Posts Tagged ‘idea generation’

Reduce stress! Become more creative in three steps

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011


Life is a cascade of challenge. Sometimes the flow trickles and sometimes it roars. How well you navigate determines who you are and your quality of life. Do you embrace the flow or avoid it? Does a torrent motivate or immobilize you? Do you look to the future with hope or fear?

Your answers to these questions probably correlate to your creative skill. A creative person sees opportunity in challenge. She tolerates and does not fear ambiguity. Entering life’s white waters, she is not paralyzed by stress but energized by the exhilaration. She does not look back or paddle upstream but races downstream toward the new vistas beckoning.

In Iconoclast: a Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently, Gregory Berns explains how highly creative individuals are hard wired. fMRI studies indicate that iconoclasts’ brains differ in terms of perception, fear response and social intelligence. Importantly, he provides practical ways for each of us to nurture such capabilities in ourselves. Yes! We can rewire the circuits and become more creative by pursuing three specific strategies:

  • Bombard the brain with novel experiences and learn to see differently
  • Tame the stress response and overcome fear
  • Develop social intelligence and persuade others to accept your novel ideas

The neuroscience behind creativity


Because the human mind runs on just 40 watts of power, it constantly seeks to conserve energy. It takes a lot of shortcuts, including in the area of perception. According to Berns, “the most likely way you perceive something will be in a manner consistent with your past experience. Commonplace perceptions feel comfortable and cost little energy to process.” The brain categorizes your past experience and then draws from these categories to determine what you “see.” By its nature, the brain does not want to expend the energy required to see differently.

Step #1: Bombard the brain with novel experiences and learn to see differently

Bern’s studies indicate that iconoclasts’ brains are more easily able to see differently — that is, their brains do not seek to conserve energy at the expense of creative insight. What about the rest of us? When confronting life’s cascade of challenge, what can we do to generate innovative solutions?

Berns suggests that we intentionally shock the brain with novel experiences, compelling it to expend the energy required to achieve creative insight. “By forcing the visual system to see things in different ways, you can increase the odds of new insights.” Specifically, he suggests that the “surest way to evoke the imagination is to confront the perceptual system with people, places, and things that it hasn’t seen before…In order to think creatively…bombard the brain with new experiences. Only then will it be forced out of efficiency mode and reconfigure its neural networks.”

For those who can learn to see differently, the brain has another, even more primal attribute that inhibits creative action. Fear. We fear the criticism, rejection and ridicule that may result from thinking differently. We avoid the risk associated with possible failure. We recoil from ambiguity because we fear the unknown. According to Berns, “The stress system is not rational. It reacts when provoked, and this reaction is powerful enough to derail many of the most innovative people out there.”

Step #2: Tame the stress response and overcome fear

Berns offers a number of specific strategies to overcome fear. None are simple and all require persistence and courage. For example, he says we need to understand the effects of fear and then re-frame it. Instead of fearing failure, train yourself to focus on its potential for learning and growth. Similarly, learn to tolerate ambiguity. The unknown can prove either detrimental or helpful to us. Berns suggests that we nurture the ability to mitigate our fear of the unknown by seeing its possible benefits. Finally, to avoid fear of ridicule, recruit a like-minded person to support you when you present an innovative idea to others.

Let’s assume that you have successfully tamed fear and are generating creative ideas. According to Berns, you have one final hurdle: taming the fear in others. Novel ideas are different. By its nature, the brain perceives what is different to be threatening. This is a primal response.

Step #3: Develop social intelligence and persuade others to accept your innovative ideas

Seeing differently and taming the stress response do not guarantee your success in creative endeavors. To implement novel ideas, you need to light up the brain’s circuits for social networking.

“In order to sell one’s ideas, one must create a positive reputation that will draw people toward something that is initially unfamiliar and potentially scary. Familiarity helps build one’s reputation…successful iconoclasts have an uncommon ability to connect on a social level that transcends the idea itself. The key to doing this is through social networks. In order to be successful, the iconoclast builds a network through two fundamental approaches: familiarity and reputation.”

Navigate life’s quick water with dexterity and joy


Reduce your stress! Face your unique cascade of challenge with a creative worldview. See differently, tame your fear and build social networks based on familiarity and reputation. While you may not become an iconoclast, you will surely navigate life’s quick waters with greater dexterity and joy.

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Changing Education Paradigms

Thursday, October 21st, 2010

Sir Ken Robinson’s fascinating, thought-provoking, and engaging animated narrative of the history of formal education, its current failures and a better path forward was presented upon the occasion of his receiving the Benjamin Franklin Medal by the Royal Society of Arts in London:

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Are Too Many Options Bad For You?

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

Ever since I read Sidney Parnes’ The Magic of Your Mind more than twenty years ago, I have firmly believed that having more options is preferable to having fewer options. On the other hand, just about every time I go to the grocery store, I wish there were fewer choices. So I am conflicted: my training and belief system tell me the more options, the better; my experience, sometimes just the opposite.

Research now validates the conflict I experience.

Sheena Iyengar’s fascinating presentation, On the Art of Choosing, discusses the impact of culture on decision-making. One of her key research findings is that the American belief that more options are better than fewer is not universally held by all cultures: “Though all humans share the basic need and desire for choice, we don’t all see choice in the same places or to the same extent.”

I find this interesting but not surprising. What did surprise me is her assertion that even for Americans, having too many options can result in poorer decision-making: “When there are too many choices to compare and contrast, the process of choosing can be confusing and frustrating. Instead of making better choices, we become overwhelmed by choice, sometimes even afraid of it. Choice no longer offers opportunities but imposes constraints.” In fact, Iyengar’s research demonstrates that when you give people “ten or more options when they are making a choice, they make poor decisions.”

