To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination.
Albert Einstein
When you are stuck in problem solving – that is, when the techniques you have applied successfully in the past are not working – try a more creative thinking approach. You may be trying to dig the same hole deeper, worrying at your problem like a terrier, when perhaps you should be digging your hole somewhere else.
The best-known and most widely used creative thinking technique is brainstorming. It was introduced in the 1930s, so it has been around a long time – a sign of its usefulness. You can employ its principles when you are thinking alone, but they work better in a team setting.
When brainstorming, don’t overlook the obvious! The obvious solution is sometimes the best. It may not, anyway, be obvious to everyone; and it may be possible to twist an obvious idea into something not so obvious. Don’t fear repetition, either! Accusing someone of being repetitive is a form of adverse criticism and should be avoided. The same idea may trigger a different response at a different time in the brainstorming session.
Take the common paper clip as an example. In five minutes one brainstormer came up with the following new uses.
| Pipe cleaner | Fuse wire |
| Nail cleaner | Letter opener |
| Tie-clip | Catapult missile |
| Ear de-waxer | Toothpick |
| Picture hook | Cufflink |
| Small-hole poker | Ornament |
| Screwdriver | Typewriter cleaner |
| Fishing hook | Tension reducer (like worry beads) |
| Broken bra-strap mender | Zip-fastener tag mender |
I expect you can do even better than that! Are you ready to have a go? Look at the Guidelines opposite first.
Exercise 4: Brainstorming skills
Take a pair of scissors and list 50 new uses for them – apart from cutting things.
You have 10 minutes. Write your ideas down and – if stuck – go back and build on your first 10 ideas.
| Suspend judgement | Give imagination the green light by withholding the critical evaluation of ideas until later. Accept ideas without judging them. |
| Welcome free-wheeling | Take off the brakes in your mind and go with the flow of your ideas. The more unusual the idea, the better – it is easier to tone down than think up. |
| Strive for quantity | The greater the number of oysters, the more likely you are to find some pearls in them. |
| Combine and improve | Listen to the ideas of others and see if you can build on them. Their way-out ideas may stimulate some buried memories or sleeping brain cells in your Depth Mind. |
| Do not edit | Ideas should not be elaborated or defended, just quickly stated and recorded. |
One major reason why brainstorming is useful is that it helps to free us from ‘functional fixedness’. We have a fixed idea, for example, that a thing has only one function and that is what it is there for. By banning the use of that familiar function (in the case of scissors, the function of cutting), the mind is released to consider other possibilities. With a little adaptation, scissors would make an interesting geometrical instrument.
Take the modern British Army bayonet. Did you know that it is ingeniously designed to combine with its scabbard to form a pair of wirecutters? Or that it has a third function (officially!) built into it – that of a bottle-opener?
Pilkington Brothers Limited in the UK had a technical problem… During the final inspection of sheet glass, small globules of water were identified by the inspection machine as flaws in the glass. A brainstorming session produced 29 ideas in less than five minutes. After research and development, three of these were used in the system, which solved the problem.
H J Heinz in the USA had a marketing problem… The company wanted to get sales promotional material to consumers more quickly. Brainstorming produced 195 ideas. After evaluation, eight were immediately used. A member of Heinz, when talking about another brainstorming session, said, ‘Brainstorming generated more and better ideas than our special committee produced in 10 meetings.’
The essential principle behind brainstorming is simple. Please refer back to Chapter 1 and the three functions of analysing, synthesising and valuing. What brainstorming commands you to do is to make a temporary and conscious division between synthesising on the one hand and valuing on the other – for much of our valuing is negative and premature, like unseasonable frost that kills off the buds of spring. As Jean-Paul Sartre once said, ‘Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.’ Brainstorming’s suspension of judgement is an invitation to exercise some inner mental discipline. Analysing and valuing have their time and place, but your imagination has wings – let it fly free!
How to run a brainstorming session
No more than 10 people should be involved. Some may know about the field, others may not – a mixture of both is desirable. They should ideally have been trained in the brainstorming technique before the meeting. When you run the session:
About 40 minutes is the optimum time for a brainstorming session. But you should ask the participants to go on consid-ering the problem and let you have further suggestions. Remember that they have programmed their Depth Minds by the brainstorming session, and other ideas will come to them unexpectedly.
A leading US firm of jigsaw-puzzle makers held a brainstorming session to think up ideas for new puzzles. It produced some worthy ideas but nothing brilliant. A month later, one of the participants went to see an exhibition of Tutankhamun’s treasures in Washington DC. The gold mask of the pharaoh struck him as a great jigsaw puzzle idea! He was right – it broke all records for jigsaw puzzle sales in the United States.
Creative thinking thrives in an environment of mutual stimulation, feedback and constructive criticism – in a community of creativity.
Anon