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REVISION AND PRACTICE

Week 8 — Quick Revision

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On this page 6 headings

Start here Creativity and thinking skills, all on one page.

What creativity is, the journey, the process, the tools and the attitudes.
What creativity is, the journey, the process, the tools and the attitudes.
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Week 8 at a glance

What is creativity?

  • Everyone is creative. We only differ in our score (4/10 vs 7/10), and practice raises it.
  • Definition: bringing into existence something that did not exist before. Personal creativity counts.
  • Maslow’s needs: physiological → safety → belongingness and love → esteem → self-actualisation. We need creativity at every level.
  • Anchoring: the first (high) price you see sets your expectations.

The creativity journey

  • Problem → solution; it never ends. You must find and implement a solution.
  • Closure = the problem is fully solved. Most solutions are copied from others or come from experience; copying nature is biomimicry.
  • Creativity is a choice. Fall in love with problems.
  • Find problems through: the 17 UN SDGs, or empathy (the empathy walk: the mother in the hospital queue).

Process of creativity (7 steps)

  1. Define the problem.
  2. Collect information.
  3. Redefine the problem (hunger → adding nutrients to food).
  4. Generate ideas.
  5. Design the solution.
  6. Evaluate feasibility and refine.
  7. Implement.
  • IDEO shopping cart: information, collaboration, ideas, prototype.
  • Worked example: “children learn English” → “fall in love with English” → summer course in England.
  • There is no guarantee of success.

Tools for creativity

Tool Key point
Seeking information You can’t solve what you don’t understand: observe, listen, ask, research
Imagination If it doesn’t exist, it hasn’t been imagined yet. Set a context.
Curiosity Ask questions. Four dimensions: joyous exploration, deprivation sensitivity, openness to people’s ideas, stress tolerance
Intersections Two ideas meet → a third is born (Medici Effect): Eastgate Centre (termites), Peter Café Sport

Attitudes for creativity

  • Willingness to: be creative, fail, be wrong, see other perspectives, iterate, fall in love with problems.
  • Plus patience (tolerating delay) and perseverance.
  • Inspiration: Van Gogh (passion), Gandhi (purposeful creativity), Ramanujan (a letter to Hardy; let your work speak).
  • Creativity is deliberate: dedication, discipline, deliberateness.

Practice questions

  1. A friend says, “I’m not creative, my sister is.” What is the professor’s first rule?
Everyone is creative; we only differ in degree.
  1. Which Maslow need does joining many WhatsApp groups reflect?
Belongingness and love.
  1. Which step comes between “generate ideas” and “evaluate feasibility”?
Design the solution.
  1. A student in the hospital queue imagines being the mother. Which tool for finding problems is this?
Empathy.
  1. Valuing different views and asking others for their approach is which dimension of curiosity?
Openness to people’s ideas.
  1. Pencil + eraser = pencil with an eraser. Which tool is this?
Intersections.
  1. Going back from implementation to choose a different idea shows which attitude?
Willingness to iterate.
  1. What is the classic definition of creativity?
Bringing into existence something that did not exist before.
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