Stimulating Creativity and Innovation

1. Stimulating Creativity and Innovation NCIIA Annual Conference Larry G. Richards lgr@virginia.edu University of Virginia March 18, 2004

2. A Little Background • Invention and Design • Creativity and New Product Development • FIE paper: Stimulating creativity • Sun Microsystems (Carla King) • NCIIA Workshop Proposal • Prism interview (Dan McGraw)

3. Creativity Questionnaire • Please take a few minutes to complete the creativity questionnaire

4. Your views on Creativity • Are you creative? • Yes_________ • No _________ • How creative are you? ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ 1 2 3 4 5 5 7

5. Your views on Creativity • What does it mean to be creative?

6. Your views on Creativity • List of Creative People

7. Your views on Creativity • Professions or vocations requiring Creativity.

8. My students’ views on creativity • In general students rate themselves as more intelligent than creative. • Attributes of creativity • Novelty, fluency, open-mindedness, unconventionality, synthesis, insightfulness, attitude • Creative professions (based on people): • Writers, musicians, entertainers, artists, political figures, cartoonists • And a few scientists, inventors, and engineers

9. My students’ views on creativity • Creative people: • Einstein • Edison • da Vinci • Jefferson • Bill Gates

10. A few more questions • Can creativity be taught? • Yes_______ • No________ • Comments

11. A few more questions • Can creativity be learned? • Yes_______ • No________ • Comments

12. My students’ views on creativity • Creative professions • Although my students feel that engineering is a creative profession, • Few of them can name any creative engineers. • Why?

13. Exercise 2 • Name some creative engineers.

14. Dean Kaman Burt Rutan Ray Kurtzweil Alan Kay Doug Englebart Amery Lovins Tim Berners-Lee Jerome Lemelson Henry Bolanos John von Neumann John Bardeen Rodney Brooks Bill Gates Michael Wozniak Some creative engineers

15. What is creativity? • A mysterious gift? • A unique talent? • An ability? • A learned skill? • An attitude?

16. Klukken, Parsons and Columbus • interviewed eight professional engineers • selected for their reputations for creativity • about their creative experiences • in practice ( industry ) • They found four “clusters of experiential themes”

17. Desire and Fulfillment • motivation • these engineers seek opportunities to be creative and try to find innovative solutions even to mundane problems

18. Autonomy and support • environment • they thrive in settings that encourage creativity and allow taking risks

19. Openness and Knowledge • tools • they are experts in their domains but are receptive to new approaches and information

20. Engrossment and Connection • process • they enjoy the subjective experiences of challenge and innovation

21. The Creativity Literature • Experimental research • Case studies and case histories • Philosophical speculations • Media accounts, popular press • “How to” books, shows, and courses

22. HOW TO books • Alex Osborne Applied Imagination,1953 • D. Kolberg and J. Bagnell The Universal Traveler,1976 • J.L. Adams Conceptual Blockbusting,1986. • Tom Kelley The Art of Innovation,2001 • Twyla Tharp The Creative Habit, 2003

23. Case studies of creative people • Wertheimer: Einstein’s thought processes • Csikszentmihalyi: 100 creative individuals • Shekerjian: 40 MacArthur Award winners

24. What psychologists know about creativity • Theresa M. Amabile Creativity in Context, 1996 • Howard Gardner Frames of Mind • Robert Sternberg Successful Intelligence • Robert W. Weisberg Creativity: genius and other myths, 1986

25. Theresa AmabileThree basic ingredients • Domain skills (becoming an expert) • Talent • Practice (10 years) • Creative thinking skills (next slide) • Intrinsic motivation • Passion • Self directed activity: tasks are done for the pleasure of doing them

26. Creative thinking skills (Amabile) • Find novel possibilities; imagine a diverse range • See it through; be persistent in tackling the problem • Have high standards • Be an independent person • Willing to take risks • Has courage to try something new

27. Expertise and Exceptional Performance • For most domains, there is an age of peak performance. • To become an expert requires 10 years of necessary preparation. • Deliberative practice (typically 4 hours per day) is required for constant improvement.

28. Expertise and Exceptional Performance • This practice is mediated by cognitive processes – it involves attention and analysis. For experts, practice is not automatic repetition. • The role of talent is vastly over-rated. Practice can overcome initial deficiencies. Adaptive changes result from extended practice.

29. Expertise • There are some “natural” limitations • Michael Jordan • Willy Shumaker

30. An Expert has • Complete or comprehensive knowledge of an area • A corpus of solved problems • Flexible, creative problem solving skills • The ability to predict or infer outcomes • The ability to solve “hard” problems

31. The Paradox of Expertise • The more competent domain experts become, the less able they are to describe the knowledge they use to solve problems.

32. Seven intelligencesHoward Gardner • Language • Mathematics and logic • Spatial reasoning • Music • Movement • Interpersonal intelligence (understanding other people) • Intrapersonal intelligence • (understanding oneself)

33. Multiple Intelligences (examples) • Language • Pablo Neruda • Ernst Hemingway • Leonard Cohen • Rita Dove

34. Multiple Intelligences (examples) • Math and logic • Carl Friedrich Gauss • Rene Descartes • Bertrand Russell • Paul Halmos • Patrick Suppes

35. Multiple Intelligences (examples) • Music • Mozart • Bach • The Beatles • Aaron Copland

36. Multiple Intelligences (examples) • Spatial reasoning • Einstein • Leonardo DaVinci • Michelangelo • Alexander Calder

37. Multiple Intelligences (examples) • Movement (bodily-kinesthetic) • Michael Jordan • Suzanne Ferrell • Jhoon Rhee

38. Multiple Intelligences (examples) • Interpersonal • Ghandi • Martin Luther King • Intrapersonal • Sigmund Freud • Steven Covey • Dan Millman

39. Robert Sternberg: Successful Intelligence • Analytical intelligence • Creative intelligence • Practical intelligence

40. Weisberg • Appeals to familiar psychological processes • Rejects both the “muse” and “genius” views of creativity • Creative activity proceeds incrementally in small steps based on past experience and efforts through the exercise of conscious mental processes.

41. Weisberg • Anyone can be creative.

42. Idea Generation • Uses test – a measure of ideational fluency • Observe your world • Annoyances (and delights) • Good and bad designs • Things we need • Structuring innovative thinking • Redesigning everyday things

43. Exercise • Take a piece of paper • Write down all the uses you can think of for a book

44. Exercise • Write down all the uses you can think of for a brick • Now let’s hear what they are. • Feel free to add as we go along

45. Exercise #1 • Write down all the uses you can think of for a 12” by 12” piece of aluminum foil.

46. Exercise # 2 - Bolanos and Lewis • List 10 ways to improve getting into and out of an automobile. • Consider how you do it now. • Observe other people doing it. • Consider special groups • older people • women in skirts • tall people

47. Exercise # 2 (continued) • Is “one seat fits all” an acceptable approach? • How might cars change over the next 20 years?

48. Exercise #3 • Redesign an everyday object • A bed • and • Bedroom

49. Some questions about beds • What is a bed? • What does a bed consist of ? • What are its functions? • What is a bed for? • What do you do in bed ? • What feelings or emotions do beds evoke? • Why, in our culture, are beds up off the floor?

50. Some concepts of beds • A mattress on a pallet • An enclosure separate from the world • A protective environment