what does problem solving and creativity mean

What is creative problem-solving?

Table of Contents

An introduction to creative problem-solving.

Creative problem-solving is an essential skill that goes beyond basic brainstorming . It entails a holistic approach to challenges, melding logical processes with imaginative techniques to conceive innovative solutions. As our world becomes increasingly complex and interconnected, the ability to think creatively and solve problems with fresh perspectives becomes invaluable for individuals, businesses, and communities alike.

Importance of divergent and convergent thinking

At the heart of creative problem-solving lies the balance between divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking encourages free-flowing, unrestricted ideation, leading to a plethora of potential solutions. Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is about narrowing down those options to find the most viable solution. This dual approach ensures both breadth and depth in the problem-solving process.

Emphasis on collaboration and diverse perspectives

No single perspective has a monopoly on insight. Collaborating with individuals from different backgrounds, experiences, and areas of expertise offers a richer tapestry of ideas. Embracing diverse perspectives not only broadens the pool of solutions but also ensures more holistic and well-rounded outcomes.

Nurturing a risk-taking and experimental mindset

The fear of failure can be the most significant barrier to any undertaking. It's essential to foster an environment where risk-taking and experimentation are celebrated. This involves viewing failures not as setbacks but as invaluable learning experiences that pave the way for eventual success.

The role of intuition and lateral thinking

Sometimes, the path to a solution is not linear. Lateral thinking and intuition allow for making connections between seemingly unrelated elements. These 'eureka' moments often lead to breakthrough solutions that conventional methods might overlook.

Stages of the creative problem-solving process

The creative problem-solving process is typically broken down into several stages. Each stage plays a crucial role in understanding, addressing, and resolving challenges in innovative ways.

Clarifying: Understanding the real problem or challenge

Before diving into solutions, one must first understand the problem at its core. This involves asking probing questions, gathering data, and viewing the challenge from various angles. A clear comprehension of the problem ensures that effort and resources are channeled correctly.

Ideating: Generating diverse and multiple solutions

Once the problem is clarified, the focus shifts to generating as many solutions as possible. This stage champions quantity over quality, as the aim is to explore the breadth of possibilities without immediately passing judgment.

Developing: Refining and honing promising solutions

With a list of potential solutions in hand, it's time to refine and develop the most promising ones. This involves evaluating each idea's feasibility, potential impact, and any associated risks, then enhancing or combining solutions to maximize effectiveness.

Implementing: Acting on the best solutions

Once a solution has been honed, it's time to put it into action. This involves planning, allocating resources, and monitoring the results to ensure the solution is effectively addressing the problem.

Techniques for creative problem-solving

Solving complex problems in a fresh way can be a daunting task to start on. Here are a few techniques that can help kickstart the process:

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a widely-used technique that involves generating as many ideas as possible within a set timeframe. Variants like brainwriting (where ideas are written down rather than spoken) and reverse brainstorming (thinking of ways to cause the problem) can offer fresh perspectives and ensure broader participation.

Mind mapping

Mind mapping is a visual tool that helps structure information, making connections between disparate pieces of data. It is particularly useful in organizing thoughts, visualizing relationships, and ensuring a comprehensive approach to a problem.

SCAMPER technique

SCAMPER stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. This technique prompts individuals to look at existing products, services, or processes in new ways, leading to innovative solutions.

Benefits of creative problem-solving

Creative problem-solving offers numerous benefits, both at the individual and organizational levels. Some of the most prominent advantages include:

Finding novel solutions to old problems

Traditional problems that have resisted conventional solutions often succumb to creative approaches. By looking at challenges from fresh angles and blending different techniques, we can unlock novel solutions previously deemed impossible.

Enhanced adaptability in changing environments

In our rapidly evolving world, the ability to adapt is critical. Creative problem-solving equips individuals and organizations with the agility to pivot and adapt to changing circumstances, ensuring resilience and longevity.

Building collaborative and innovative teams

Teams that embrace creative problem-solving tend to be more collaborative and innovative. They value diversity of thought, are open to experimentation, and are more likely to challenge the status quo, leading to groundbreaking results.

Fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement

Creative problem-solving is not just about finding solutions; it's also about continuous learning and improvement. By encouraging an environment of curiosity and exploration, organizations can ensure that they are always at the cutting edge, ready to tackle future challenges head-on.

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How to Be a More Creative Problem-Solver at Work: 8 Tips

• 01 Mar 2022

The importance of creativity in the workplace—particularly when problem-solving—is undeniable. Business leaders can’t approach new problems with old solutions and expect the same result.

This is where innovation-based processes need to guide problem-solving. Here’s an overview of what creative problem-solving is, along with tips on how to use it in conjunction with design thinking.

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What Is Creative Problem-Solving?

Encountering problems with no clear cause can be frustrating. This occurs when there’s disagreement around a defined problem or research yields unclear results. In such situations, creative problem-solving helps develop solutions, despite a lack of clarity.

While creative problem-solving is less structured than other forms of innovation, it encourages exploring open-ended ideas and shifting perspectives—thereby fostering innovation and easier adaptation in the workplace. It also works best when paired with other innovation-based processes, such as design thinking .

Creative Problem-Solving and Design Thinking

Design thinking is a solutions-based mentality that encourages innovation and problem-solving. It’s guided by an iterative process that Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar outlines in four stages in the online course Design Thinking and Innovation :

• Clarify: This stage involves researching a problem through empathic observation and insights.
• Ideate: This stage focuses on generating ideas and asking open-ended questions based on observations made during the clarification stage.
• Develop: The development stage involves exploring possible solutions based on the ideas you generate. Experimentation and prototyping are both encouraged.
• Implement: The final stage is a culmination of the previous three. It involves finalizing a solution’s development and communicating its value to stakeholders.

Although user research is an essential first step in the design thinking process, there are times when it can’t identify a problem’s root cause. Creative problem-solving addresses this challenge by promoting the development of new perspectives.

Leveraging tools like design thinking and creativity at work can further your problem-solving abilities. Here are eight tips for doing so.

8 Creative Problem-Solving Tips

1. empathize with your audience.

A fundamental practice of design thinking’s clarify stage is empathy. Understanding your target audience can help you find creative and relevant solutions for their pain points through observing them and asking questions.

Practice empathy by paying attention to others’ needs and avoiding personal comparisons. The more you understand your audience, the more effective your solutions will be.

2. Reframe Problems as Questions

If a problem is difficult to define, reframe it as a question rather than a statement. For example, instead of saying, "The problem is," try framing around a question like, "How might we?" Think creatively by shifting your focus from the problem to potential solutions.

Consider this hypothetical case study: You’re the owner of a local coffee shop trying to fill your tip jar. Approaching the situation with a problem-focused mindset frames this as: "We need to find a way to get customers to tip more." If you reframe this as a question, however, you can explore: "How might we make it easier for customers to tip?" When you shift your focus from the shop to the customer, you empathize with your audience. You can take this train of thought one step further and consider questions such as: "How might we provide a tipping method for customers who don't carry cash?"

Whether you work at a coffee shop, a startup, or a Fortune 500 company, reframing can help surface creative solutions to problems that are difficult to define.

3. Defer Judgment of Ideas

If you encounter an idea that seems outlandish or unreasonable, a natural response would be to reject it. This instant judgment impedes creativity. Even if ideas seem implausible, they can play a huge part in ideation. It's important to permit the exploration of original ideas.

While judgment can be perceived as negative, it’s crucial to avoid accepting ideas too quickly. If you love an idea, don’t immediately pursue it. Give equal consideration to each proposal and build on different concepts instead of acting on them immediately.

4. Overcome Cognitive Fixedness

Cognitive fixedness is a state of mind that prevents you from recognizing a situation’s alternative solutions or interpretations instead of considering every situation through the lens of past experiences.

Although it's efficient in the short-term, cognitive fixedness interferes with creative thinking because it prevents you from approaching situations unbiased. It's important to be aware of this tendency so you can avoid it.

5. Balance Divergent and Convergent Thinking

One of the key principles of creative problem-solving is the balance of divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the process of brainstorming multiple ideas without limitation; open-ended creativity is encouraged. It’s an effective tool for generating ideas, but not every idea can be explored. Divergent thinking eventually needs to be grounded in reality.

Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is the process of narrowing ideas down into a few options. While converging ideas too quickly stifles creativity, it’s an important step that bridges the gap between ideation and development. It's important to strike a healthy balance between both to allow for the ideation and exploration of creative ideas.

6. Use Creative Tools

Using creative tools is another way to foster innovation. Without a clear cause for a problem, such tools can help you avoid cognitive fixedness and abrupt decision-making. Here are several examples:

Problem Stories

Creating a problem story requires identifying undesired phenomena (UDP) and taking note of events that precede and result from them. The goal is to reframe the situations to visualize their cause and effect.

To start, identify a UDP. Then, discover what events led to it. Observe and ask questions of your consumer base to determine the UDP’s cause.

Next, identify why the UDP is a problem. What effect does the UDP have that necessitates changing the status quo? It's helpful to visualize each event in boxes adjacent to one another when answering such questions.

The problem story can be extended in either direction, as long as there are additional cause-and-effect relationships. Once complete, focus on breaking the chains connecting two subsequent events by disrupting the cause-and-effect relationship between them.

Alternate Worlds

The alternate worlds tool encourages you to consider how people from different backgrounds would approach similar situations. For instance, how would someone in hospitality versus manufacturing approach the same problem? This tool isn't intended to instantly solve problems but, rather, to encourage idea generation and creativity.

7. Use Positive Language

It's vital to maintain a positive mindset when problem-solving and avoid negative words that interfere with creativity. Positive language prevents quick judgments and overcomes cognitive fixedness. Instead of "no, but," use words like "yes, and."

Positive language makes others feel heard and valued rather than shut down. This practice doesn’t necessitate agreeing with every idea but instead approaching each from a positive perspective.

Using “yes, and” as a tool for further idea exploration is also effective. If someone presents an idea, build upon it using “yes, and.” What additional features could improve it? How could it benefit consumers beyond its intended purpose?

While it may not seem essential, this small adjustment can make a big difference in encouraging creativity.

8. Practice Design Thinking

Practicing design thinking can make you a more creative problem-solver. While commonly associated with the workplace, adopting a design thinking mentality can also improve your everyday life. Here are several ways you can practice design thinking:

• Learn from others: There are many examples of design thinking in business . Review case studies to learn from others’ successes, research problems companies haven't addressed, and consider alternative solutions using the design thinking process.
• Approach everyday problems with a design thinking mentality: One of the best ways to practice design thinking is to apply it to your daily life. Approach everyday problems using design thinking’s four-stage framework to uncover what solutions it yields.
• Study design thinking: While learning design thinking independently is a great place to start, taking an online course can offer more insight and practical experience. The right course can teach you important skills , increase your marketability, and provide valuable networking opportunities.

Ready to Become a Creative Problem-Solver?

Though creativity comes naturally to some, it's an acquired skill for many. Regardless of which category you're in, improving your ability to innovate is a valuable endeavor. Whether you want to bolster your creativity or expand your professional skill set, taking an innovation-based course can enhance your problem-solving.

If you're ready to become a more creative problem-solver, explore Design Thinking and Innovation , one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses . If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

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Article • 10 min read

Creative Problem Solving

Finding innovative solutions to challenges.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Imagine that you're vacuuming your house in a hurry because you've got friends coming over. Frustratingly, you're working hard but you're not getting very far. You kneel down, open up the vacuum cleaner, and pull out the bag. In a cloud of dust, you realize that it's full... again. Coughing, you empty it and wonder why vacuum cleaners with bags still exist!

