CREATIVE THINKING: HOW TO GET OUT OF THE BOX AND GENERATE IDEAS
Sometimes easy meets difficult have you ever been assigned an easy task which for you is actually very difficult to perform maybe for anybody else and that is when you experienced frustration. I have experience that when I started taking singing lessons and my teacher told me to breathe when my diaphragm that’s easy to her natural breasts but actually very difficult to do and it’s a secret all the Greeks singers and it’s similar to what happens when boss comes into a meeting and tells you to think out of the box come on guilt me your creative ideas think out of the box I wanna hear that I need innovation easy simple but actually very hard to do you need to practice you need to know how to get out of the box were to go an outlook come back inside the box because that’s where we live we actually live insider boxes so I wanna ask these questions I asked those questions to myself and this presentations the little journey through my answers I hope that some of these will resonate with yours so the first thing is to asked why why it should be really go out of the box because inside the box we feel safe we agree with everybody else and when we go out we risk our reputation we worked so hard for a lifetime to build it up why should we risk it is this something which is luxury that only a few people can do or is it really a necessity so why think of our lives today we are really part of the network we are nose in a network we share information in real time and we in the end all POSes the same information that’s the end. Of it and that is a scary thought if we all possess the same information what makes difference between ourselves Word docs are dignity as human beings lie your really depends on what we generate with that common shared information so to think creatively to go out of the box is not a luxury it’s a necessity for us and for our dignity as human beings so which books are we talking about we must have a clear definition so that we are talking about something specific it is not our mind we cannot think out of our minds it’s a boundary within our minds the boundary between what we know and what we have in still or yet thought about what is our mind what is our knowledge structure is an emergent phenomenon out of the complex mechanism which is the brain we start with initial conditions our genetic heritage we have boundary conditions the environment we have in direct experience years and years spent in school and university to learn what other people have thought what other people have discovered what other people have created and then we have our own direct experience our successes are faders that really make what we are all this build the and Hill within which we live and will live very well in that and whatever we think inside that on here that box we feel safe whatever is outside it’s invisible to us we don’t know want is outside that is why soul risky because net nobody else knows and so we are faced with something which is necessary to our dignity but actually it’s very difficult to do
How
How do we go out of the box how do we do that what are the mechanisms do we need to wait for an apple to follow right now on our heads or are there some specific techniques well realities out there for us to perceive it. It’s beautiful see this flowers and we have a lot of ideas which is our convergent information the dominant ideas whenever we need to think about and Mary I focus area we have ideas on how things should be we have requirements we are specific actions we know how things are because the that’s the way the always have been but if we want to go out to the box we need to add something more a little spice something which goes beyond the convergent information something wrong something absurd something which apparently is not relevant something which takes us far this is what we call divergent information we need a little bit of that diverge information to cross the borders within our minds from what we know to what we Evan yet thought about so this is the essential mechanism that is necessary and it takes us to a place where we don’t really know where to go we are suspended it’s like the middle game in chess where do you go once your out of the box you have no preset direction so it’s already a potential situation that brings us to the feeling that we should read immediately go back this does not make any sense let’s go back to safe place let’s go back inside the box that’s a temptation we need to resist we need to value long thinking normally we talk about brilliant thinking fast thinking deep thinking but here we’re talking about something different long thinking what does that mean its some thought that takes us far it’s as if you were reading poetry or listening to music you don’t judge the single notes you don’t judge the single words it’s the ensemble that gives you feeling and takes you far must do the same thing where are with our concepts we need to go far and so we can use Association ideas combination of ideas extraction l’ll principles and application all those principles to areas where they were never applied before we need to be open-minded we need to be fluent look for alternatives and not for the correct answer because when you think creatively there’s no single correct answer there are many possible alternatives as suppose now that we are lucky we’ll end up upon a new idea in our travel India exploration out of the box what is the value that how do you assess the value of a new idea it’s very difficult if it’s really new because you’ve never seen that before nobody else as the a seen that before it’s as if we’ll end it on a new planet totally undiscovered territory and it’s difficult to understand the value something you first of all because we don’t feel entitled to be inventors Who am I to be the generator out that new idea add probably this is being thought about before if if this is correct somebody else would have done it before me these are all natural mechanisms with which we kill our own ideas we have to resist that we have to look for the match between the new idea and our initial pride our initial focus or evaluate the idea per se for some value and maybe see the best something that solved another problem which was not yours serendipity happens all the time we just need to have eyes to see that to notice the difference okay but we are social animals we live in an environment so to think out of the box bringing new ideas is gonna challenge that environment when is it a good idea to challenge everybody around you in your working environment you’re the boss you don’t really want to upset him or her when is it a good idea to think out of the box well first the whole if we the environment punishes mistakes you will never be really tempted to go out of the box you will remain safely in a known environment so if you want to stimulate an environment which is creative you need to allow the day very good the existence of the Virgin information you need to allow irrelevant information to come eat you have to mix and match different disciplines you have to using metaphors in the organization all only in that case you will allow the environment to a be really prone to the generation up new ideas so I wanna hang my talk with the little experiment we wanted to do this interactivity with you but at the time yes cars so I have for indeed prepared a little thing but the if you believe me and to be honest these has been generated in the space of you minutes the generation all ideas this travel outside the box something which happens very fast so word should we experiment 2 okay let’s say that we want to generate new ideas about to text conferences we are here so that service a focus area which is very clear to all of us now let’s start form the convergent information about FedEx conferences what is needed to make an excellent good decks conference well you need the brilliant speakers I will come up I you need a an excellent theme you need fast speaker to speaker transitions you need ground settings okay the list can go on and all I’m saying is things that you already know this is all converging information safe I’m not generating anything new I’m inside the box now want to go out so I ally divergent modifier to any all these convergent elements start from the last time for example the ground said so their vested modifier for example is to exaggerate bring it to the limit so instead of thinking all but to text conference in that theater thing cover to text a conference in a stadium does this make any sense stadium very difficult to organize even more difficult than in the theater and how do you feel the place how do you feel stadium student fickle doesn’t make any sense I’m tempted to reject that idea but then I moved and I say okay maybe the state you me is a ready field with people so from that you can get the idea of having a text conference at halftime of football matches and network all speeches which happens at have time a foot ball matches good idea bad idea I leave it for you to assess take another element good speakers Britain speakers that’s the most fundamental element with the next conference let’s take that away we eliminate the good brilliant speakers there’s this make any sense no we are out of the box does this lead to anything useful well I could say that okay I don’t need the speakers but I’d need this features this features the talks the scripts from this comes the idea all one speaker delivering the speech or somebody else we exchange speakers so it’s a cooperative to text conference maybe we have duets on stage instead of a single element of we have her or we have people that speak about on somebody s this topic and in that way we have one advantage at