80% of Creativity in 1 Hour
1 • Define creativity in 1 sentence.
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Creativity means getting new ideas / approaches / solutions / new somethings.
2 • Define creativity in 2 sentences.
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Creativity involves generating novel ideas, concepts, insights, perspectives, solutions, or possibilities.
It's about
- thinking divergently, breaking away from conventional patterns or constraints,
- seeing connections between seemingly unrelated concepts, making unexpected connections.
3 • Steve Jobs defined creativity as "connecting the dots". Is that true and useful?
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True, as Jobs is too clever to tell outright lies.
Not very useful, as Jobs is unwilling to share his secrets.
But he gave clues elsewhere. There he said (1) People in computer industry don't have diverse experiences and so they don't have many dots to connect. On one occasion, he even said (2) Bill Gates's thinking/imagination was too narrow and linear because he had never tried LSD/drugs. On another occasion, he said (3) dots connect in hindsight.
My question : what about those people with diverse experiences but who still don't seem to have many dots? So, where do such dots come from?
4 • How will you define creativity "usefully"? ;-)
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- Creativity means "jumping". That's how you get your dots. ("Lateral Thinking" by Edward de Bono.) It's called Divergent Thinking.
You can jump near or wide, low or high.
You can jump by force consciously (Green block above) or you can jump for fun sub-consciously(Red block above).
- Creativity also means "jumping back" or "looking back". e.g. You see magnets in Japanese home appliances, will you see the connection to iMac as Jobs did? You see African primitive face paints, will you see the connection to modern painting as Picasso did? Can you link the new input / stimuli back to your current problem / situation? This is called Convergent Thinking.
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