James Dyson, inventor and founder of Dyson® vacuum cleaners, had exactly the same problem, and he used creative problem solving to find the answer. While many companies focused on developing a better vacuum cleaner filter, he realized that he had to think differently and find a more creative solution. So, he devised a revolutionary way to separate the dirt from the air, and invented the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner. [1]

Creative problem solving (CPS) is a way of solving problems or identifying opportunities when conventional thinking has failed. It encourages you to find fresh perspectives and come up with innovative solutions, so that you can formulate a plan to overcome obstacles and reach your goals.

In this article, we'll explore what CPS is, and we'll look at its key principles. We'll also provide a model that you can use to generate creative solutions.

About Creative Problem Solving

Alex Osborn, founder of the Creative Education Foundation, first developed creative problem solving in the 1940s, along with the term "brainstorming." And, together with Sid Parnes, he developed the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process. Despite its age, this model remains a valuable approach to problem solving. [2]

The early Osborn-Parnes model inspired a number of other tools. One of these is the 2011 CPS Learner's Model, also from the Creative Education Foundation, developed by Dr Gerard J. Puccio, Marie Mance, and co-workers. In this article, we'll use this modern four-step model to explore how you can use CPS to generate innovative, effective solutions.

Why Use Creative Problem Solving?

Dealing with obstacles and challenges is a regular part of working life, and overcoming them isn't always easy. To improve your products, services, communications, and interpersonal skills, and for you and your organization to excel, you need to encourage creative thinking and find innovative solutions that work.

CPS asks you to separate your "divergent" and "convergent" thinking as a way to do this. Divergent thinking is the process of generating lots of potential solutions and possibilities, otherwise known as brainstorming. And convergent thinking involves evaluating those options and choosing the most promising one. Often, we use a combination of the two to develop new ideas or solutions. However, using them simultaneously can result in unbalanced or biased decisions, and can stifle idea generation.

For more on divergent and convergent thinking, and for a useful diagram, see the book "Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making." [3]

Core Principles of Creative Problem Solving

CPS has four core principles. Let's explore each one in more detail:

• Divergent and convergent thinking must be balanced. The key to creativity is learning how to identify and balance divergent and convergent thinking (done separately), and knowing when to practice each one.
• Ask problems as questions. When you rephrase problems and challenges as open-ended questions with multiple possibilities, it's easier to come up with solutions. Asking these types of questions generates lots of rich information, while asking closed questions tends to elicit short answers, such as confirmations or disagreements. Problem statements tend to generate limited responses, or none at all.
• Defer or suspend judgment. As Alex Osborn learned from his work on brainstorming, judging solutions early on tends to shut down idea generation. Instead, there's an appropriate and necessary time to judge ideas during the convergence stage.
• Focus on "Yes, and," rather than "No, but." Language matters when you're generating information and ideas. "Yes, and" encourages people to expand their thoughts, which is necessary during certain stages of CPS. Using the word "but" – preceded by "yes" or "no" – ends conversation, and often negates what's come before it.

How to Use the Tool

Let's explore how you can use each of the four steps of the CPS Learner's Model (shown in figure 1, below) to generate innovative ideas and solutions.

Figure 1 – CPS Learner's Model

Explore the Vision

Identify your goal, desire or challenge. This is a crucial first step because it's easy to assume, incorrectly, that you know what the problem is. However, you may have missed something or have failed to understand the issue fully, and defining your objective can provide clarity. Read our article, 5 Whys , for more on getting to the root of a problem quickly.

Gather Data

Once you've identified and understood the problem, you can collect information about it and develop a clear understanding of it. Make a note of details such as who and what is involved, all the relevant facts, and everyone's feelings and opinions.

Formulate Questions

When you've increased your awareness of the challenge or problem you've identified, ask questions that will generate solutions. Think about the obstacles you might face and the opportunities they could present.

Explore Ideas

Generate ideas that answer the challenge questions you identified in step 1. It can be tempting to consider solutions that you've tried before, as our minds tend to return to habitual thinking patterns that stop us from producing new ideas. However, this is a chance to use your creativity .

Brainstorming and Mind Maps are great ways to explore ideas during this divergent stage of CPS. And our articles, Encouraging Team Creativity , Problem Solving , Rolestorming , Hurson's Productive Thinking Model , and The Four-Step Innovation Process , can also help boost your creativity.

See our Brainstorming resources within our Creativity section for more on this.

Formulate Solutions

This is the convergent stage of CPS, where you begin to focus on evaluating all of your possible options and come up with solutions. Analyze whether potential solutions meet your needs and criteria, and decide whether you can implement them successfully. Next, consider how you can strengthen them and determine which ones are the best "fit." Our articles, Critical Thinking and ORAPAPA , are useful here.

4. Implement

Formulate a plan.

Once you've chosen the best solution, it's time to develop a plan of action. Start by identifying resources and actions that will allow you to implement your chosen solution. Next, communicate your plan and make sure that everyone involved understands and accepts it.

There have been many adaptations of CPS since its inception, because nobody owns the idea.

For example, Scott Isaksen and Donald Treffinger formed The Creative Problem Solving Group Inc . and the Center for Creative Learning , and their model has evolved over many versions. Blair Miller, Jonathan Vehar and Roger L. Firestien also created their own version, and Dr Gerard J. Puccio, Mary C. Murdock, and Marie Mance developed CPS: The Thinking Skills Model. [4] Tim Hurson created The Productive Thinking Model , and Paul Reali developed CPS: Competencies Model. [5]

Sid Parnes continued to adapt the CPS model by adding concepts such as imagery and visualization , and he founded the Creative Studies Project to teach CPS. For more information on the evolution and development of the CPS process, see Creative Problem Solving Version 6.1 by Donald J. Treffinger, Scott G. Isaksen, and K. Brian Dorval. [6]

Creative Problem Solving (CPS) Infographic

See our infographic on Creative Problem Solving .

Creative problem solving (CPS) is a way of using your creativity to develop new ideas and solutions to problems. The process is based on separating divergent and convergent thinking styles, so that you can focus your mind on creating at the first stage, and then evaluating at the second stage.

There have been many adaptations of the original Osborn-Parnes model, but they all involve a clear structure of identifying the problem, generating new ideas, evaluating the options, and then formulating a plan for successful implementation.

[1] Entrepreneur (2012). James Dyson on Using Failure to Drive Success [online]. Available here . [Accessed May 27, 2022.]

[2] Creative Education Foundation (2015). The CPS Process [online]. Available here . [Accessed May 26, 2022.]

[3] Kaner, S. et al. (2014). 'Facilitator′s Guide to Participatory Decision–Making,' San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

[4] Puccio, G., Mance, M., and Murdock, M. (2011). 'Creative Leadership: Skils That Drive Change' (2nd Ed.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

[5] OmniSkills (2013). Creative Problem Solving [online]. Available here . [Accessed May 26, 2022].

[6] Treffinger, G., Isaksen, S., and Dorval, B. (2010). Creative Problem Solving (CPS Version 6.1). Center for Creative Learning, Inc. & Creative Problem Solving Group, Inc. Available here .

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Creative Problem Solving Explained

Creative problem solving is based on the belief that everyone is creative and can enhance their creative abilities with discipline.

Creative problem solving is a deliberate approach to solving complex problems. While creativity is an innate part of creative problem solving, the process uses a variety of steps and strategies designed to bring to the table solutions that are actionable and effective.

It’s a proven approach to use innovative ideas and views of a problem to develop viable options that can be brought to bear on the challenge. It can also redefine the problem, coming at it from a new perspective that results in an effective solution.

It also has powerful applications for addressing your greatest workflow challenges. Using creative problem solving lets you identify, refine, iterate, and select the best options to improve workflows using new technologies like automation.

Fundamentals of Creative Problem Solving

Many people hear “creative problem solving” and think it’s about brainstorming answers. However, creative problem solving is about much more. Creative answers to problems do not just appear magically but are the result of deliberate processes.

To work well, creative problem solving is rooted in two assumptions:

• Everyone is creative in some manner
• You can learn and enhance someone’s creative abilities

Those are powerful assumptions. They help to dispel the idea that there are “creative types” and “noncreative types.” All participants can be empowered to engage in the process by supporting and reinforcing the innate presence of creativity.

Alex Osborn helped define and formalize the idea of creative problem solving. He believed that two types of thinking are critical to creative problem solving.

Convergent Thinking focuses on the norms of problem solving and focuses on finding a singular solution that's well defined. Divergent Thinking is the opposite, with multiple options being considered after fostering creativity as part of the problem solving process.

Both play a role and have value in problem solving. Typically, both are used as part of the process.

For example, divergent thinking can create multiple ideas for possible solutions. Convergent thinking can whittle those down to a few or one idea to implement.

Principles of Creative Problem Solving

Here is a closer look at some key tenets of creative problem solving.

Reframe the Problem as a Question

Begin by restating the problem as a question or series of open-ended questions. The problem becomes more approachable with multiple possibilities available, and participants can be invited into the process.

By contrast, problems presented as declarative statements are often met by silence. These statements often lead to a limited response or no response at all.

There's a shift when asked as a question rather than a statement. The challenge is not an obstacle but rather an opportunity to solve. It opens the door to brainstorming and ideation.

Suspend Judgment

All too often, ideas that are generated in problem solving spaces are quickly dismissed. This instantaneous judgment has short- and long-term impacts.

First, it immediately dismisses the presented idea and the presenter. What’s more, the dismissal can have a chilling effect on others, stymieing the idea generation process.

There’s a time when judging presented ideas – when convergent thinking is at play. In the beginning, immediate judgment should be suspended.

Even the most implausible ideas presented at the beginning of the process may play a role later as long as they are still considered viable. If poisoned early in the process, they will unlikely be given any value later.

‘Yes, And’ Instead of ‘No, But’

The word “no” can have a similarly stifling effect on the creative problem solving work. "But," whether preceded by "yes” or "no," can close the conversation. It acts to negate everything that has come before.

You can create and maintain a more positive, encouraging tone using "yes, and" language instead of "no, but" language.

More positive language helps build on previously generated ideas. It creates an additive approach to the process instead of a dismissive one.

One Approach to Creative Problem Solving

Having a clearly defined approach to solving problems helps participants understand the scope and scale of the work. While multiple approaches can be used, here is one way to frame the engagement.

1. Clarify the Problem

The most critical step to creative problem solving is identifying and articulating the problem or goal. While it may appear to be easy to do so, often, what people think the problem is is not the true problem.

The critical step is to break down the problem, analyze it and understand the core issue.

One approach is to use the "five whys." Start by asking yourself, "Why is this a problem?" Once you have the answer, ask, "Why else?" four more times.

This iterative process can often refine and revise to unearth the true issue that needs to be addressed. You can ask other questions to further refine, such as:

• Why is this problem important to us?
• What is stopping us from solving this problem?
• Where will we be differently 6-12 months after solving the problem?

2. Define Evaluation Criteria

The creative problem solving process is likely to generate many potential ideas. It’s important to establish the process by which the ideas will be evaluated and, if selected, deployed.

These processes may have important factors, such as budget, staffing and time. The process needs to address what you seek to accomplish, avoid and act on. The process should be articulated to the participants in the problem solving and those affected by the outcomes.

3. Research the Problem

You want a clear understanding of the problem, which may require lots or a little research. Understand the common problem, how others may deal with it, and potential solutions.

