Overcoming Traditional Thinking as a Creativity Strategy

Apply overcoming traditional thinking in order to become more creative.

A unifying theme runs through all forms of creativity training and suggestions for creativity improvement: Creative problem solving requires an ability to overcome traditional thinking. An executive's guide to the subject explains that only by forcing our brains to recategorize information and get beyond our habitual thinking patterns can we begin to imagine novel alternatives.The concept of traditional thinking is relative, but it generally refers to a standard and frequent way of finding a solution to a problem. A traditional solution to a problem is thus a modal or most frequent solution. For example, traditional thinking suggests that to increase revenue, a retail store should conduct a sale or advertise more heavily. Creative thinking would point toward other solutions. As an example, a retail store might increase sales by shipping goods for a small fee, or by having store associates offer free fashion advice.

The creative person looks at problems in a new light and transcends conventional thinking about them. A historically significant example is Henry Ford, who was known for his creative problem-solving ability. A meatpacking executive invited Ford to visit his Chicago plant and observe how employees processed beef. The automotive executive noticed that at one end of the plant, whole carcasses of steers were placed on a giant conveyor belt. As the meat traveled through the plant, workers carved it into various cuts until the carcass was consumed. A flash of whimsical insight hit Ford: What if the process were reversed, and all the pieces would become a whole steer again? Ford asked himself, "Why can't an automobile be built that way?" He took his creative idea back to the Ford Motor Company in Detroit and constructed the world's first manufacturing assembly line.

The central task in becoming creative is to break down rigid thinking that blocks new ideas. At the same time, the problem solver must unlearn the conventional approach. Henry Ford unlearned the custom approach to building autos, so he could use an assembly line. (In the current era, people who have unlearned the assembly-line approach and switched to customization are considered to be creative!)

Overcoming traditional thinking is so important to creative thinking that the process has been characterized in several different ways. The most familiar is that a creative person thinks outside the box. A box, in this sense, is a category that confines and restricts thinking. Because you are confined to a box, you do not see opportunities outside the box. For example, if an insurance executive thinks that health insurance is only for humans, the executive might miss out on the growing market for domestic animal health insurance.

A caution about thinking outside the box: Workers still need some constraints as to how far outside the box they are permitted to think. Creativity writer Shawn Coyne contends that when people are told to think outside the box with no constraints, they quickly become overwhelmed by the unlimited scope of the task. Effective project leaders establish parameters and prepare their teams for idea generation by pointing them in a specific direction. Coyne also explains thatthe best ideas come from "thinking inside a very carefully designed box that's not too big or too small."An example might be telling team members that they need to find ways of saving the company energy costs but that no suggestions will be used that are too expensive or result in widespread employee complaints.

Sophisticated innovators have long recognized that constraints prompt and guide innovations. To attain more disciplined innovation, organizational leaders need to add a few simple rules for innovation. An example of such a rule would be that a new product will not be launched unless there is $100 million in potential revenue.

Constraints often force people to rethink the problem they are facing, and arrive at a new solution for its resolution. According to two professors specializing in innovation, Fiona Murray and Elsbeth Johnson, one set of constraints has to do with outcomes, which refers to defining what a good solution would accomplish for users. For example, the innovation could be acceptable if users could reduce the time needed to complete a transaction by one half. A second set of constraints relates to timeframes, such as getting a new system or product ready within six months. The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates how these two constraints can be applied. An example of constraining outcomes was, "the new antibody test must have a specified level of sensitivity." An example of constraining time was, "the temporary hospital must be ready in ten days."

Organizational Methods to Enhance Creativity and Innovation

Describe both organizational and individual approaches to enhance creative problem solving.

To enhance creative problem solving, most organizations regularly engage in systematic approaches to develop creative and innovative ideas. We focus here on new developments in brainstorming and other creativity-enhancing methods. Programs of this nature are applied to actual problems, while at the same time they provide an opportunity to improve creative thinking.

