This document discusses various topics related to creative thinking and idea generation. It covers divergent and convergent thinking patterns, areas of creativity in organizations including products, processes, marketing, and organization. It also discusses the idea process, company responses to new ideas, idea profiles and traits, characteristics of creative personalities, thinking techniques like brainstorming and mind mapping, and motivation theories.
2. THINKING PATTERNS (Theories of creative thinking)
DIVERGENT THINKING CONVERGENT THINKING
Think around or away from the problem Think around or into the problem
Discontinuity/ break Continuity
“Dig another hole” “ Dig a deeper hole”
Spontaneous, informal, random Systematic, formal and focused
Remove constraints Work within constraints
Sub- conscious processes Conscious processes
3. Areas of creativity in organizations
• A. Product
• 1. Product features – how good is the quality and functionality of your
• product?
• 2. Product systems – how can your product be related conceptually with
• other internal and external products and services?
• 3. Product services – what services are your customers being offered in
• relation to the product and how?
• B. Process
• 4. Core processes – how are internal value-creation processes established
• on a mechanical and resource-oriented level?
• 5. External processes – how are external production frameworks and logistics
• processes administrated?
4. • C. Marketing
• 6. Business models – how does your organization make money?
• 7. Brand names – how does your organization manage
communication?
• 8. Sales channels – how does your product reach the customers?
• D. Organization
• 9. Networks – how is your organization and its value chain
structured?
• E. Experience
• 10. Customer experience – how is value added or increased in the
form
• of product experience?
8. Idea Profiles & Traits
PROFILES TRAITS
(i) Incubate (Long-term
Development)
(ii) Imagine (Breakthrough
Ideas)
(iii) Improve (Incremental
Adjustments)
(iv) Invest (Short-term Goals)
(i) "Idea Generation" (Fluency,
Originality, Incubation and
Illumination)
(ii) "Personality" (Curiosity and
Tolerance for Ambiguity)
(iii) "Motivation" (Intrinsic,
Extrinsic and Achievement)
(iv) "Confidence" (Producing,
Sharing and Implementing)
9. Characteristics of Creative Personality
• Creative individuals have a great deal of energy, but they are also often
quiet and at rest.
• Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.
• Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or
responsibility and irresponsibility.
• Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy ant one
end, and rooted sense of reality at the other.
• Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum
between extroversion and introversion.
• Creative individuals are also remarkable humble and proud at the same
time.
• Creative individuals to a certain extent escape rigid gender role stereotyping
and have a tendency toward androgyny.
• Generally, creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent.
• Most creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be
extremely objective about it as well.
• The openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to
suffering pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment.
10. `Genius and New ideas Ordinary Thinking
Special kind of thinking Memory, expertise and craft
Spontaneity, breaking set Continuity (history, experience, tradition)
Determinism by personality traits Environmental factors
Consistent level of achievement Inconsistency, peaks and troughs
Absolute value judgments Relative value judgments
Genius in the person Genius in the work
“aha” moments Revision and modification
Individualism, self reliance Interaction, mutual dependency
13. Brain storming
• Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by
which a group tries to find a solution for a specific
problem by amassing a list of ideas
spontaneously contributed its members.
• Osborn Method 1939
– 1. Focus on quantity
– 2. With hold criticism
– 3. Welcome unusual ideas
– 4. combine and improve ideas
14. • Criticism
• Sources of inadequacy
– Free Riding
– Blocking (suppression)
– Evaluation Apprehension
• Variations
– Nominal group technique
– Group passing technique
– Team idea mapping
– Electronic BS
– Question BS
15. Mind mapping
• A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks,
or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word
or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure,
and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing
information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing.
• Mind maps are, by definition, a graphical method of taking
notes.
• Their visual basis helps one to distinguish words or ideas, often
with colors and symbols.
• They generally take a hierarchical or tree branch format, with
ideas branching into their subsections.
• Mind maps allow for greater creativity when recording ideas
and information, as well as allowing the note-taker to associate
words with visual representations.
• Mind maps differ from concept maps in that mind maps focus
on only one word or idea, whereas concept maps connect
multiple words or ideas.
16. uses
• problem solving
• outline/framework design
• anonymous collaboration
• marriage of words and visuals
• individual expression of creativity
• condensing material into a concise and memorable format
• team building or synergy creating activity
• enhancing work morale
CHARACTERISTICS
– The main idea, subject or focus is crystallized in a central image.
– The main themes radiate from the central image as 'branches'.
– The branches comprise a key image or key word drawn or printed on
its associated line.
– Topics of lesser importance are represented as 'twigs' of the relevant
branch.
– The branches form a connected nodal structure.
17. Motivation Theories
• Acquired Needs Theory: we seek power, achievement or affiliation.
• Activation Theory: We have a need for arousal.
• Affect Perseverance: Preference persists after disconfirmation.
• Attitude-Behavior Consistency: factors that align attitude and behavior.
• Attribution Theory: we need to attribute cause, that supports our ego.
• Cognitive Dissonance: non-alignment is uncomfortable.
• Cognitive Evalution Theory: we select tasks based on how doable they are.
• Consistency Theory: we seek the comfort of internal alignment.
• Control Theory: we seek to control the world around us.
• Disconfirmation bias: Agreeing with what supports beliefs and vice versa.
• Drive Theory: We seek to satisfy needs.
• Endowed Progress Effect: Progress is motivating.
• ERG Theory: We seek to fulfill needs of existence, relatedness and growth.
• Escape Theory: We seek to escape uncomfortable realities.
• Expectancy Theory: We are motivated by desirable things we expect we can achieve.
• Extrinsic Motivation: external: tangible rewards.
• Goal-Setting Theory: different types of goals motivate us differently.
• Intrinsic Motivation: internal: value-based rewards.
• Investment Model: our commitment depends on what we have invested.
• Opponent-Process Theory: opposite emotions interact.
• Positive Psychology: What makes us happy.
• Reactance Theory: discomfort when freedom is threatened.
• Self-Determination Theory: External and internal motivation.
• Self-Discrepancy Theory: we need beliefs to be consistent.
• Side Bet Theory: aligned side-bets increase commitment to a main bet.
• The Trans-theoretical Model of Change: Stages in changing oneself.
18. Intrinsic Motivation and 16 desires theory
• Acceptance, the need for approval
• Curiosity, the need to learn
• Eating, the need for food
• Family, the need to raise children
• Honor, the need to be loyal to the traditional values of one's
clan/ethnic group
• Idealism, the need for social justice
• Independence, the need for individuality
• Order, the need for organized, stable, predictable environments
• Physical activity, the need for exercise
• Power, the need for influence of will
• Romance, the need for sex
• Saving, the need to collect
• Social contact, the need for friends (peer relationships)
• Status, the need for social standing/importance
• Tranquility, the need to be safe
• Vengeance, the need to strike back/to win
19. How to stop great ideas
• "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" - H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
• "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." - Decca Recording Co. rejecting
the Beatles, 1962.
• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, chairman of
IBM, 1943
• "640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981
• "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of
communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." - Western Union internal memo,
1876.
• "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message
sent to nobody in particular?" - David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for
investment in the radio in the 1920s.
• "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I
can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." - The editor in charge
of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
• "But what ... is it good for?" - Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM,
1968, commenting on the microchip.
• "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." - Popular Mechanics, forecasting
the relentless march of science, 1949
• "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, president,
chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.