4. Develop Creative Challenges

Once the problem is articulated and researched, it’s time to frame them. “Creative challenges” are simple and brief, question-based concepts. For example, "How can we …" or “What would it mean if …" These challenges will form the basis of your problem solving. They should be broadly focused and not include any evaluation criteria.

5. Create Ideas

Idea generation is what most people envision when they think of brainstorming or solving problems.

Start by taking just one of the creative challenges. Give yourself or the team some time to build at least 50 ideas. That may seem like a lot, but it can spark conversation and construction.

The ideas may or may not solve the presented challenge. By capturing them on paper or a computer (many programs support idea generation), you can have them readily available to organize, expand on, evaluate, and flesh out.

Be sure to use the following rules in this stage:

• Write down every idea
• Ensure no one critiques presented ideas
• Don’t stop until you’ve reached 50
• Present the full list of ideas and then ask if anyone has anything else to add
• If you have time, sleep on the ideas and return the next day. Try to add 25 more.

6. Sort and Assess Ideas

Take a break and reconvene to look at the ideas using the evaluation criteria. Combine ideas, then use the evaluation criteria to whittle down the list.

Some ideas may be implementable immediately. Others may need further analysis to prioritize.

7. Create a Plan

When you have your shortlist, create an action plan that outlines the steps necessary to implement the ideas. By breaking down the ideas into actionable steps, you’ll be better able to put them into play and see the results.

Problem Solving Your Workflows

When it comes to coming up with creative answers to your workflow problems, we have a variety of resources for you listed below. In addition, we're always interested in providing objective, experienced ideas through our Customer Success and Services teams.

• Reframe Your Business Processes
• Process Redesign Tips
• What is Business Process Re-Engineering?
• Process Improvement Examples
• https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/what-is-creative-problem-solving
• https://www.mindtools.com/a2j08rt/creative-problem-solving
• https://www.creativeeducationfoundation.org/what-is-cps/
• https://innovationmanagement.se/2010/06/02/the-basics-of-creative-problem-solving-cps/
• https://asana.com/resources/convergent-vs-divergent

Tags creativity   problem solving   process improvement  

Categories Business Ideas   Workflow Ideas   Project Management  

Marketing the world's best workflow automation software and drinking way too much coffee. Connect with me on LinkedIn at  https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelraia/

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Understanding the Psychology of Creativity

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Michael H / DigitalVision / Getty Images

What Is Creativity?

When does creativity happen, types of creativity, what does it take to be creative, creativity and the big five, how to increase creativity, frequently asked questions.

What is creativity? Creativity involves the ability to develop new ideas or utilize objects or information in novel ways. It can involve large-scale ideas that have the potential to change the world, such as inventing tools that impact how people live, or smaller acts of creation such as figuring out a new way to accomplish a task in your daily life.

This article explores what creativity is and when it is most likely to happen. It also covers some of the steps that you can take to improve your own creativity.

Studying creativity can be a tricky process. Not only is creativity a complex topic in and of itself, but there is also no clear consensus on how exactly to define creativity. Many of the most common definitions suggest that creativity is the tendency to solve problems or create new things in novel ways.

Two of the primary components of creativity include:

• Originality: The idea should be something new that is not simply an extension of something else that already exists.
• Functionality: The idea needs to actually work or possess some degree of usefulness.

In his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention , psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggested that creativity can often be seen in a few different situations.  

• People who seem stimulating, interesting, and have a variety of unusual thoughts.
• People who perceive the world with a fresh perspective, have insightful ideas and make important personal discoveries. These individuals make creative discoveries that are generally known only to them.
• People who make great creative achievements that become known to the entire world. Inventors and artists such as Thomas Edison and Pablo Picasso would fall into this category.

Experts also tend to distinguish between different types of creativity. The “four c” model of creativity suggests that there are four different types:

• “Mini-c” creativity involves personally meaningful ideas and insights that are known only to the self.
• “ Little-c” creativity involves mostly everyday thinking and problem-solving. This type of creativity helps people solve everyday problems they face and adapt to changing environments.
• “Pro-C” creativity takes place among professionals who are skilled and creative in their respective fields. These individuals are creative in their vocation or profession but do not achieve eminence for their works.
• “Big-C” creativity involves creating works and ideas that are considered great in a particular field. This type of creativity leads to eminence and acclaim and often leads to world-changing creations such as medical innovations, technological advances, and artistic achievements.

Csikszentmihalyi suggests that creative people tend to possess are ​a variety of traits that contribute to their innovative thinking. Some of these key traits include:

• Energy: Creative people tend to possess a great deal of both physical and mental energy. However, they also tend to spend a great deal of time quietly thinking and reflecting.
• Intelligence: Psychologists have long believed that intelligence plays a critical role in creativity. In Terman’s famous longitudinal study of gifted children, researchers found that while high IQ was necessary for great creativity, not all people with high IQs are creative. Csikszentmihalyi believes that creative people must be smart, but they must be capable of looking at things in fresh, even naïve, ways.
• Discipline: Creative people do not just sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. They ​are playful, yet they are also disciplined in the pursuit of their work and passions.

Certain personality traits are also connected to creativity. According to the big five theory of personality , human personality is made up of five broad dimensions:

• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

Each dimension represents a continuum, so for each trait, people can be either high, low, or somewhere between the two. 

Openness to experience is a big five trait that is correlated with creativity. People who are high on this trait are more open to new experiences and ideas. They tend to seek novelty and enjoy trying new things, meeting new people, and considering different perspectives. 

However, other personality traits and characteristics can also play a role in creativity. For example, intrinsic motivation , curiosity, and persistence can all determine how much people tend to pursue new ideas and look for novel solutions.

While some people seem to come by creativity naturally, there are things that you can do to increase your own creativity .

Some strategies that can be helpful for improving creativity include: 

• Being open to new ideas : Openness to experience is the personality trait that is most closely correlated with creativity. Focus on being willing to try new things and explore new ideas.
• Be persistent : Creativity is not just about sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike. Creative people spend time working to produce new things. Their efforts don't always work out, but continued practice builds skills that contribute to creativity.
• Make time for creativity : In addition to being persistent, you also need to devote time specifically toward creative efforts. This might mean setting aside a little time each day or each week specifically to brainstorm, practice, learn, or create.

Csikszentmihalyi has noted that creativity requires both a fresh perspective combined with discipline. As Thomas Edison famously suggested, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

A Word From Verywell

Creativity is a complex subject and researchers are still working to understand exactly what factors contribute to the ability to think creatively. While some people seem to come by creativity naturally, there are also things you can do to build and strengthen this ability.

The late Maya Angelou also suggested that thinking creativity helps foster even greater creativity, "The important thing is to use it. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have," she suggested.

Creativity does not reside in one single area of the brain; many areas are actually involved. The frontal cortex of the brain is responsible for many of the functions that play a part in creativity.

However, other parts of the brain impact creativity as well, including the hippocampus (which is important to memory) and the basal ganglia (which is essential in the memory of how to perform tasks). The white matter of the brain, which keeps the various parts of the brain connected, is also essential for creative thinking.

Research suggests that people can train their brains to be more creative. Engaging in cognitively stimulating tasks, going on a walk, finding sources of inspiration, and meditating are a few strategies that may help boost creative thinking abilities. 

The "big five" are the broad categories of traits that make up personality. The five dimensions are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Each trait involves a range between two extremes, and people can be either at each end or somewhere in the middle.

American Psychological Association. The science of creativity .

Csikszentmihalyi M. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention .   New York: HarperCollins; 2013.

Kaufman J, Beghetto R. Beyond big and little: The four C model of creativity .  Review of General Psychology . 2009;13(1):1-12. doi:10.1037/a0013688

Kaufman SB, Quilty LC, Grazioplene RG, et al. Openness to experience and intellect differentially predict creative achievement in the arts and sciences .  J Pers . 2016;84(2):248-258. doi:10.1111/jopy.12156

Elliot J.  Conversations With Maya Angelou . Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi; 1998.

Cavdarbasha D, Kurczek J. Connecting the dots: your brain and creativity . Front Young Minds . 2017;5:19. doi:10.3389/frym.2017.00019

Sun J, Chen Q, Zhang Q, Li Y, Li H, Wei D, Yang W, Qiu J.  Training your brain to be more creative: brain functional and structural changes induced by divergent thinking training .  Hum Brain Mapp . 2016;37(10):3375-87. doi:10.1002/hbm.23246

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Creativity encompasses the ability to discover new and original ideas, connections, and solutions to problems. It’s a part of our drive as humans—fostering resilience , sparking joy, and providing opportunities for self-actualization.

An act of creativity can be grand and inspiring, such as crafting a beautiful painting or designing an innovative company. But an idea need not be artistic or world-changing to count as creative. Life requires daily acts of ingenuity and novel workarounds; in this sense, almost everyone possesses some amount of creativity.

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There are many pieces to the puzzle of creativity, including a balance between controlled, deliberate thought and spontaneous play and imagination . Personality plays a role, as well as biology and life experience.

But everyone possesses some measure of creativity, even if they don’t realize it. Life is full of small moments that require new ideas or surprising solutions. A choice that you don’t think twice about—how you cook a fried egg or the route you take to work—someone else might find delightfully original.

Creative people embody complexity; they show tendencies of thought and action that are segregated in others, according to the pioneering creativity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. They balance intense energy with quiet rest, playfulness with discipline, fantasy with reality, and passion for their work with objectivity.

Neuroscience research seems to support this idea. Creative people may better engage the three brain systems —the default mode network , the salience network, and the executive control network—that collectively produce creative thought.

The trait of Openness to Experience correlates with creativity, encompassing a receptivity to new ideas and experiences. People who are low in openness prefer routines and familiarity, while those who are high in openness revel in novelty, whether that is meeting new people, processing different emotions, or traveling to exotic destinations. Accumulating these experiences and perspectives can help the brain forge creative new connections. Other characteristics that are linked to creativity include curiosity, positivity, energy, persistence, and intrinsic motivation.

When we think of creativity, we often think of Mozart, Picasso, Einstein—people with a seemingly fated convergence of talent and opportunity. It's too narrow a set of references, because all sorts of people, possessing various levels of intelligence and natural ability, are capable of engaging in fulfilling creative processes. And buying into a limited definition of creativity prevents many from appreciating their own potential.

Everyday creativity is a framework originally developed by Ruth Richards, Dennis Kinney, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School defined as expressions of originality and meaningfulness. This could encompass daily errands, personal hobbies, or work. Making wacky recipes or dying your hair an unusual color would qualify, as would working on a scrapbook of memories for a friend.

People sometimes refer to “little-c” or “Big-C” to discuss different degrees of creativity. This framework was expanded into a theory called The Four C Model of Creativity by researchers James Kaufman, Ronald Beghetto. Mini-c refers to creativity that arises in any learning process and little-c refers to consistent everyday creativity. Pro-c is the progression to professional expertise in a given domain, while Big-C is reserved for monumental and historic contributions to society.

Many people feel that they have no or very limited creative ability—even some who work in creative fields—and it's true that certain individuals are more creative than others. Fortunately, however, creativity can be acquired and honed at any age or experience level.

Innovation is not some divine gift; it’s actually the skilled application of knowledge in new and exciting ways. It requires changing up your normal routine, stepping outside of typical comfort zones, and paying attention to the present moment.

When learning new information, taking a break—either by sleeping or simply enjoying a distraction—is another way of allowing the unconscious mind to process the data in novel and surprising ways. This often lays the groundwork for a creative insight or breakthrough.

