ENDS 101 Lecture 5

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Creativity and Brainstorming

Guest speaker from Cambridge (something)

Creativity is the most important leadership quality. (2010 Global CEO Study)

Divergence (creation of ideas by widening scope); convergence (application of ideas by narrowing scope)... What happened to our divergent thinking? Why can't we create ideas?

Education has become a block for divergent thinking. Although atrophied, it can be worked out.

Keep divergent and convergent thinking distinctly separate, but converge after diverging to narrow a list of ideas.

Divergent Thinking

Defer Judgement

NOT "don't judge"... Withhold judgement until convergent thinking. Don't judge your own ideas. That leads to negative judgment. Also subdue positive judgment, which leads to pride.

Think about how something might be applied to an activity that it wasn't specifically designed to do. (Project Bunson provides a virtual laboratory environment using game controller technology)

Quantity, not Quality

Ideator and scribe model: scribe writes down every idea no matter where it comes from.

80% of the greatest ideas are found in the last 20% of generated "stream of consciousness"

Capture essence of ideas (normally a few words)..

Quirky promises to produce a new product every 3 days.

Associations

Mix two ideas to create a whole new idea. Piggy-back on other ideas. This helps with the quantity aspect of brainstorming.