexities impossible to catch by hard work of linear thought, fall in place as if at once.

What Did Henry Ford Learn from Slaughtering Pigs that Made Him a Multi-Millionaire?

When Henry Ford decided to build automobiles, he didn’t think of how cars are manufactured. He thought of essences, functions, and patterns which freed his imagination from the constraints of words, labels, and categories. He looked at “how things are made” and “how things are taken apart.” Among his many experiences was his visit to a slaughterhouse, where he watched how workers slaughtered pigs on a moving assembly line. Conceptually blending the patterns of the slaughterhouse method of disassembling pigs with assembling cars, he created the concept of the assembly line that made the Model T possible.

Why Did the U.S. Postal Service Have to Wait for Federal Express to Show Them How to Make Overnight Deliveries Possible?

The U.S. Postal Service and UPS both worked on the challenge of making overnight deliveries using established systems and theories. They thought logically in terms of packages and points. If, for instance, you want to connect one hundred markets with one another, and if you do it all with direct point-to-point deliveries, it will take one hundred times ninety-nine – or ninety-nine hundred – direct deliveries. They concluded that there was no way they could make it economically feasible.

Fred Smith did not think in terms of delivering packages within established systems. Instead he perceived the essence of all delivery systems to be “movement.” So, Smith wondered about the concept of movement, and thought about how things are moved from one place to another. He thought about how information is moved, and how banks move money around the world. Both information systems and banks, he discovered, put all points in a network and connect them through a central hub . He decided to create a delivery system – Federal Express, now known as FedEx – that operates essentially the way information and bank clearinghouses do.

If you take any individual transaction, this kind of system seems absurd – it means making at least one extra stop. But if you look at the network as a whole, it’s an efficient way to create an enormous number of connections. But if you go through a single clearinghouse system, it will take at most one hundred deliveries. So you’re looking at a system that is about one hundred times as efficient. His delivery system is so efficient that the same idea was subsequently employed in, of course, all air cargo delivery systems in industry.

It is important to realize that the patterns of moving money, information, and goods do not describe an actual idea or fact – they describe the potential for an idea or fact of nature. Banks and delivery systems, for example, are not in themselves phenomena and did not become phenomena until they were observed and conceptually blended into one phenomenon in the mind of Fred Smith.

Take a few moments and wonder about how many things you know that would suddenly take on new meanings if only you could perceive the connections between their essences and patterns with dissimilar things such as slaughtering pigs with manufacturing cars or bank clearinghouses with overnight delivery.

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.

Web site: http://www.creativethinking.net
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Twitter: http://twitter.com/MichaelMichalko

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