Various lines of research have converged around common insights that provide steps to be more creative:

1. Aim for output: Creative geniuses often produce their best works at their times of greatest output. Some pieces may miss the mark, but the quantity of output makes it likely that other pieces will yield great creativity.

2. Be willing to go deep: In the realm of artistic creativity, pioneers often spend time in solitude, feel emotions and sensations deeply, and aren’t afraid to self-reflect.

3. Be open and playful: The personality trait most tied to creativity is Openness to Experience—whether that be intellectual, aesthetic, or emotional.

4. Capture your ideas: Remember to record thoughts as they arise so they aren't forgotten.

5. Adopt or hire outside perspectives: It can be difficult to innovate if you become trapped in the rules and language of your domain of expertise.

6. Feel free to procrastinate : If you are motivated to solve a problem, procrastinating, exercising, or sleeping on it can lead to divergent thinking and more possibilities.

Most of the time, ideas develop from the steady percolation and evaluation of thoughts and feelings. But every so often, a blockbuster notion breaks through in a flash of insight that’s as unexpected as it is blazingly clear. So-called “aha moments” can generate the brilliant idea for a tech startup, the theme of a musical composition, or the answer to an engineering quandary.

Improving the odds of having a “eureka moment” involves toggling between two modes of thinking: conscious, methodological, concerted problem solving and the restful, spontaneous, unplanned connections of the default mode network, the brain’s resting state. In this way, the default mode network can inspire new solutions when all of the puzzle pieces are in place.

Studies show that training can lead both children and adults to hone creative skills. Sessions may focus on identifying problems to solve, exploring different possibilities, and enhancing emotional intelligence . In one training, for example, instead of making art immediately, children were asked to play with materials—feel their textures, try them out, arrange and rearrange them. Children were encouraged to use emotion -laden memories to explore ideas for art portraying different emotional themes—what colors or textures could be associated with anger?

Several strategies can help build your creative muscle. One is to find a problem that needs solving, and another is to be open to new opportunities, such as trying new foods or using a new approach to complete a task at work. Another is to change your perspective, such as by imagining what somebody else or somebody in a different time period might think. Yet another is to simply create—creativity requires risk-taking and critical feedback, but persisting through discomfort can lead to an innovative and daring outcome.

Creativity may offer some surprising psychological benefits. It can contribute to the ability to make meaning—such as finding ways to successfully cope with past experiences such as trauma , regret, or nostalgia , helping to manage moods, relationships, and problem-solving, and establishing one’s professional and personal legacy for the future. Well-being, in turn, may facilitate creative thinking, such as by practicing mindfulness , research suggests.

Creative thinking involves making new connections between different ideas, which is accomplished by cultivating divergent thinking skills and deliberately exposing yourself to new experiences and to learning. While research psychologists are interested in tapping innovative thinking, clinical psychologists sometimes encourage patients to use artistic expression as a way to confront difficult feelings.

Three key networks operate as a team to spark creativity in the brain, research suggests. The default mode network helps generate ideas, the executive control network evaluates them and propels them forward, and the salience network identifies which ideas are relevant and important. These networks may also influence one another via other feedback loops; for instance, the executive control network might tune the way the salience network scans internally, depending on the task at hand.

The default mode network is the pattern of brain activity that occurs when people are not focused on the outside world. It’s the network that becomes active when the mind turns inward, as people daydream, rest, and reflect on the past or imagine the future. The default mode network can spark connections between different ideas, contributing to creative thought.

The salience network is a large system within the brain that helps to detect and filter important information from the environment , and then determine how to respond to that information. It scans for relevant signals, whether they contain sensory, cognitive, or emotional information. The salience network is rooted in the anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, but it contains nodes in other regions as well.

The executive control network, or executive function, refers to the systems and processes that allow people to plan, monitor, and execute their goals . In the context of creativity, executive functioning monitors the observations, connections, and ideas that are generated, directs attention to particular ideas, and oversees decision-making in the context of a larger goal.

A hallmark of creativity, divergent thinking involves generating multiple ideas or solutions to a problem. It’s original and imaginative, exploring as many different connections as possible. By contrast, convergent thinking is converging onto a single, correct answer or solution, by analyzing the information available and judging which answer is best.

The belief that the left hemisphere completely controls logic and the right brain governs creativity is largely a myth. Creativity and imagination involve communication between networks throughout both hemispheres, research shows. Those networks work together and collectively manipulate ideas, images, and symbols.

From Vincent van Gogh to Sylvia Plath and Winston Churchill, individuals with mental illness have unleashed intellectual and artistic genius throughout history. The connection has fascinated psychologists and everyday individuals alike. What biological theories might explain the overlap? And what evolutionary advantages might these individuals possess?

Psychotic spectrum disorders, including bipolar disorder , schizotypy, and schizophrenia, are disproportionately diagnosed in highly creative individuals (they've been most often measured in artists, musicians, and writers) or in their first-degree relatives. 

But this connection can be confounded by the degree of giftedness at play. While creative types are more mentally stable than are non-creatives, the correlation reverses in the presence of exceptional creativity. Extraordinarily creative individuals are more likely to exhibit psychopathology than are noncreative people, according to University of California at Davis psychologist Dean Keith Simonton. He dubs this concept the "Mad Genius Paradox."

An inability to filter out seemingly irrelevant information is a hallmark of both creative ideation and disordered thought. The state, known as reduced latent inhibition, allows more information to reach awareness, which can in turn foster associations between unrelated concepts. The barrage accounts for both the nonsensical ideas seen in psychosis and for novel thinking.

One hypothesis for the mystery between genius and mental illness is rooted in the diametric theory, an idea put forth by sociologist Christopher Badcock and evolutionary biologist Bernard Crespi to explain how autism and schizophrenia are poles on one cognitive continuum. (In this theory, paternal gene expression pushes towards mechanistic thinking—autism at its most extreme—and maternal genes produce mentalizing traits—psychosis at its most extreme.)

The theory makes a key prediction—that epoch-making minds, likely including John Nash's and Isaac Newton's, exhibit both hypermechanistic and hypermentalizing extremes. These men were both autistic and schizophrenic—double outliers. True genius in some realms, especially mathematics and science, could represent that unique overlap.

Some research has found that genetic variants that are more common in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are also more common in certain creative professions. However, it’s difficult to conduct reliable studies of the link between genetics and a broad trait like creativity. What we do know, however, is that many mental health conditions, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, have a genetic component, so the condition and potentially related traits are passed down from one generation to the next.

Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia can be debilitating illnesses, so scientists have wondered why these conditions have persisted over time. Some believe that schizophrenia and  bipolar disorder offer an evolutionary advantage, in that they predispose individuals to greater creativity, achievement, and success that can benefit both individuals and societies.

People with bipolar disorder can be deeply concerned that medication will strip away the creativity and productivity that accompany manic episodes . Therefore it’s important to address the topic in therapy .

Therapists should explain that manic energy can be confused for creative skill; mania often deludes individuals into believing they are greater than their skills. The pair can discuss the patient’s innate talents and skills to develop, and then devise a strategy to do so following mood stabilization, continuing to adapt to new circumstances or challenges as they arise.

Creativity is typically seen as a socially beneficial trait. But some people use their imagination in pursuit of antisocial ends—what's sometimes termed “dark creativity” or “malevolent creativity.”

A scam artist who devises a novel or foolproof scheme for luring his victims is exercising creativity. But as it’s being deployed to harm others and enrich himself, most observers would find his scheme objectionable, no matter how imaginative.

In recent years, researchers have sought a greater understanding of how darkness and creativity interrelate. Some studies have found that creativity is associated with narcissism ; others have identified a link between higher creativity and reduced honesty and humility. In one study, dispositional creativity was found to predict unethical behavior.

Ultimately, creativity may be better conceived as neither inherently positive nor inherently negative. Instead, it may be best to assess motivations and outcomes when judging the value of any creative act.

One distinction between light and dark creativity involves who benefits and who stands to be harmed by the creative pursuit. Light creativity is associated with ways to benefit others in society, or at least not detract from their welfare, such as composing a moving symphony or founding a tech start-up. Dark creativity is primarily associated with harming others or helping oneself without caring about the potential for collateral damage—devising an elaborate plot to rob a store, for example.

Malevolent creativity has been linked to childhood experiences, such as neglect, and traits in the dark triad , such as narcissism. Another characteristic linked to dark creativity is aggression . In one study, premeditation (planning ahead of time) controlled an individual’s expression of malevolent creativity more than implicit aggression—in other words, being able to hold off on your impulses can make even those primed to be aggressive and darkly creative less harmful when provoked.

Some argue that creativity exists on a spectrum and creative pursuits can exist in the gray area between light and dark. For example, if someone comes up with a clever white lie to avoid meeting someone, that original and plausible idea might lean toward a darker use of creative thinking. The grayer areas of creativity arise when it’s not completely clear where the eventual benefit of the creative behavior lies. For example, is hacktivism bright creativity or dark?

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What Is Creative Problem Solving and Why Is It Important?

Numerous studies, including ones from the US Department of Education , World Economic Forum , and Bloomberg indicate that tomorrow’s jobs will demand “creative problem solving skills.” But what exactly are creative problem solving skills? And are they being taught effectively to the next generation who will face competition for jobs from automation? To learn more about creative problem solving in the classroom, Adobe conducted a new study to understand how educators and policymakers think about creative problem solving skills, how critical these skills are to future jobs, and how they are currently being nurtured in schools today.

We asked educators and policymakers to talk to us about creative problem solving based upon the following definition: “Creative Problem Solving is the process of redefining problems and opportunities, coming up with new, innovative responses and solutions, and then taking action.” We wanted to know how skills like independent learning, learning through success or failure, and working with diverse teams are critical to a students’ ability to succeed in the future workforce.

What we discovered was extremely illuminating. Three quarters of the educators surveyed believe that students need to develop these skills to protect their futures, as the professions that require creative problem solving are less likely to be impacted by automation. However, it isn’t just job-protection where creative problem solving makes a difference. Almost 90 percent of respondents believe students who excel at creative problem solving will have higher-earning job opportunities in the future, and 85 percent agreed that these same skills are in high demand by today’s employers for senior-level and higher-paying careers.

Knowing that 90 percent of educators believe creative problem solving should be integrated across all curricula, and that policymakers are in vehement agreement, it’s reasonable to assume that schools are already providing opportunities for students to develop these skills. Alarmingly though, this critical skillset is not emphasized enough in schools today due to the barriers educators face – from tight budgets and lack of resources to outdated testing requirements. Coupled with the fact that more than half of educators explain that they do not have the training or knowledge to help students develop creative problem solving skills, the challenge that educators and students face is vast.

Adobe believes that we need to support educators who are teaching creative problem solving, get technology into the hands of schools and students, and inspire young people to create. While technology alone is not the answer, it plays a key role. That is why Adobe is working to update its licensing models, so students – including those under the age of 13, consistent with U.S children’s privacy regulations – can access Creative Cloud in the classroom and at home using just their school I.D. to log in. This will reap benefits for the users, as the educators surveyed who use Creative Cloud in the classroom report that their students are more prepared for the jobs of the future .

Adobe is also constantly developing new storytelling tools like Spark, so students can easily create high quality, visually compelling reports, research papers, posters, writing assignments, presentations and so much more. Lastly, Adobe recognizes that it is critical to challenge students and encourage them to create and to have a positive social impact. That is why we created Project 1324 , which works with emerging creatives and leading youth arts organizations around the world to showcase artists who create the art and change they want to see in their communities.