To view Iyengar’s full discussion of the impact of culture on decision-making, click below. If you wish to go directly to her dismantling of the assumption that the “more choices you have, the more likely you are to make the best choice,” fast forward to 8 minutes 10 seconds.

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The Antidote for America’s Creativity Crisis

Friday, July 23rd, 2010


In its July 10 issue, Newsweek reported that although creativity scores had for decades been steadily rising in America, since 1990 “they have consistently inched downward.” This news is disturbing for the nation’s children and our future prosperity. But the situation is not dire. There is a clear antidote to this decline in the nation’s creativity.

Creativity is a discipline that can be taught. Although many consider this assertion to be self-evident, others vehemently disagree. A common retort: No matter how much training and practice I receive, I will never be a Mozart or a Shakespeare or a Beatle. But this misses the point. Few would make the claim that creative genius can but taught. But each of us can become better creative thinkers with quality training and sustained practice.

Consider this analogy. When I was a kid, I never suffered the illusion that I would be the next Jerry West or Oscar Robertson, but I did practice a lot of basketball and became fairly proficient at the game. Last fall, while killing time at the local YMCA, I went into an empty gym, picked up a basketball and made 14 free throws in a row. A fluke? Absolutely. But decades later, the muscle memory remained.

Just as we practice an athletic discipline over and over until its skills become automatic, so, too, we can practice creativity skills until they become habits of mind. For more than 50 years the Creative Education Foundation (CEF) has championed research and delivered training in deliberate processes to improve creative thinking. The CEF’s approach distinguishes between two major creativity skills, divergence and convergence:

  • To diverge is to explore options, to consider all possibilities, to extend in different directions often while departing from the norm.
  • To converge is to critically evaluate options, to move toward a common conclusion, to reach agreement, to make a choice or decision.

Diverging before converging is not the natural pattern for most people. By our natures, most of us are more apt to criticize each new idea as it is shared and less apt to defer judgment while carefully considering all possibilities. But the simple fact is that training and practice can instill the habit of diverging before converging in just about anyone.

Both these major creativity skills have sub-skills. For example, divergence requires the ability to think fluently and flexibly. Fluency is the ability to generate a large quantity of ideas quickly. Examples of fluency sub-skills include brainstorming, free-noting, tolerance for ambiguity, among many others. Flexibility is the ability to see diverse and unusual relationships. Here, too, there are many sub-skills, including forced analogies, lateral thinking and morphological analysis. And — like shooting free throws over and over until the motion is preserved in muscle memory — each of these sub-skills can be practiced repeatedly until they become automatic habits of mind.

Yes, we can all learn to be more creative thinkers. We have the research base, the educational resources, the knowledge and skill. America can reverse the trend toward declining creativity among its youth.

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Bugs Bunny Didn’t Brainstorm

Monday, April 5th, 2010


Chuck Jones is a creative genius who towers over American popular culture. Best known as the director of Looney Toons shorts featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd, he knew a thing or two about creative process.

In his autobiography, Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, the creator of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote describes a process he and his Warner Brothers colleagues used as an alternative to brainstorming. The “yes” session is designed to explore the potential within nascent ideas.

According to Jones, “The ‘yes’ session imposes only one discipline: the abolition of the word ‘no.’” Jones clearly disdained naysayers. “Anyone can say ‘no’… It is a cheap word because it requires no explanation, and many men and women have acquired a reputation for intelligence who know only this word and have used it in place of thought on every occasion.”

In a “yes” session, anything goes, but only if it is “positive, supportive and affirmative to the premise.” No negatives are allowed. “All roadblocks impeding the advancement and exploration of the value of an idea are forbidden.”

If you need evidence of the effectiveness of a “yes” session, treat yourself to seven minutes of Jones’ brilliance in this hilarious parody of Rossini’sThe Barber of Seville, starring Bugs and Elmer Fudd.

The next time you or your colleagues are problem solving, try the “yes” session. Before you say “No,” say “Yes!” to a new idea — and in as many ways as possible. Like Edward DeBono’s PMI technique discussed in a previous post, the “yes” session ensures that feedback does not kill ideas but enlivens them; results not in the pain of rejection but the thrill of creation.

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Status Quo Bias

Monday, March 29th, 2010


Often, when making difficult decisions, we choose what is familiar and reject novelty. We favor the status quo because it is “within our comfort zone.” This is a natural human tendency. However, new research reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates that effective decision makers need to beware of the potential pitfalls of “status quo bias.”

The research construct was simple. Participants watched a video monitor displaying a tennis match. On cue, they were asked to decide whether a tennis ball was “in” or “out.” In each case, there was a default option, either “in” or “out.” So, when making a judgment, participants could select the default option or choose to over rule it. Results demonstrated that there was clear bias toward the status quo (i.e., the default option) and that this bias resulted in errors in judgment. “This bias toward default acceptance was seen in 13 of 16 subjects and importantly resulted in suboptimal choice behavior.”

The study authors observe that when “faced with a complex decision, people tend to accept the status quo, as reflected in the old adage, ‘When in doubt, do nothing.’ Indeed, across a range of everyday decisions, such as whether to move house or trade in a car…there is a considerable tendency to maintain the status quo and refrain from acting.”

Effective decision-making requires that we be aware of status quo bias, the “suboptimal acceptance of a default choice option.” To avoid this bias and to ensure optimal decision-making, an effective problem solver will diverge to generate all possible options and then converge with a clear set of criteria to select the best from among them. For simple strategies to do so, see these additional blog posts: Solution Webs and The Matrix.

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