The leader has a dual role in implementing creative problem-solving techniques: They facilitate group interaction and also provide a fair share of creative output. The two creativity-enhancing, problem-solving techniques described here are systematically collecting fresh ideas, including the use of whiteboards and granting time to explore ideas; and brainstorming. As will be described later, creative problem-solving techniques are more likely to be effective in an organization culture that favors creativity and innovation.

A notable point about creativity-enhancing methods is that no one method is likely to be consistently better than any other method. The underlying mechanism is that each creativity-enhancing method helps bring new ideas to the surface.

Steps in the Creative Process

Identify the steps in the creative process.

An important part of becoming more creative involves understanding the stages involved in creativity, which is generally defined as the production of novel anduseful ideas. A still well-accepted model of creativity developed almost ninety-five years ago can be applied to organizations. This model divides creative thinking into five stages.

Step 1 is opportunity or problem recognition: A person discovers that a new opportunity exists or a problem needs to be resolved. One day in 1994, a financial analyst named Jeff Bezos was seated at his desk at the New York hedge fund, D. E. Shaw, when he noticed an astonishing statistic: The number of Internet users was growing by 2,300 percent per year. Bezos thought that there must be some good way to commercialize this development. Bezos was concerned that he or his company had not yet capitalized on the revolutionary development called the Internet. He detected an opportunity for some kind of business, but he did not yet know which one.

Step 2 is immersion: The individual concentrates on the problem and becomes immersed in it. The individual will recall and collect information that seems relevant, dreaming up alternatives without refining or evaluating them. Bezos grabbed every fact he could about mail-order businesses and thought about which ones could be conducted more efficiently over the Internet than by the traditional means, such as phoning in or writing for orders.

Step 3 is incubation: The person keeps the assembled information in mind for a while. They do not appear to be working on the problem actively, but the subconscious mind is still engaged. While the information is simmering, it is being arranged into meaningful new patterns. Bezos kept thinking about using the Internet for a mail order business while performing his regular work.

Step 4 is insight: The problem-conquering solution flashes into the person's mind at an unexpected time, such as on the verge of sleep, during a shower, or while running. Insight is also called the Aha! experience: All of a sudden, something clicks. At some point it clicked in Bezos's mind that books were the commodity for which no comprehensive mail order catalogue existed because a catalogue of this nature would be much too large to mail profitably. A catalogue of this type would be ideally suited to the Internet because a vast database could be shared with an almost unlimited number of users. The aha! experience usually arrives after hours of thought and study, as indicated by Step 2, immersion.

Step 5 is verification and application: The individual sets out to prove that the creative solution has merit. Verification procedures include gathering supporting evidence, using logical persuasion, and experimenting with new ideas. Application requires tenacity because most novel ideas are first rejected as being impractical. The day after his insight experience, Bezos flew to Los Angeles to the American Booksellers' Convention to learn all he could about the book business. One key fact he found was that the major book wholesalers had already assembled electronic lists of their inventory. Bezos reasoned that the potential new venture only needed one Internet location where the book-buying public could search through the stock and place orders directly.

Because his employer wasn't interested in jumping into the Internet bookselling business, Bezos decided to go into business for himself, foundingAmazon.com. He and MacKenzie Scott, his wife at the time, then drove to Seattle, Washington, to set up the new business, drawing up the business plan as they rolled down the highway in a 1988 Chevy Blazer.

Bezos' opportunity spotting has evolved into a major business corporation that now sells all kinds of merchandise in addition to books and music, as well as information technology services such as cloud computing. Today,Amazon.comis the largest online retailer in the world, and also regarded by many as the world's largest retailer. The end product of Bezos' creative thinking was a business opportunity rather than an invention. Nevertheless, businesspeople typically follow the same five steps of creative thought as do inventors. Even though creativity usually follows the same steps, it is not a mechanical process that can be turned on and off. Much of creativity is intricately woven into a person's intellect and personality, including being observant and having sharp intuition.

Required

Record any creative or innovative idea we all had lately in relation to organizational activity, including school. After recording the idea, we should ask ourselves what prompted us to develop it. If no creative or innovative idea has been developed yet by us, this assignment is to develop a creative idea. If possible, we need to make plan to implement the idea and mention what prompted us to develop it; otherwise, it will not lead to innovation.