BASIC FUNCTIONS OF MIND

Contents•Introduction to Creativity•Definition of Creativity•Definition of Innovation•Creativity and Innovation•Blocks of creativity•Creativity process•Convergent and divergent thinking •Neuro linguistic programming

Introduction

Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby something new is created which has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs. What counts as "valuable" is similarly defined in a variety of ways.

we can say that creativity involves the generation of new ideas or the recombination of known elements into something new, providing valuable solutions to a problem. It also involves motivation and emotion.

Definition of Creativity

Creativity “is a fundamental feature of human intelligence in general. It is grounded in everyday capacities such as the association of ideas, reminding, perception, analogical thinking, searching a structured problem-space, and reflecting self-criticism. It involves not only a cognitive dimension (the generation of new ideas) but also motivation and emotion, and is closely linked to cultural context and personality factors.” (Boden 1998).

Objectives of Creativity

Main objectives of a creative thinking process is • To think beyond existing boundaries• To awake curiosity• To break away from rational, conventional

ideas and formalized procedures • To rely on the imagination• To consider multiple solutions and alternatives

According to Boden (1998), there are three main types of creativity, involving different ways of generating the novel ideas:

a) The “combinational” creativity that involves new combinations of familiar ideas.

b) The “exploratory” creativity that involves the generation of new ideas by the exploration of structured concepts.

c) The “transformational” creativity that involves the transformation of some dimension of the structure, so that new structures can be generated.

Increase or Encourage creativity

• To be happy, to have fun• Keep channels of communication open• Trust, failure accepted• Contacts with external sources of information• Independence, initiatives taken• Support participatory decision-making and

employees’ contribution• Experiment with new ideas

Innovation

Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something, or the useful application of new inventions or discoveries.

It may refer to an incremental emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations.

Distinguishing between creativity and innovation

Creativity Creativity is typically

used to refer to the act of producing new ideas, approaches or actions

Innovation while innovation is the

process of both generating and applying such creative ideas in some specific context.

Creativity and Innovation

In the context of an organization, therefore, the term innovation is often used to refer to the entire process by which an organization generates creative new ideas and converts them into novel, useful and viable commercial products, services, and business practices, while the term creativity is reserved to apply specifically to the generation of novel ideas by individuals or groups, as a necessary step within the innovation process.

Blocks to creativity

There are three main blocks to Creativity

• Environmental blocks• People blocks• Internal blocks

Environmental blocksSome blocks occur in our environment.

Environments can be supportive as well as obstructive, and you can deliberately build an environment that are full of creative stimuli--or maybe just very relaxing. Effective creative environments can vary with people and moods, so you may want to be able to experiment with your surroundings so you can build the most effective environment you can.

People blocks

Many blocks come from other people. We are highly social creatures and even the thought that a complete stranger may find us ridiculous is enough to make most of us clam up. We are also competitive and judgmental which can easily lead us to evaluating others and their ideas, even when we consciously know the corrosive effect it will have on them.

Psychologist Carl Rogers said we should create two conditions for people:

Psychological safety by accepting the person, empathizing and not evaluating them.

Psychological freedom to think, feel and contribute fully.This is why group creativity is particularly tricky and why one of the

basic brainstorming rules is 'no judgment'. If you do not trust your co-creators, you might as well all go home. It is also one reason why it is useful to have a neutral facilitator run the session.

Internal blocksThe final and most pernicious sources of creative blocks is -

ourselves. More accurately, it is our subconscious and that little voice that warns us of the dangers of unconventional thought.

Many of these blocks come from our past and are programmed in from an early age. We are taught to follow the rules, be logical and not rock the boat. Our parents, teachers and peers have all helped us put some powerful psychological blocks in place to keep us on the straight and narrow socially-acceptable road. Most of the time this is perfectly useful, but when we want to be creative, it is just a darned nuisance.

In the final analysis, all blocks are internal, although the people and things around us can still make it easier or harder to get into a creative frame of mind.

A Simple Process for Creativity

DO IT was devised by Robert W Olsen

DO IT is a process for creativity.Techniques outlined earlier in this section focus on specific aspects

of creative thinking. DO IT bundles them together, and introduces formal methods of problem definition and evaluation. These help you to get the best out of the creativity techniques.

DO IT is an acronym that stands for:D - Define problemO - Open mind and apply creative techniquesI - Identify best solutionT - Transform

How to Use the Tool

1. Define the Problem

This section concentrates on analyzing the problem to ensure that the correct question is being asked. The following steps will help you to do this:

Check that you are tackling the problem, not the symptoms of the problem. To do this, ask yourself why the problem exists repeatedly until you get to the root of it.