To read the full study findings, and to learn more about how Adobe is working to get much-needed technology into the hands of students and educators, support educators in teaching creative problem solving skills, and inspire students to create, please visit Creative Problem Solving .

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What is creative thinking?

Types of creative thinking, why is creative thinking important, how creative thinking works, what are some examples of creative thinking, the benefits of creative thinking, how to make your thinking process more creative, start fostering your creative thinking skills.

Few things feel better than a stroke of creative genius. A new creative idea can make you feel brilliant and unstoppable.

But, when the great ideas stop flowing, it’s easy to get discouraged and declare that you’re just not a creative thinker.

Many people believe that creative thinking is something that strikes at random. In reality, there are many ways to use creative problem-solving every day, even if you don’t think you have innate creativity. While thinking creatively isn’t difficult, it does take practice. 

Building your creative skills is the key to innovation. But where do you start?

In this article, we’ll cover what creative thinking is, how it works, and how to strengthen your creative skill.

Creative thinking may feel like a superpower reserved only for a “creative person.” Thankfully, creative geniuses aren’t the only ones who can have innovative ideas. 

At its core, creative thinking is intentionally gaining new insights and different ideas through existing information.

Often, creative thought involves tapping into different styles of thinking and examining information from different viewpoints to see new patterns. Anyone can foster a creative mind with some practice!

Using a wide variety of brainstorming strategies can help you discover new solutions for issues in every area of your life, including at work.

In fact, 61% of employees say they’re expected to come up with creative ideas or new ways to do things at work. But, with only 30% of employees saying they’re given time to think or discuss new ideas daily, it’s becoming increasingly important to develop our creative thinking muscles.

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Fostering creative thinking starts with changing your perspective. Learning new and different styles of thinking can help give birth to powerful idea generation. 

Aesthetic thinking, divergent thinking, lateral thinking, convergent thinking, and inspirational thinking are five types of innovative thinking to get the ball rolling.

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Divergent and convergent thinking are the most common ways to foster more creative thought. 

Divergent thinking is like a traditional brainstorming session, where you come up with as many possible solutions as your imagination will allow. 

Meanwhile, convergent thinking takes a more logical approach, encouraging you to gather facts and discover the most common solution to a problem. These strategies are frequently used together to conjure new creative solutions.

Inspirational thinking focuses on imagining the best-case scenarios to find a new way to solve a problem, while lateral thinking involves letting ideas flow in a step-by-step format. 

Aesthetic thinking focuses on reframing the problem to see its inherent beauty and value, like looking at a painting.

It’s easy to get stuck in the same thought patterns, especially at work. However, those thought patterns may be hampering your innovation and keeping you stuck in routines that don’t serve you. 

Creative thinking shows us that there are many solutions to any problem, and developing your creative thinking skills helps you recognize innovative solutions more quickly. 

Plus, creativity was the most sought-after soft skill in 2020, so strengthening your creativity skills can set you apart at work, too.

Alongside critical thinking and focus , creative thinking is crucial to help recognize patterns that may not be obvious at first glance. Thinking creatively makes you a better problem-solver, which has far-reaching benefits in both your work and personal life.

Expressive, creative thinking helps us challenge our own assumptions, discover new things about ourselves and our perspective, stay mentally sharp, and even be more optimistic .

Many business leaders see creativity and innovation as something unpredictable, with 53% of businesses reporting that innovation occurs by chance. However, with the right tools, you can tap into creative thinking whenever you want.

There are many ways to get your creative juices flowing, and practicing creative thinking strategies can help you think outside the box more readily and more often. 

Creative thinking works by igniting our curiosity. Getting curious about a problem looks different for various industries.

A go-to example for creative thinking may be the advertising executive coming up with creative campaigns by brainstorming with divergent thinking. However, that’s far from the only way to use creative thinking. 

In STEM industries like biomedicine, stimulating creativity by asking open-ended questions and creating fictional scenarios helps professionals find innovative solutions to health problems. 

These questions encourage medical professionals to experiment and discover new ways of solving a persistent problem. 

Through creative thinking, professionals in any field can discover unique answers to pressing problems.

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Creative thinking is valuable in many situations, not just traditionally creative industries. Whether you’re solving a problem, organizing your calendar, or at an impasse with your team, creative thinking can come in handy.

One way creative thinking is valuable is for identifying the right problem . 

Using divergent thinking strategies can help you examine a problem from every angle and identify the true root of the issue. 

Once you’ve found the root problem, you can use lateral thinking or convergent thinking to discover new solutions that may not have been available to you before.

Adding constraints , like a timeline or budget for your project, can also help you guide a creative thinking session. 

For example, you could brainstorm how you'd handle a particular problem if your existing budget was cut in half. Constraints can help spur unique ideas you may have missed.

Creative thinking doesn’t just make you a better employee; it also makes you a better parent, student, and leader, too. By developing your creative thinking skills, the benefits of thinking creatively can show up throughout your daily life.

Here are a few major benefits of creative thinking.

Improved problem-solving capabilities

We don’t just solve problems at work, and we shouldn’t only use our creative thinking skills at work, either! Developing your creative thinking abilities can help you solve a wide variety of problems faster. 

As your mind becomes more accustomed to using different thought techniques, you’ll quickly recognize patterns that you might not have before.

Stronger interpersonal connections

Creative thinking can help you communicate your ideas more clearly, which leads to better conversations and relationships with your friends, family, and coworkers. 

Plus, many creative thinking methods work best when they’re done in a group. Developing new ideas together can strengthen bonds and help you combine ideas to create something truly innovative.

Heightened productivity

It may seem like creative thinking is a time-consuming distraction from your work, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

When we get stuck in thought patterns, it’s easy to get frustrated when something isn’t working correctly. That frustration can cause our productivity to plummet. 

Taking a moment and engaging in a creative thinking strategy can renew your motivation, reinvigorate your passion, and help you find new solutions when you’re stuck. 

Higher self-awareness

Creative thinking allows you to try on perspectives that you may not have considered before. 

As you’re exploring new perspectives, you may discover something about your own assumptions, viewpoints, or biases that you never noticed. 

Challenging your traditional way of thinking can offer higher self-awareness and build your emotional intelligence. With creative thinking, you strengthen your ability to reframe your perspective and harness a growth mindset.

Ready to unlock the potential in your organization?

Find out how

Now that we see how important creative thinking skills are, building our creative capabilities is the next step to reap the benefits. 

There are many ways to encourage more creative thinking in your daily life. While practicing different thinking strategies and brainstorming with your team at work help to develop these skills, they’re far from the only way to foster a more creative thought process. 

One powerful way to get your creativity flowing is to meet new people, especially if they’re in the arts or in a different industry from you. Sharing your interests and listening to others can inspire you to view the world differently. 

Practicing boredom can help you develop your creativity, too. Allowing yourself to become bored and seeing what pulls your interest can help you practice letting your curiosity lead the way. 

Another tactic is to ask questions about everything that piques your interest, and come up with possible answers before you look up the actual answer.

Coaching can also help you hone your creative thinking. 

In fact, 71% of employers see managerial coaching as helpful for creative development. When you’re feeling distracted or uninspired, coaching can refocus your attention and help you get curious about your experience.

Breaking away from your normal routine and trying something new is the key to fostering creative thinking in your daily life.

BE THE FIRST TO KNOW

Stay up to date with new resources and insights.

Thinking more creatively can take effort, but a little practice can offer a ton of benefits. Honing your skills to recognize patterns and find solutions shifts your perspective and offers a new vantage point for you to explore. 

Not only can creative thinking improve your performance at work, but it can also improve every other area of your life too. 

Coaching is a powerful tool to help foster your creativity skills. Are you ready to become more innovative? 

Start working with a dedicated coach today to develop your own creative thinking skills.

Maggie Wooll

Thought Leader

What is lateral thinking? 7 techniques to encourage creative ideas

Why creativity isn't just for creatives and how to find it anywhere, thinking outside the box: 8 ways to become a creative problem solver, 8 creative solutions to your most challenging problems, from crisis to creativity, how to develop critical thinking skills, the whole person model: a holistic way to build inspiring leaders and thriving teams, how to improve your creative skills for effective problem-solving, what is a bullet journal, and how can it boost your productivity, similar articles, what is cognitive flexibility, and why does it matter, 8 brainstorming techniques to harness the power of teamwork, how divergent thinking can drive your creativity, what’s convergent thinking how to be a better problem-solver, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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What Does Creativity Mean in Safety-Critical Environments?

Samira bourgeois-bougrine.

1 Université de Paris, LAPEA, Boulogne-Billancourt, France

2 LAPEA, Univ. Gustave Eiffel, IFSTTAR, Versailles, France

Safety in high-risk and time-pressured situations relies on people’s ability to generate new and appropriate solutions to solve unforeseen problems for which no procedures or rules are available. This type of ability is regularly associated with the concept of creativity. While psychology researchers have studied, for decades, how creative ideas and solutions are generated, this basic research has not made it into the more applied fields of human factors and neuroergonomics. Building on the research on the psychology and the neuropsychology of creativity, this paper will (1) address the question of what creativity means and what are its ties with problem solving and decision-making; (2) focus on the evidence of the creative processes, the underlying mechanisms, and the multiple psychological dimensions of the creative behavior involved in unexpected events in extreme environments such as Apollo 13 mission, United Airline Flight 232, and Mann Gulch wildfire; and (3) explore the implications for future research in the domains of neuroergonomics and differential psychology.

Introduction

In a recent interview ( Saraceno, 2018 ), James Lovell, commander of Apollo 13 mission, commented on the catchphrase “ Houston, we have had a problem ” 1 saying, not without humor: “ the quote became iconic because it fits into millions of situations people experience every day. Every time you turn around, you seem to hear, ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ I wish I had copyrighted it! ” Apollo13 spaceflight crew and mission control team demonstrated considerable creativity and ingenuity under time and resource constraints. In this life-or-death situation, creativity was the critical pathway to survival. “It is a reactive force, triggered when all else fails, when the usual ways of doing things suddenly stop working and there is no choice but to discover or invent others” ( King, 1997 , p. 301). According to many experts, the ability to succeed under unexpected and extreme conditions involves “creative intelligence” ( Orasanu and Fischer, 1997 ; Lagadec, 2009 ; Boy, 2013 ; Klein, 2013 ). This ability reflects the complementary roles and the integration of intelligence, which primarily focuses on finding the correct solution, and creative reasoning that allows the generation of new alternative and approaches ( Jaarsveld et al., 2015 ).

Although references to creativity in safety are frequent, the underlying processes of the creative behavior in safety-critical environments received only limited attention. Building on several decades of research on the psychology and the neuropsychology of creativity, this article aims to advance our understanding of how experts create new solutions in extreme and unforeseen situations. These questions are not new but they will be addressed in this article from a new perspective. Traditionally, problem solving, judgment, and decision making in safety-critical environments have been discussed extensively in the literature based, particularly, on Rasmussen skill-rule-knowledge (SRK) model (for SRK; Rasmussen, 1985 ) and naturalistic decision-making framework (NDM; Klein, 2008 ). SRK model highlights three types of information processing according to the degree of conscious attentional control: (a) skill-based mode refers to the execution of highly practiced action in an automatic way, (b) rule-based mode consists of implementing prescribed rules with moderate control, and (c) knowledge-based mode involves high-level of conscious control and eight stages devoted to the analysis of the situation (activation, observation, identification, interpretation, or diagnosis) and to the formulation and the execution of an action plan (evaluating of the alternatives, task definition, procedure formulation, and execution). NDM relies on recognition-primed decision strategies, in which the familiarity with a situation is assessed and information is activated from memory. NDM research emphasizes the role of intuition in expert decision and “views intuition as an expression of experience as people build up patterns that enable them to rapidly size up situations and make rapid decisions without having to compare options” ( Klein, 2015 , p. 164). Building on SRK and NDM models, Orasanu and Fischer (1997) made an explicit link between creativity and aviation decision making (ADM) in critical situations. They considered that creating and implementing a solution when a problem is ill-defined or ambiguous is the most difficult action plan in ADM because it involves not only assessing the situation but also of creating a solution for a defined problem that has never been encountered.

