The Rush for Creativity Techniques
As a team leader, how does one inspire creativity among team members? Or how does one become creative in order to come up with innovative solutions to solve technological, social problems?
The solution seems simple. A Google search on creativity throws up a few hundred creativity techniques to push one to the leagues of innovators, scientists, successful entrepreneurs, etc.
Very often I wonder whether these techniques really make one creative.
I will try to make it clear why I don’t think so. Recently I came across a reference to the work of a psychologist, Professor Graham Wallas, author of An Art of Thought.
Ever since we discovered the use of stone as a tool, all our efforts have been to create extension of our bodies to perform physical functions at an acceleration, for instance, wheels to cover a distance at a faster pace than our legs can. We have extended this tool-making to cover our computation capacity and substitute brain with computing systems.
But, all these tool-making were followed by rigorous scientific processes. It is not like one of the imagine-this-imagine-that type of creativity techniques that one finds promoted through internet. These techniques will never work as long as we don’t understand the processes.
Professor Graham Wallas, outlines four crucial steps in the process of creativity that results in new ideas.
They are
1. Preparation,
2. Incubation,
3. Illumination and
4. Verification.
Preparation is about intense thinking of problem, situation. It comes from reading vigorously books, journals, etc, interacting with people who face the situation daily, travelling vastly to see the situation. All these are done to form a concept, one’s own theory of interpretation. Of course, different brains, even the same brain in different context, will interpret differently. How do we know preparation is complete? When there is nothing other than the situation in the brain, the brain is saturated with enough information about the situation.
Now, the next stage starts — incubation. It is the opposite of preparation, a period of unlearning. How do we unlearn? How do we incubate? Let go of all the thoughts and relax. It is not so easy. It is like heating and cooling immediately. During this period, don’t take any other serious mental. It is about letting the unconscious do the work. It is not sure when incubation ends..
However, it is sure that during the period of incubation, illumination starts. Many scientists have had their Eureka moment, which describes this process.
This illumination is mistakenly considered to be creativity and people have come with dozens of techniques to spur this moment. But I want to make it clear. Illumination will not occur without preparation and incubation. There is no creativity without intense work and relaxation. Examples abound from the history of science, such as Kekule who realized the structure of benzene in a dream. It is always the norm that flashes of inspiration, discovery have always followed intense periods of preparation and incubation.
The last stage is verification, which is the scientific method of proof. It requires dedicated application of research methodologies.
The so-called creativity techniques are mostly limited to the first step — of breaking the comfort zone. It is like tilling the soil. It lets in the stage for preparation with many inputs. We mistake means as the end. We wrongly think illumination will happen at the end of these creativity techniques. Mental exercises don’t make creativity process.