Lay out the bounds of the problem. Work out the objectives that you must achieve and the constraints that you are operating under.

Define the Problem cont..

Where a problem appears to be very large, break it down into smaller parts. Keep on going until each part is achievable in its own right, or needs a precisely defined area of research to be carried out. See Drill-Down for a detailed description of this process.

2. Open Mind and Apply Creative Techniques

Once you know the problem that you want to solve, you are ready to start generating possible solutions. It is very tempting just to accept the first good idea that you come across. If you do this, you will miss many even better solutions.

At this stage of DO IT we are not interested in evaluating ideas. Instead, we are trying to generate as many different ideas as possible. Even bad ideas may be the seeds of good ones.

Open mind and apply creative techniques cont..

While you are generating solutions, remember that other people will have different perspectives on the problem, and it will almost certainly be worth asking for the opinions of your colleagues as part of this process.

3. Identify the Best Solution

Only at this stage do you select the best of the ideas you have generated. It may be that the best idea is obvious. Alternatively, it may be worth examining and developing a number of ideas in detail before you select one.

When you are selecting a solution, keep in mind your own or your organization's goals. Often Decision Making becomes easy once you know these.

4. Transform

Having identified the problem and created a solution to it, the final stage is to implement this solution. This involves not only development of a reliable product from your idea, but all the marketing and business side as well. This may take a great deal of time and energy.

Many very creative people fail at this stage. They will have fun creating new products and services that may be years ahead of what is available on the market.

They will then fail to develop them, and watch someone else make a fortune out of the idea several years later.

The first stage in transforming an idea is to develop an Action Plan for the transformation. This may lead to creation of a Business or Marketing Plan. Once you have done this, the work of implementation begins!

The Creative Process has six phases

inspiration

clarification

Evaluation

distillation

incubation

perspiratio

n

Inspiration: In which you research and generate many ideas

Clarification: In which you focus on your goals

Evaluation: In which you review your work and learn from it

Distillation: In which you decide which of your ideas to work on

Incubation: In which you leave the work alone

Perspiration: In which you work determinedly on your best ideas

Inspiration

This is the research or idea-generation phase.

The process is uninhibited and characterized by spontaneity, experimentation, intuition, and risk-taking.

Clarification• What am I trying to achieve here?

• What am I trying to say?• What exactly is the problem I am trying to solve?• What would I like the finished work to be like?And in more open ended work:• How could I exploit the ideas I have had?• Where could this idea take me - what could I make of it?

The aim here is to clarify the purpose or objective of the work. It is easy to lose your sense of direction while dealing with detailed difficulties in creative work. So you need occasionally to disengage from these obstacles and ask "what exactly am I trying to do?".

Evaluation

In the evaluation phase you examine your work for strengths and weaknesses. Then you need to consider how the work could be improved, by removing weaknesses but also by capitalizing on its strengths. Then there will probably need to be another perspiration phase to respond positively to the suggestions for improvement. Perspiration and evaluation phases often alternate to form a cycle.

DistillationHere ideas from the inspiration phase are sifted through

and evaluated usually in the light of the findings of a clarification phase. The best ideas are chosen for further development, or are combined into even better ideas.

This is a self-critical phase. It requires cool analysis and judgment rather than slap-happy spontaneity. However it should not be so critical as to inhibit productivity entirely. Remember, the ideas you have had are only ideas, not complete solutions - you must not expect too much of them. It is where the ideas can take you that counts, not the ideas themselves.

Incubation

'Incubation' is particularly useful after an 'inspiration' or a 'perspiration' phase, or if a problem has been encountered. Creative people are often surprisingly patient and untidy, and are content to let half-baked ideas, loose ends and inconsistencies brew away in their sub-conscious until 'something turns up'.

Perspiration

This is where the real work is done. You are involved in determined and persistent effort towards your goal, this will usually involve further 'inspiration' 'distillation' and 'clarification' phases.

Some expected results of the creativity process are

• Innovation through new product and process ideas• Continuous improvement of products or services• Productivity increase• Efficiency• Rapidity• Flexibility• Quality of products or services• High performance

Creativity tools

Creativity tools are

• Convergent thinking

• Divergent thinking

Convergent thinking

Convergent thinking is oriented towards deriving the single best (or correct) answer to a clearly defined question. It emphasizes speed, accuracy, logic, and the like, and focuses on accumulating information, recognizing the familiar, reapplying set techniques, and preserving the already known.

Convergent thinking cont..

It is based on familiarity with what is already known (i.e., knowledge), and is most effective in situations where a ready-made answer exists and needs simply to be recalled from stored information, or worked out from what is already known by applying conventional and logical search, recognition and decision-making strategies.

