Nine approaches to creative problem solving:
- Rethink!
Look at problems in many different ways.
Find new perspectives that no one else has taken.
Solutions example: Finding a job or internship:
- Ask friends or colleagues for potential leads
- Over-sell yourself
Send samples of your work or portfolio to anyone that might respond.
- Check local resources like Craigslist or your school's job search
- Broaden your target audience.
What other fields could you specialize in?
- Visualize!
Utilize diagrams and imagery to analyze your dilemma.
- How can you use pictures, images, graphs, etc. in your studies?
- Visit guides on
concept or mind maps,
picturing vocabulary,
flashcards, etc.
- Write out one example of how you can use imagery, then print and post it in your study area.
- Produce!
Genius is productive.
- Perhaps originality is not the key, but rather constant application of thought and tools to arrive a solutions.
- Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet
- Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience.
George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788) French naturalist
- Combine!
Make novel combinations...
Combine and recombine ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations no matter how incongruent or unusual.
- Form!
Form relationships.
Make connections between dissimilar subjects.
- This doesn't always apply to objects: form relationships with people and ask them questions!
- Get to know people in your field that can help you excel to the best of your ability.
- Write down one person that you could get in contact with, why you think this person can help, and print/post it for reference!
- Opposite!
Think in opposites.
Don't always stick with the obvious solutions.
Get outside of your comfort zone.
- “Opposites” bring two approaches to a situation but they do share a basic similarity.
Example: “right” and “left” are both directions, but which is the right choice?
- The Sesame Street Muppet
Elmo teaches small children the concept of opposites!
- Metaphor/simile!
Think metaphorically.
- Metaphors are connections that are unusual or not an ordinary way of thinking:
A sea of troubles; the heart of a lion; raining cats and dogs.
- Similes use "like" or "as"
to illustrate
The boy was as agile as a monkey.
The miner's face was like coal.
The task was as easy as ABC.
Dry like a raisin in the sun.
- Failure!
Learning from your mistakes is one example of using failure.
- As strange as it seems the human brain is failure machine: it generates models of reality, acts on them, and adjusts or creates new, successful models based on failures.
- From Daniel Coyle’s
the Talent Code on Adam Bryant’s weekly interview: “every single CEO shares the same nugget of wisdom: the crucial importance of mistakes, failures, and setbacks… mistakes create unique conditions of high-velocity learning that cannot be matched by more stable, “successful” situations.”
- Patience!
Don't confuse inspiration with ideas.
Apply your ideas with patience for the reward they may deserve.
Flash exercise by
Karl Noelle,
student, College of Design; Brad Hokanson, faculty, College
of Design, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN;
with edits/revisions by Joe Landsberger.
Adapted with permission from:
Michalko, Michael,
Thinking Like a Genius: Eight strategies
used by the super creative, from Aristotle and Leonardo to Einstein
and Edison (New
Horizons for Learning) as seen at http://www.newhorizons.org/wwart_michalko1.html,
(June 15, 1999)
This
article first appeared in THE FUTURIST, May 1998. Michael Michalko is the author of
Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity),
ThinkPak (A Brainstorming Card Set), and
Cracking
Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Geniuses (Ten Speed
Press, 1998).
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