Since the 1950s, psychology researchers have studied how creative ideas and solutions are generated. According to the 4Ps model, the psychology of creativity research covers four perspectives: Process (stages and the nature of the problem solving and decision making), Person (personality, intellect, temperament, experience, etc.), Product (e.g., when a thought becomes a course of action, a creative idea, procedure, physical object, etc.), and Press (impacts of factors in the physical and social environments). Moreover, the underlying mechanisms or brain function involved in the emergence of creative solutions have been investigated using the recent advance in neurophysiological [e.g., electroencephalography (EEG)] and neuroimaging [e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)] studies of creativity. However, this basic research has not made it into the more applied fields of human factors and neuroergonomics.

Building on the 4Ps model (Process, Person, Product, and Press) and the neuropsychology of creativity, this paper will (1) address the question of what creativity means and what are its ties with problem solving and decision-making?; (2) focus on the evidence of the creative processes, the underlying mechanisms, and the multiple psychological dimensions of the creative behavior involved in unexpected and extreme events such as Apollo 13 mission, United Airline Flight 232, and Mann Gulch wildfire; and (3) explore the implications for future research in the domains of neuroergonomics and differential psychology.

What is Creativity?

Creativity is the capacity to produce novel, original work that fits with task constraints and has value in its context. While intelligence relies on analytical thinking, the use of prior knowledge, and problem solving through the use of routine procedures, creative resolution of a problem involves the skill to make non-obvious connections in order to generate previously unknown solutions ( Sternberg, 1997 ). Bruner (1983, p. 183 in Weick, 1993 ) described creativity as “figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you currently think.” This description echoes the notion of potential, which refers to a latent state that may be put to use if a person has the opportunity. As part of an individual’s “human capital,” creative potential may remain latent and the individual may be aware of his/her potential or may be blind to it. Recent advances suggest that creative potential stems from numerous factors (cognition, personality, emotional, and environmental context); it can be defined, measured, and improved. It is based on 10 cognitive and conative dimensions ( Lubart et al., 2013 ): Divergent thinking, Mental flexibility, Analytic thinking, Associative thinking, Selective combination, Openness, Tolerance of ambiguity, Intuitive thinking, Risk taking, and Motivation to create. These dimensions will be defined, in the Creativity Under the Gun: Evidence of Creativity in High Risk Environments section, when addressing the evidence of creativity in high-risk environments.

What Are the Processes Involved in Creative Behavior?

The nature of the creative processes that produce original ideas that have value in their context could be considered within two conceptualizations ( Fisher and Amabile, 2008 ): compositional and improvisational creativity. While in music and theater, there is an accepted distinction between composing and improvising, we will see throughout this article that in the context of safety, they are used interchangeably.

With regard to compositional creativity, one of the early sources of information is based on the introspection of eminent scientists such as Poincaré and Helmholtz. It allowed Wallas to formalize, in 1926, the four-stage iterative model of the creative process ( Lubart, 2001 ; Bourgeois-Bougrine and Lubart, 2019 ): preparation (information gathering and preliminary analysis to define the problem), incubation (phase where there is no conscious work on the problem), illumination (when an interesting idea becomes conscious), and verification (evaluation, redefinition, and development of the idea; Iteration of the previous steps if the idea is unsatisfying). The initial stage could be considered as a “formless” situation where there is no structure, no task, and no problem to solve; ideas do not, indeed, present themselves as “problems capable of resolution or even sensible contemplation. They must be posed and formulated in fruitful and often radical ways if they are to be moved toward solution. The way the problem is posed is the way the dilemma will be resolved” ( Getzels, 1979 , p. 167).

Several stage models of creativity have emerged introducing changes and improvements to the four-stage model such as the creative problem solving (CPS) model. A recently accepted CPS model ( Mumford and McIntosh, 2017 ) includes eight key sub-stages of creative thinking summarized in four components: understanding the challenge, generating ideas, solution planning and execution, and monitoring the results. This CPS model has similarities with Knowledge based behavior in SRK model ( Rasmussen, 1985 ), which is frequently referred to in the safety context. Collaborative CPS in safety-critical events will be illustrated in the Creativity Under the Gun: Evidence of Creativity in High Risk Environments section.

Fisher and Amabile (2008) suggest that in compositional creativity, preparation can include the development of specific skills and obtaining the information needed to perform the task. In improvisation, such preparation cannot occur because immediate action is needed. Indeed, the main difference between improvisational and compositional creativity lies in the role of urgency. Time pressure is often what produces improvisation in the first place. Improvisation is considered as an unplanned, spontaneous, and intuition-guided action to achieve a goal; the actions contain both a high degree of novelty and a low temporal separation of problem presentation, idea generation, and idea execution ( Vera and Crossan, 2005 ; Fisher and Amabile, 2008 ). Therefore, improvisation could be considered a deliberate creative process where a convergence between the “design and the execution of a new production takes place” ( Miner et al., 2001 , p. 314). There is no improvisation unless an action is taken ( Weick, 1998 ). Individual or group improvisation systematically starts with a spontaneous and unplanned action when one does not have time to step back and think. As a consequence, improvisation in the safety context often refers to an outcome or a solution that emerges without planning.

Improvisation is often associated with the concept of bricolage, which involves a new combination of available resources ( Adrot and Garreau, 2010 ). However, improvisation is different from bricolage because of the nature of the constraint in question: in the first case, the constraint is the lack of time that leads to “thinking in action” and, in the second case, the constraint is related to the lack of resources that leads to using the resources at hand. However, during improvisation, the pressure of time makes it unlikely to search for or obtain additional resources, increasing the likelihood of bricolage ( Baker and Nelson, 2005 ; Adrot and Garreau, 2010 ).

Group improvisation involves a collective engagement in a joint creation. The creative performance is built through verbal and nonverbal interactions (e.g., speech, gestures, and movements). Musicians or theater actors perform as a group with no preparation, no previous experience of playing together, no script, and no director. They respond to each other as in a conversation, they are sensitive, attentive, and adapt to what other members of the group play or say. Miles Davis once said, “ Play what you hear, not what you know .” Recent studies have identified changes in the brain during collective improvisation compared to individual or solo improvisation. Limb and colleagues ( Limb and Braun, 2008 ; Donnay et al., 2014 ) used functional brain imaging to study the areas of the brain involved in musical improvisation. Professional, highly skilled jazz musicians played on a keyboard developed specifically for use in the context of brain imaging. During the collective improvisation (two musicians playing simultaneously during brain imaging), a strong activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was observed due to the social context, which makes use of the working memory. In fact, in comparison with individual musical improvisation, the interaction between the two musicians requires paying attention to what is being played, thus placing a high demand on working memory. Interestingly, structured scoping study of improvisation in scientific literature ( Frykmer et al., 2018 ) showed that collective improvisation in crisis management is a mere aggregation of individual improvisation at collective level, which is different from group improvisation in music and theater.

Where Do Creative Ideas Come From?

The neuropsychology of creativity highlights possible underlying mechanisms that promote the emergence, the selection, and the implementation of creative ideas. The findings of domain-specific studies (e.g., creative writing, visual art making, melody improvisation, etc.) and psychometric tasks 2 highlight the fact that creativity does not rise from a conceptual void but from an ongoing knowledge base development and personal past experiences ( Madore et al., 2016 ; Abraham, 2017 ). Individuals accumulate a collection of knowledge and routines, which must be both readily accessible and flexibly organized to meet any situational demand. For instance, Bill Evans, 3 one of the greatest jazz pianists of the second half of the 20th century, said that it took him 15 years of work from the time he first started improvising, at age 13, until he mastered the process of improvisation and was ready to create something truly valuable. Evans’s approach to music was a process of analysis followed by intuition. This highlights the pivotal role of intuition in improvisation and confirms the view of intuition as an expression of experience. However, as we will see in the next section, improvisation in safety-critical situations could involve insight problem solving instead of intuition. Insight is a sudden understanding on how to solve a problem while intuition corresponds to an association between a piece of information provided by the situation and information stored in memory ( Klein, 2013 ).

Conceptual knowledge is represented within an extensive semantic network in the memory, with direct and strong connections between closely related concepts (e.g., Bees-Honey or Table-Chair). Although memory access and retrieval are critical to creativity, evidence suggests that it can also hamper original idea generation leading to cognitive fixedness ( Beaty et al., 2017 ; Agnoli et al., 2020 ). For example, an excessive strength in semantic associations could lead to fixation on the strong associates and result in difficulties to transcend or to inhibit overlearned response, stereotypical associations, or salient concepts ( Bendetowicz et al., 2018 ).

The ability to flexibly combine concepts stored in memory to form novel and useful associations requires the coactivation of large brain networks: the default mode network (DMN) and the control executive network (CEN). The DMN, which is hypothesized to be involved in spontaneous activation of concepts and experiences from memory, is known to support the divergent and open creative process; it is activated by diverse forms of tasks that require spontaneous activation of autobiographical and semantic memory, perspective-taking, and envisioning the future. However, the DMN is deactivated during attention-demanding externally oriented task ( Buckner et al., 2008 ). The CEN is a goal-directed processing which (a) controls attentional shift from the external world to internal thoughts, (b) exerts a high cognitive control for the selection and integration of semantic concepts, (c) facilitates flexible switching between semantic categories during memory retrieval, and (d) mitigates sources of interference by suppressing salient conceptual knowledge. Using convergent and divergent tasks, Bendetowicz et al. (2018 , p. 228) confirm that optimal creative performance “ requires controlled mechanisms such as strategic search and controlled retrieval in memory, the inhibition of interference caused by frequent and more salient associates, the integration or combination of the retrieved associates, and the selection and evaluation of a solution that satisfies the constraints of the task .”

Creativity Under the Gun: Evidence of Creativity in High Risk Environments

This section addresses traditional safety issues through the lens of the psychology and the neuropsychology of creativity which consider creative action within the CPS framework. Creative individuals such as artists, musicians, etc., who seek to express his or her feelings in an original way are considered to be involved in solving a problem. In safety-critical events, desperation drives individuals to create new solutions to survive. Three examples of successfully managed safety events where creativity was considered as one of the key factors will be tentatively analyzed from the perspective of individual and team’s creative behavior, and the neuropsychological underlying mechanisms of such behaviors highlighted. The first two case studies, Apollo 13 mission and United Airline Flight 232, are positive examples of collaborative problem solving and the third, Mann Gulch wildfire, is a successful example of individual insight problem solving. The analyzed data includes the following sources: official accidents reports, communications’ transcripts (cockpit voice recorder and technical air-to-ground voice communications), interviews, talks, and a testimony.

Collaborative Creative Problem Solving in Safety-Critical Environments

Creativity in the air: united airline flight 232.