Divergent thinking

Divergent or "synthetic thinking" is the ability to draw on ideas from across disciplines and fields of inquiry to reach a deeper understanding of the world and one's place in it.

There is a movement in education that maintains divergent thinking might create more resourceful students.

Divergent thinking cont..

Rather than presenting a series of problems for rote memorization or resolution, divergent thinking presents open-ended problems and encourages students to develop their own solutions to problems.

Divergent production is the creative generation of multiple answers to a set problem. For example, find uses for 1 meter lengths of black cotton.

Neuro-linguistic programming

The word Neuro linguistic programming can be broken down to three distinct words:

• Neuro• linguistic and • programming.

Neuro refers to the brain and neural network that feeds into the brain. Neurons or nerve cells are the working units used by the nervous system to send, receive, and store signals that add up to information.

Linguistics refer to the content, both verbal and non-verbal, that moves across and through these pathways.

Programming is the way the content or signal is manipulated to convert it into useful information. The brain may direct the signal, sequence it, change it based on our prior experience, or connect it to some other experience we have stored in our brain to convert it into thinking patterns and behaviors that are the essence of our experience of life.

Our experiences and feelings affect the way we react to external stimuli.

Let me illustrate. I am afraid of snakes. The impulse I get if I see a snake or even hear a sound close to resembling that of a snake is a feeling of total fright. This is because, I was born in an area infested with several deadly snakes. One day a boy from my neighborhood came to our house. He knocked on the door. I opened the door. He had a snake in his hand. He wanted to show me the prize catch he had. He was holding it like we hold a pet cat. For him it was a pet. So, it gave him lot of joy to hold one. To me, it gave a migraine headache!

Both myself and my neighbor boy saw the same thing. The same signal was passed to our brain. It was the picture of a snake. However, our brains interpreted the implications of the snake entirely differently. In processing the information, our brains used our experiences (good and bad), our biases, our opinions, our value systems, etc. to convert it into useful information that we can use.

The basic premise of NLP is that the words we use reflect an inner, subconscious perception of our problems. If these words and perceptions are inaccurate, they will create an underlying problem as long as we continue to use and to think them. Our attitudes are, in a sense, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Neuro linguistic therapist will analyze every word and phrase you use in describing your symptoms or concerns about your health. He or she will examine your facial expressions and body movements. After determining problems in your perception, the therapist will help you understand the root cause. The therapist will help you remodel your thoughts and mental associations in order to fix your preconceived notions. These preconceived notions may be keeping you from achieving the success you deserve.

NLP will help you get out of these unhealthy traits and replace them with positive thoughts, and patterns that promote wellness.

Representational Systems

Representational system in NLP consists of our five senses. These are:

• Visual (images)• Auditory (sounds)• Kinesthetic (touch and internal feelings)• Gustatory (tastes)• Olfactory (smells)

Representational Systems cont…

Every one of us uses one or a combination of these senses to perceive the world. The brain gets the "picture" of what we are talking about from one or from a combination of these senses and from these senses alone. For example, we see a dead dog on the road. The eye senses the visual image and sends it to the brain. The nose will sense the smell and send it to the brain. For example, if the smell is rotten, the brain may infer from what it had received so far (a picture of a dog lying still that is giving out foul smell) that the dog had been dead for some time. If the dog is crying, the ears will send this information to the brain. In addition, we might touch the dog. We probably won't taste the dog. So, these are the "inputs" to the brain.

Making Changes To Our Life Style Using NLP:

Once we understand our own map of reality, we can make changes to it in order to obtain the life experiences we want. NLP provides us "maps" used by other people. We learn how others have responded to a particular situation we are facing. We see the differences in the approaches and in the outcomes. Based on it, we may voluntarily make changes to our own behavior. We step out of our own map and step into the other's. When this happens, the rewards are many. We experience a deep connection to the successful person. And our life will never be the same again.

Making Changes To Our Life Style Using NLP cont…

NLP increases the depth and effectiveness of our relationships, beginning with our self and extending through personal and intimate relationships to our professional and work lives, and finally, to the therapeutic arena or working with others to bring about healing, change and growth. NLP provides the tools that enable this rich connection with self and others to happen.

Conclusion Creativity makes an individual grow with an innovative

ideas and helps to achieve the individual and organizational goals creatively.

NLP is based on model of interpersonal communication chiefly concerned with the relationship between successful patterns of behavior and the subjective experiences (esp. patterns of thought) underlying them and a system of alternative therapy based on this which seeks to educate people in self-awareness and effective communication, and to change their patterns of mental and emotional behavior.

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