Why Group Norms Kill Creativity | PsyBlog

· Research shows group members equate creativity with conformity. Creativity is a much coveted asset for a very simple reason: an idea that transcends orthodoxy has the power to bring wealth, fame and status. Commercial, scientific, educational and artistic organisations, therefore, often talk about how they want to foster creativity. Unfortunately groups only rarely foment great ideas because people in them are powerfully shaped by group norms: the unwritten rules which describe how individuals in a group 'are' and how they 'ought' to behave. Norms influence what people believe is right and wrong just as surely as real laws, but with none of the permanence or transparency of written regulations.

Click to read more ...

Anybody Can Learn to Become A Better Idea Generator

Everybody can make himself better at creating ideas. People can increase their creativity by improving their knowledge about the topic ideas should be generated about, practising a range of idea-generation methods, making efforts to create a lot of ideas and having the right attitude, says Lassi Liikkanen, a researcher from Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT. Liikkanen has just finished his PhD on creating ideas in conceptual design. In his thesis, Liikkanen modelled the idea-generation process. For him creating ideas means that a person processes memorized information and combines it in new ways. According to Liikkanen, results improve if the person obtains more background information on the topic. The more a person knows about the topic and can learn from others, the more chances he has to make novel combinations of knowledge.

Click to read more ...

Ideation Success Formula; Eight Suggestions to Improve the Odds - Gregg Fraley

There is a growing industry of consultants and companies (Eureka Ranch, What If!, Ideas to Go, Landis, Research International, Brainjuicer, IDEO, and many more independents like myself ) who specialize in assisting the Fortune 1000 with new product development. They all have different methods – some design oriented, some observational, some with highly structured problem solving methods, others more creative-from-the-gut, but at the end of the day, at some point, they all tend to rely on some form of brainstorming. After all to get to a new product you need a new product idea, and, as they say, they don’t grow on trees. Brainstorming has been around for years of course. Alex Osborn coined the term and wrote the original book on the subject, Applied Imagination. In the USA the term Brainstorming h

Click to read more ...

An Artists Insight on Idea Generation...

An Artist Talks About Idea Generation from Ralph Kerle on Vimeo.

Why Don't Managers Think Deeply?

Jeffrey Immelt, GE's CEO, has received a lot of publicity recently for fostering "imagination breakthroughs" by encouraging managers to think deeply about innovations that will ensure GE's longer-term success. He has vowed that he will protect those working on the breakthroughs from the "budget slashers" focused on short-term success. Questions that this effort raises include: (1) Why so much publicity? (2) Isn't "deep thinking" what leaders are paid to do? and (3) Why do these kinds of effort require so much protection? In their new book, Marketing Metaphoria, Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman suggest some answers to the questions.

Click to read more ...