Thinking Lab · 3 lessons

Creative Thinking

Generate possibilities and new approaches Creativity is much less about inspiration than about deliberately widening the set of options before you narrow it.

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Generate possibilities and new approaches

In one line: Open properly before you close, and change the description when the options run out.

When you need it

• You have two options and neither is any good.
• The obvious answer is the one everybody in the room already had.
• You are stuck, and more effort on the same framing is producing nothing.

The common misreading

What people think

Creativity is a personality trait you either have or do not.

What is true instead

Most of what looks like creative talent is a process: separating generating from judging, and being willing to work with a worse description first.

After this module you can produce ten options where you would normally have stopped at two, and judge them afterwards.

The key idea

Creativity is much less about inspiration than about deliberately widening the set of options before you narrow it.

Start with a hard question

Pick something you are working on, forbid the standard method, and write what remains.

What would you try if the obvious approach were simply not allowed?

Answer it before reading the lessons — then again after, and notice what changed.

The lessons

• Divergent and convergent thinking — Name which mode you are in. Opening and closing at once produces the obvious answer with extra steps. (6 min)
• Reframing, analogies and combinations — Change the description and different solutions become available. The description is doing more work than you think. (7 min)
• Reverse thinking, "what if", and useful constraints — When stuck, add a constraint rather than removing one. Unlimited options mostly produce the conventional answer. (6 min)

Practise it

Short exercises. Under each is what a considered answer tends to contain — not a mark scheme.

Alternative uses

List fifteen uses for a paper clip that are not holding paper. Push past the point where it feels finished.

• Tends to contain: The first five are conventional
• Tends to contain: Later ones change scale, material or quantity
• Tends to contain: Whether you kept going after it felt done

Three reframes

"People sign up and never come back." Write this problem three more ways, each of which makes a different solution look obvious.

• Tends to contain: One frame about the promise made before signup
• Tends to contain: One about the first session
• Tends to contain: One about whether they got what they came for
• Tends to contain: Different solutions genuinely follow from each

Forced combination

Combine a public library with a gym. Describe what it is, who uses it, and what makes it work.

• Tends to contain: A real mechanism, not just both things in one building
• Tends to contain: Who it serves that neither serves now
• Tends to contain: What breaks, and whether that is fixable

The hard limit

Design a way to teach someone a skill in one hour a week, with no budget and no video. What does the constraint force?

• Tends to contain: The constraint changed the structure, not just trimmed it
• Tends to contain: What the limit made unnecessary
• Tends to contain: Whether the constrained version is actually worse

Reflect

Which reframe changed what you were going to do next?