CREATIVE THINKERING

DO GOOD A true story, happened in 1892 at Stanford University: An 18-year-old student was struggling to pay his fees. He was an orphan, and not knowing where to turn for money, he came up with a bright idea. He and a friend decided to host a musical concert on campus to raise money for their education. They reached out to the great pianist Ignacy J. Paderewski. His manager demanded a…

16 Ways to Jump-start Creativity Simply put, the key to increasing creativity in any organization is to make it start acting like a creative organization. Suppose you wanted to be an artist: You would begin behaving like an artist by painting every day. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you’ll become much more of an artist than someone who has never tried. Similarly, you and your…

TOP TEN TIPS FOR CREATIVITY

Creativity special: Ten top tips Tom Ward senior research fellow in the Center for Creative Media at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and editor of the Journal of Creative Behavior “Merge two previously separate concepts that are in conflict with one another. For example, combinations such as ‘friendly enemy’ and ‘healthful illness’. The more discrepant the concepts, the more likely they…

THE TIPPING POINT OF AMERICA

The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant, so they ignored the potatoes and ate other vegetables. An 18-month-old female named Imo discovered…

AMERICA’S UNCONSCIOUSNESS

The Japanese monkey, Macaca Fuscata, had been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima, scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkey liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant, so they ignored the potatoes and ate other vegetables. An 18-month-old female named Imo discovered…

HOW WE WERE TAUGHT TO THINK

We have not been taught how to think for ourselves, we have been taught what to think based on what past thinkers thought. We are taught to think reproductively, not productively. What most people call thinking is simply reproducing what others have done in the past. We have been trained to seek out the neural path of least resistance, searching out responses that have worked in the past, rather…

Find Out More about Your Personality

 This is a fun thing to do with a crowd of people, perhaps a dinner party.  There are only 3 questions and the answers will surprise you. 1. Put the following 5 animals in the order of your preference. Cow Tiger Sheep Horse Pig  2. Write one word that describes each one of the following: Dog Cat Rat Coffee Sea  3. Think of someone, (who also knows you and is important to you), that…

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL ONCE MORE

During a campaign speech President Biden labeled republicans as fascist destructive people. His disgust of a large portion of America’s population shook my faith and reminded me of the single most important thing in life, which I had forgotten long ago. I was reminded that the real nature of human feeling is mostly the same from person to person, mostly the same in every person everywhere on…

HOW CAN A BEEHIVE BE THE SOLUTION TO DE-ICE POWER LINES DURING ICE STORMS?

How can a beehive be the clue to a solution? Engineers working for a power company in the northwest were struggling with the problem of how to de-ice power lines during ice storms so they don’t collapse from the weight of the ice. The conventional approaches to the problem were proving to be very expensive and inefficient. It is not possible to think unpredictably by looking harder and longer in…

WHAT CAN YOU INVENT USING THIS EXERCISE

Creative thinking requires the generation of associations and connection between two or more dissimilar and unrelated subjects. When the Israeli air force needed a way to speed up the healing process for wounds, an analogy was drawn between the wound and a severed electrical cord. To restore the flow of current, the wire had to be spliced back together. The solution took the form of a…

CHANGE THE WAY YOU LOOK AT THINGS AND THE THINGS YOU LOOK AT CHANGE

Michael Michalko’s creative thinking techniques give you the extraordinary ability to focus on information in a different way and different ways to interpret what you are focusing on. Below is a picture of irregular black and white shapes.Concentrate on the four small dots in the vertical row in the middle of the picture for at least 30 seconds.Then close your eyes and tilt your head back. Keep…

THE KEY TO THOMAS EDISON’S INCREDIBLE INNOVATIVE CREATIVITY: ADAPTATION

One of the paradoxes of creativity is that in order to think originally, we must first familiarize ourselves with the ideas of others. Thomas Edison put it this way: “Make it a habit to keep on the lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea needs to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are working on.” Many cultural historians agree with…

INVENTION OF VALENTINE’S DAY

It can take people a while to grasp the implications of a new communications system. When Thomas Edison invented his improved telephone receiver in 1877, he thought it would become a medium for broadcasting concerts and plays to remote auditoriums. For twenty-five years after the radio was developed at the end of the nineteenth century, people chiefly regarded it as a means of ship-to-shore…

WALT DISNEY’S CREATIVE THINKING TECHNIQUE

We exhibit a phenomenon called structured imagination. Structured imagination refers to the fact that even when we use our imagination to develop new ideas, those ideas are heavily structured in highly predictable ways according to existing concepts, categories and stereotypes.  This is true whether the individuals are inventors, artists, writers, scientists, designers, businesspeople, or…