“Disaster in the air, are you ready?” was the subtitle given by the Alaska Air Safety Foundation to a talk given by Captain Alfred Haynes about Flight 232 of United Airline (UAL), one of the most celebrated cases of CPS ( NASA-Dryden, 1991 ). The flight crew experienced severe difficulties controlling the airplane after a catastrophic loss of all hydraulic systems due to an explosion in the number two engine. The crew had been trained to manage “ one failure or double failures, but never a complete hydraulic failure ” ( NASA-Dryden, 1991 ). The official accident report indicates that “ Douglas Aircraft Company, the FAA, and UAL considered the total loss of hydraulic-powered flight controls so remote as to negate any requirement for an appropriate procedure to counter such a situation…The simulator re-enactment of the events leading to the crash landing revealed that line flight crews could not be taught to control the airplane and land safely without hydraulic power available to operate the flight controls ” ( National Transportation Safety Board, 1989 ). This begs the question: how did the crew deal with this complete unforeseen circumstance in the air with virtually no prior experience of flying an airplane under those conditions?

The flight crew engaged, during 45 min, in an efficient collaborative CPS demonstrating outstanding skills throughout the four-stage CPS process: understanding the challenge, generating ideas, solution planning and execution, and monitoring the results. During the whole event, the crew tried to make sense of what was going on by “reading into their situation patterns of significant meaning…Sensemaking is built out of vague questions, muddy answers, and negotiated agreements that attempt to reduce confusion” ( Weick, 1993 , p. 635). As Isaksen and Treffinger (1987) have argued the process started by a disorder phase (mess) during which the problem was defined. These authors distinguish between the discovery phase of the problem (something is wrong, unsatisfactory, or missing) and the preparation phase in which information is collected. The crew was aware that they had lost one engine. The captain called for engine failure checklist and noticed that something else was wrong as suggested in the following quote of the Captain of UAL-232 flight: “ the first thing it (the checklist) said was, close the throttle. And when I tried to pull the throttle back, it would not come back. Now, I’ve never shut an engine down in flight on a jet, so I did not know that when you pulled the throttle back, it did not come back. In the simulator, when you do it, it always came back. This one would not come back… ” The crew quickly understood that not only they had lost one engine but also the three hydraulic systems and had to deal with an additional problem (e.g., “phugoid”): “ we immediately determined that we could not control the airplane: it would not respond to the inputs of the crew… Besides losing all of our hydraulics, which gave us no control, we had a problem that I was not really familiar with, called ‘phugoid’… ” The two outboard engines were still running, but no flight controls were operative.

As in any ill-defined problem, the crew had a purpose (e.g., to keep the plane upright in the sky) but did not have a known means or obvious path to achieve it. While figuring out what is going on and trying to find an airport, they gathered information from air traffic control about possible landing areas (runways and highway), checked visually the external damage to the airplane, discussed the procedures, invited in the cockpit an off-duty DC-10 captain who volunteered his assistance, and contacted San Francisco area maintenance experts for help with the issue of the loss of hydraulics, etc.

This safety-critical event involved, indeed, numerous cycles of divergent and convergent thinking at each step of the process: the crew simultaneously generated and evaluated ideas and used these ideas to formulate implementation plans. The execution of these plans often led them to circle back as the output was inadequate until they figured out opportunistically a novel solution to operate the plane without any control. Every time the maintenance experts and the off-duty captain tried to find something that the crew could do, they had either already done it or could not do it, because of the loss of hydraulics. As the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) indicated, the crew collectively generated and tested possible solutions and courses of action in dealing with the loss of the hydraulic system, as well as the methods of attempting an emergency landing: “ if we had not let everybody put their input in, it’s a cinch we would not have made it…the way we flew the airplane (was): what do you want to do, I do not know, and let us try this, and you think that’ll work, beats me, and that’s about the way it went, really. If you read the CVR transcript, there’s a lot of that on there .” This reflects a high degree of tolerance of ambiguity, openness, and risk taking which are among of the 10 dimensions of the creative potential ( Lubart et al., 2013 ). Tolerance of ambiguity is characterized by the ability to solve, or at least to tolerate situations and/or information that are ambiguous, unclear, contradictory, or absent. Openness is the tendency to try out new things and to have new experiences; it is opposed to dogmatism and conformism. The idea of sensible or calculated risk taking is often associated with creativity ( Bourgeois-Bougrine et al., 2020 ), and several researchers have argued for the need to measure risk taking in a variety of domains to better capture its complex nature ( Sternberg and Lubart, 1995 ; Sternberg, 1997 ; Runco, 2015 ).

Moreover, the crew demonstrated a high-level of mental flexibility which is the ability to change points of view and to change initial cognitive frames in order to explore new directions, as suggested by the captain: “ we found that in order to stop a phugoid, you had to do the opposite of what you would normally do .” This cognitive ability is synonymous to mental suppleness and to the ability to alternate between processing several kinds of information. They also stumbled upon solutions in an opportunistic way to several problems. For instance, with the help of the off-duty captain (who was assigned to the throttles), the crew managed to control the heading in synchronized effort: “ And we said (to the off-duty captain), give us a right bank, bring the wing up, that’s too much bank, try to stop the altitude, he’d try to respond. And after a few minutes of doing this, everything we’d do with the yoke, he could correspond with the throttles. So, it was a synchronized thing between the three of us, with (second first officer) still being able to do all his communications. So that’s how we operated the airplane, and that’s how we got it on the ground .” This might represent an instance of rare and true group improvisation as experienced by musicians or theater actors “in the spirit of shared leadership, responsibility, mutual support, and care” ( Nisula and Kianto, 2018 , p. 485). Indeed, through verbal and nonverbal interactions, the crew coordinated and synchronized their actions in a spontaneous, unplanned, and never experienced way. Crewmembers were attentive and adapted to each other’s action.

Although the mood of the crewmembers was understandably negative (fear), there were no apparent symptoms of panic as suggested by the CVR and the Captain in his talk: “ although we did not appear to be panicked…an airplane about to roll onto its back at 35,000' is pretty scary, so you just do anything you can to make it stop .” Provided that they are not associated with extremely high-level arousal, negative mood states might increase the capacity to consider multiple alternatives because of enhanced persistence ( Nijstad et al., 2010 ).

Distributed Creative Teams: Apollo 13 Mission

During the commemoration of 45th anniversary of Apollo 13 mission, Jim Lovell 4 said “ The flight was a failure in its initial mission. However, it was a tremendous success in the ability of people to get together, like the mission control team working with what they had and working with the flight crew to turn what was almost a certain catastrophe into a successful recovery .” Similar to the abovementioned case (UAL-232 flight), the teams demonstrated outstanding collaborative CPS skills, high degree of divergent thinking, tolerance of ambiguity, openness, risk taking, and mental flexibility. However, in the case of Apollo 13, the teams were distributed between space 5 and the ground 6 and the creative effort lasted about 80 h after the blast. The transcript of the technical air-to-ground (TAG) voice communications 7 shows that through constant communication, trust, and care, the flight crew and mission control established and maintained a shared understanding. They monitored and evaluated the results of their actions, provided feedback, and adapted plans.

The blast that occurred 200,000 miles from earth at 55 h:55 min into the mission led to a major loss of power, oxygen, heating, disturbed the supply of water, and forced the crew to abandon the command module (CM) and use the lunar module (LM) as a lifeboat. Immediately after the blast, the creative process started with a phase of mess-finding in which the problem was defined. Both teams engaged simultaneously in troubleshooting the possible issues to make a sense of the erratic readings as suggested below in the followings TAG transcript:

• “ 055:55:51 Liebergot: Okay, flight, we have got some instrumentation funnies. Let me add them up . (In Mission Control Center in Houston, the flight controllers monitor the ship’s remote telemetry)
• 055:55:58 Lousma: Okay, stand by, 13. We’re looking at it. [Pause.]
• 056:03:17 Swigert: Okay, Houston. Are you still reading 13?
• 056:03:20 Lousma: That’s affirmative. We’re reading you. We’re trying to come up with some good ideas here for you .
• 056:03:29 Haise: Okay. Let me give you some readings…”

As the teams examined the gauges, they started gaining a greater insight into the magnitude of the failure ahead of them. They stayed calm and engaged in numerous cycles of divergent and convergent thinking. For instance, they brainstormed ideas after Jim Lovell’s announcement of something leaking from the ship:

• “056:09:07 Lovell: We are venting something out into space…It’s a gas of some sort .
• 056:09:29 Kranz: Rog. (Pause) Okay, let us everybody think of the kind of things we might be venting…”

Once the lunar landing was aborted, the big questions were: how do we return to earth safely? How to deploy the capability of the LM? How will we overcome the damaged alignment system? etc. After a day and a half in the LM, a warning light showed that the carbon dioxide had built up to a dangerous level. But the CM’s square-shaped canisters, which remove carbon dioxide from the spacecraft, were not compatible with the round openings in the LM environmental system. Mission control devised and transmitted to the fligthcrew a way to attach the CM canisters to the LM system by using plastic bags and cardboard and to tape all materials carried on board. This outcome is an example of creative bricolage under resources constraints.

Moreover, the teams came up with five return-to-earth options and developed an alternative procedure to use the Sun as an alignment star as a result of the damages caused by the explosion to the alignment system ( Granath, 2015 ). Among others, the teams generated and discussed ideas to solve the problem of the entry procedure:

• “110:23:19 Lousma: Jim, we have had a lot of people working on the entry procedures, and they will be continuing to do so. We got a few ideas we would like to toss at you so you can start thinking about them…?”

Similar to members of creative innovation networks ( Gloor, 2006 ), the flight crew and mission control team’s work was interdependent, based on trust, respect, reciprocity, and consistency. All along, the knowledge was questioned, the problems redefined, and the solutions generated through an iterative process of CPS. This process involved prototyping solutions with what the crew had on-board and testing new procedures in the simulator. When asked if the question of survival ever came up, Jim Lovell showed outstanding emotional control: “ Honestly, no, we never had that thought. As long as the situation wasn’t hopeless, we thought positive ” ( Saraceno, 2018 ).

Problem Solving Through Insight

Creative desperation: mann gulch fire.

On August 1949, Wagner Dodge and his 15 crewmembers were running uphill for safety, when he realized that the fire was only 50 yd. away behind them, and they could not outrun it. He stopped to light an escape fire as his testimony indicates 8 : “ the fire was too close, in my estimation, to continue farther. At this point, I stopped the crew and explained to those nearest me (at least eight men) that we would have to burn off a section of the light fuel and get into the inside in order to make it through… After setting a clump of bunch grass on fire, I had an area of 100 feet square that was ablaze…for all my hollering, I could not direct anyone into the burned area…within seconds after the last man had passed, the main fire hit the area that I was in…This lasted approximately 5 min, and I was able to sit up within the burned area… ” Dodge’s intention was to provide the crew a burned over, fuel-free zone but none of the crew followed his order to dive in the ashes that saved his life. Lillquist (2006 , p. 567) reports that “ when later asked by the Board of Review whether he had been taught to set an escape fire in such a situation, Dodge replied Not that I know of. It just seemed the logical thing to do. I had been instructed if possible to get into a burned area .” As the burned area was behind the “wall of fire” that was about to engulf him, he created the escape fire to “get into a burned area” of his making.

