Engineers are urged to be innovative. Innovation requires creativity. How do you define creativity? What can you do to increase your creative ability?
What is Creativity?
According to google, creativity is a noun defined as
the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work. synonyms: inventiveness, imagination, innovation, innovativeness, originality, individuality; artistry, inspiration, vision; enterprise, initiative, resourcefulness "her agency is a hotbed of youthful creativity"
and the Wikipedia entry for creativity includes this definition
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and somehow valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a literary work, or a painting).
We could spend a lot of time and energy defining creativity. Here are a few ideas that express complementary views.
- Christian Schunn et al. in Final Report from the NSF Innovation and Discovery Workshop: The Scientific Basis of Individual and Team Innovation and Discovery, Workshop at NSF, 17-18 May 2006
Creativity involves the introduction of new variables, significant leaps, and novel connections. A subset of creativity, innovation, involves the creation of a new idea but also involves its implementation, adoption, and transfer. Innovation and discovery transform insight and technology into novel products, processes, and services that create value for stakeholders and society. Innovations and discoveries are the tangible outcomes. Creativity is needed to produce these outcomes. Innovation and discovery processes should be formal processes that harness creativity to those ends.
- Carl Selinger in a 2004 essay titled The Creative Engineer: What can you do to spark new ideas? in IEEE Spectrum Magasin (1 August 2004) uses this definition
it's the quality of making, inventing, or producing–rather than imitating–and it's characterized by originality and imagination
- Elizabeth Gilbert in an in an interview with Krista Tippett says that
"Creativity is choosing curiosity over fear"
- Paul Arden in It's not how Good you are, it's how good you want to be (2009 Phaidon Press, New York, ISBN 9780714843377) raises the question of how to interpret a request for creativity.
The word 'creative' is the currency with which ad agencies operate.
Without it there are no agencies.
It will feature heavily in any brief.
But what is meant by the word 'creative'?
It means something completely different to each client.
To one it may mean, 'I want the same as my competitors but different'.
To another it may be as simple as wanting a new jingle.
To another it means, 'Give me the same as we've had for the last twenty yeas, but not quite'.
99% will want something that they recognize from experience.
It has been alleged that Procter & Gamble's maxim is 'Creativity with a Precedent'
Only one in ten thousand will really mean 'Give me something I haven't seen before.'
So, before you make your pitch, find out exactly what your client means by the word 'creative'.
It's probably different from your definition.
Stories
- Parable of the black pebble as an example of Lateral Thinking
- Aesop's fable of the crow and the pitcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crow_and_the_Pitcher
Techniques
There are many consultants and books on methods of inspiring creative thought
- Design Heuristics
- Daniel Pink, Thinking about someone else's problem
- TRIZ
TRIZ
TRIZ is a Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. It was created in 1946 and developed over many years of refinement by G. S. Altshuller who extracted from a study of Russian patents a collection of problem-solving strategies. TRIZ is based on the core idea
"Somebody someplace has already solved this problem (or one very similar to it.) Creativity is now finding that solution and adapting it to this particular problem."
For additional information on TRIZ, consult
- short summary in the course textbook by Mattson and Sorenson
- TRIZ Journal
- Altshuller Institute
- the textbook, The Ideal Result: What it is and how to Achieve It,
Can we teach Creativity?
In September 2016, at a meeting with the officers of the ASME, I was asked, "can you teach creativity"? I said that yes, but it was difficult, and it is far easier to crush the creative instincts of students, and referred to the book by Gordon MacKenzie Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace. MacKenzie tells of his volunteer work with K-8 students where he found that younger children more likely identify themselves as artists than older children. MacKenzie's observed that as we grow older we are socialized to conform and not risk self expression and creative thought. Similar ideas are expressed by Tom Kelly who retells MacKensie's story and connects it to innovation:
It's OK to be an artist. It's OK to be an innovator. It's OK to be a design thinker even if it causes people around you to raise their eyebrows.
Brent and Felder, in an article titled, Want Your Students To Think Creatively And Critically? How About Teaching Them? (Chemical Engineering Education, vol. 48 no. 2, pp. 113-114 (Spring 2014) write
"show them examples of the kind of thinking you have in mind; ask them in class and in assignments to complete tasks that require that kind of thinking; give them feedback; and repeat"