In his analysis of this disaster, Weick (1993 , p. 642) described the escape fire as a “burst of improvisation” in the face of an inconceivable life-threatening event. This improvisation does not rely on intuition but on insightful problem solving ( Klein, 2013 ). Insight or “Aha Moment” requires a spontaneous and sudden reorganization of the elements of the problem, a perspective shift to find the correct solution, and a transition from one mental model to another that is more satisfying and bringing suggestions for new actions that can remedy the tensions inherent in the previous mental model ( Klein, 2013 ; Abraham, 2018 ). Klein and Jarosz (2011) referred to it as a “creative desperation path” triggered in a situation of imminent danger when the individual is confronted with an impasse resulting from deliberate and often desperate efforts to escape it. In contrast to Wallas’s four-stage model, when a person reaches an impasse and needs a quick breakthrough, a sudden reframing or restructuration of their mental model of the situation may occur without any deliberate preparation or incubation. Insight or revelation requires a high degree of mental flexibility to generate a new interpretation of the problem and to restructure it.

Referring to the escape fire, Weick (1993 , p. 638) indicates that “what we do not expect under life-threatening pressure is creativity.” This leads us to two questions: why did his crew members not see escape fire as a lifesaving solution? and why was Wagner Dodge the only one who came up with this solution? The first question has received an extensive analysis from several perspectives. For instance, Weick (1993) suggested that Dodge’s failure to get his crewmembers in the escape fire, that resulted in the death of 13 men, was due to the “collapse of sensemaking” and the disintegration of role structure in this minimal temporary organization. While the second question remains difficult to answer, we will provide in the next section some basic research evidence of the underlying mechanisms of insight problem solving compared to traditional analytical approaches (e.g., conscious and deliberate search through a space of potential solutions).

The Underlying Mechanisms of Insight Problem Solving

Using psychometric tasks, EEG recording, brain imaging, and eye tracking, recent laboratory studies ( Kounios and Beeman, 2014 ; Salvi et al., 2015 ) have attempted to answer two challenges: identifying the differences in cognitive and neural mechanisms in insight vs. analytical responses and the existence of an unconscious process preceding a conscious response. The results indicate differences in brain activation and eye movements of participants depending on the type of problem solving. Successful problem solving through insight involves a transient reorientation of attention inward while preparing and solving a problem. Kounios and Beeman (2014) showed that solutions that emerge from insight, compared to analytical solutions, were associated with an intense activity of gamma waves (40 Hertz) preceded by a burst of alpha waves (about 10 Hertz). The increase in gamma activity is considered to be the main correlate of the insight experience: it allows the link between treatment in different areas of the brain to build a coherent percept ( Tallon-Baudry et al., 2005 ), and it occurs when the participant finds the solution to the problem, in a brain region involved in semantic integration ( St George et al., 1999 ). The burst of alpha, on the other hand, indicates that the brain limits the flow of external visual information in order to avoid distraction, which could disturb the emergence of the solution by insight. The authors point out that in normal circumstances, when asked a difficult question, we often tend to look away from the person who asked that question or even briefly close our eyes during the search for an answer. As the participants in this experiment were instructed to look at the center of the screen, the increase in alpha waves is a compensatory phenomenon of the brain, which directs attention inward in order to protect the emergence of the solution. In other words, reducing temporarily interfering visual inputs allows the solution to pop into awareness. The results observed by exploring brain activity were confirmed by a study that used eye tracking technique to study attention in a similar experimental design ( Salvi et al., 2015 ). The changes in the duration and frequency of blinking and eye fixation are overt indicators of the modulation of attention. Immediately prior to solutions, participants blinked longer and looked away from the problem more often when solving it by insight than when solving analytically. Spontaneous eye blinks are hypothesized to be actively involved in the release of attention from external stimuli to internal thoughts and tend to occur at breakpoints of attention, such as the end of a sentence while reading, a pause by the speaker while listening to a speech, etc. A recent study ( Nakano et al., 2013 ) suggested that eye blinks are actively involved in the process of attentional disengagement during a cognitive task. The control of attentional process facilitates the shift of attention between external task and internal thoughts, the inhibition of most common response, the access and the combination of remote conceptual knowledge.

To sum up, insight problem solving involves a shift of attention inward and a “transient sensory gating” ( Kounios and Beeman, 2014 , p. 80). Despite the limitations of the laboratory approach, the neuropsychological studies of creativity open up new avenues for future research to understand the cognitive process and the underlying mechanisms of creative and insight problem solving in life critical-situation.

Concluding Thoughts: Implication for Future Research

Drawing on the aforementioned literature and safety events, we propose a definition of creativity in safety-critical environments as “the capacity of expert individuals and teams to create original, unusual, and adapted solutions to solve unforeseen problems in life-critical situations, for which there is no prescribed procedure or obvious solution to apply.” Contingent on this definition, the solutions must contain both a high degree of novelty and adaptability, which also strike others as being interesting or clever ( Kellner and Benedek, 2017 ). The solutions or “products” should be distinguished from the process that leads to the emergence of the successful outcome. In contrast to the existing literature on experts’ decision-making, insights from the psychology of creativity research suggest that creative behavior involves not only intuition as mentioned in the NDM model but also the combination of several cognitive and conative factors such as divergent thinking, mental flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity, etc.

Among the many implications for future research, two main issues could be addressed. The first issue, which represents a new research opportunity for neuroergonomics, would explore the neural basis of creative and insight problem solving in life critical-situation. The second issue falls within the traditional boundaries of differential psychology and would address the nature of the attributes of creative individuals in safety contexts. The ultimate goal is to improve operational training and required skills to deal with the unexpected and to explore design principles for human-machine systems that would support creative behavior whenever required.

What Would Be the Underlying Mechanisms of Creative and Insight Problem Solving in Life Critical-Situation?

In life or death situations, acute stress and anxiety can lead to severe performance impairment due to cognitive fixation and mental block ( Jouniaux, 2001 ). Attention and cognitive tunneling on specific symbology or stimuli could result in failure to detect potentially critical events that do not fall within the attended region ( Jarmasz et al., 2005 ). Based on the neuropsychology of creativity, we can hypothese that these stress reactions would potentially limit the shift of attention between external task and internal thoughts, prevent the “sensory gating,” and hinder the inhibition of most common response as well as the access and the combination of remote conceptual knowledge.

Therefore, a particular attention should be devoted to the study of the underlying brain function involved in creative and insight problem solving related to operational performance in a simulator or virtual reality environment. This would require identifying and analyzing operational safety-critical events where there is evidence of creativity in line with the aforementioned definition of creativity in safety-critical environments. A simulation of the selected events will provide the opportunity for neuroergonomics researchers to explore in objective way (e.g., using eye tracking and brain imaging technics) the following issues: (1) the mental processes and environmental cues that lead to or prevent the emergence of new ideas and solutions in life critical events, (2) ways to optimize attention control and emotional regulation when solving operational problems under extreme stress such as mindfulness training ( Meland et al., 2015 ; Abraham et al., 2019 ), and (3) the design principles for human-machine systems that will optimize the attention span and focus to avoid “locking” the user on an unsuccessful path in solving unexpected and extreme problems ( Klein, 2013 ).

What Would Be the Attributes of Creative Individuals in Safety Context?

Experts agree that “ If the unforeseen were the norm, crew training should be fundamentally oriented to deal with it - particularly stimulating pilots’ capacities for judgment and creativity, essential qualities for this purpose ” ( AAE-Académie de l’air et de l’espace, 2013 , p. 39). For instance, reflecting on what defined the first astronauts, Jim Lovell said: “ Originally, we were all test pilots. We sort of lived on the edge. We tested unproven airplanes for the military; we always expected something to go wrong ” ( Saraceno, 2018 ). Moreover, Alfred Haynes served as a pilot in the Navy during the Korean War for 4 years before joining United Airlines. This confirm the role of experiences in the development of knowledge and highlight the need to (1) understand how past experiences in difficult conditions shape the creative potential to instigate CPS and decision making in stressful and extreme situations and (2) explore the nature of trainings that would enhance the creative potential of ordinary frontline operational without having to live on the edge.

To be able to develop these trainings, there is a need to identify and measure the required abilities and skills. As explored in the previous section, the creative process in life critical events is oriented toward damage control and reflects the creative potential of experts. To make a sense of the unfolding events and to come up with appropriate and unusual solutions, several cognitive and conative factors are critical such as divergent thinking, mental flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity, analytical skills, etc. As it has been suggested ( Lubart et al., 2013 ), the assessment of the creative potential profile would help to (a) identify the strengths and weaknesses of each person in relation to the average profile of his group or to the top performers in his domain and (b) to tailor training that target weaknesses in specific dimensions. A multidimensional approach has been adopted to detect of the creative potential in children, adolescent, and adults such as managers or designers ( Caroff et al., 2018 ). Similar approach could be used to determine (1) whether there is a particular profile of the creative potential or skills that facilitate insight and CPS in life critical-situation and (2) how these skills and abilities could be developed?

In conclusion, we would like to emphasize that the successful outcomes in safety-critical situations rely on four sources of resilience: creativity, role system, attitude of wisdom, and respectful interaction ( Weick, 1993 , p. 638). To the question “Disaster in the air, are you ready?,” Captain Haynes answered “No, you are never ready. But you might be prepared.” We hope that revisiting the role of creativity in safety opens up multiple implications for future research that would contribute to the reinforcement of resilience.

Author Contributions

SB-B prepared and wrote the manuscript. It is based on a review and synthesis of knowledge from multiple disciplines and sources including her own research and experience.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The author expresses her sincere gratitude to the editor and the reviewers for their constructive comments and to Louise Bourgeois and Amy Powell for proofreading the manuscript.

1 The legendary line delivered by Lovell is “Houston, we have had a problem” and not the familiar “Houston, we have a problem” made especially popular by the Tom Hanks movie. https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap13fj/08day3-problem.html

2 Psychometric tasks: alternative uses task (AUT) and remote associates test (RAT). The AUT assess divergent thinking and the RAT measures the ability to see relationships between things that are remotely associated.

3 http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/the_universal_mind_of_bill_evans_advice_on_learning_to_play_jazz.html

4 https://www.nasa.gov/content/members-of-apollo-13-team-reflect-on-nasas-finest-hour

5 Flight crew – Commander: Jim Lovell; Command module pilot: John Swigert; Lunar module pilot: Fred Haise.

6 Mission control (Houston): flight directors, capsule communicators, engineers…

7 https://history.nasa.gov/afj/ap13fj/21day5-batterycharge.html

8 Testimony of smokejumper foreman Dodge. https://www.nifc.gov/safety/mann_gulch/event_timeline/event3/documents/Pages%20117_118%20from%20Board_of_Review_%20Sept%2026_28_1949.pdf

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Is Your AI-First Strategy Causing More Problems Than It’s Solving?

• Oguz A. Acar

Consider a more balanced and thoughtful approach to AI transformation.

The problem with an AI-first strategy lies not within the “AI” but with the notion that it should come “first” aspect. An AI-first approach can be myopic, potentially leading us to overlook the true purpose of technology: to serve and enhance human endeavors. Instead, the author recommends following 3Ps during an AI transformation: problem-centric, people-first, and principle-driven.

From technology giants like Google to major management consultants like McKinsey , a rapidly growing number of companies preach an “AI-first” strategy. In essence, this means considering AI as the ultimate strategic priority , one that precedes other alternative directions. At first glance, this strategy seems logical, perhaps even inevitable. The figures speak for themselves: the sheer volume of investment flowing into AI technologies shows the confidence levels in an increasingly AI-driven future.

• Oguz A. Acar is a Chair in Marketing at King’s Business School, King’s College London.

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