“Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, US President)
Creativity can have an unimaginably wide range of applications, from invention to fashion, from the facilitation of various household activities to new fields of research, from gastronomic innovations to works of art, from the creation of new games to the articulation of new languages, new sports, new branches of art, etc.
The book market offers a wide range of books on the subject of human creativity. Therefore, in order to approach what is useful and applicable to us, we need to better understand what creativity is, how it manifests itself, and how we can discover it or “train” it.
What creativity is
In the theoretical field, there is a method of study and research aimed at discovering new facts, phenomena, events, analysing them and acquiring new knowledge; it is called “heuristics”, from the Greek heuriskein, meaning “to find out.” In other contexts it also means the method of finding the truth in a debate or controversy.
Heuristics has theorised and developed dozens of methods of intellectual innovation, establishing different stages of the act of creation in the scientific field. However, creativity remains a mystery, whether it is creativity as inspiration put into action, or the ability of an individual to produce something new, something ingenious, to improve an existing product, to revolutionise an approach to an activity, or to make more profitable use of a circumstance or set of elements. There is no way of explaining or predicting when that moment of grace will occur, when that skill or inspiration will be translated into action, or how long it will last.
It has also been found that the predisposition to be creative varies not only from one individual to another, but also from one stage of life to another in the same individual. Sometimes an individual can produce a chain of innovations and inventions, as in the case of Thomas Edison, the Lumière brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, and so many other scientists or self-taught inventors. For others, it is a single invention that distinguishes and makes them famous, as in the case of Petrache Poenaru, the inventor of the fountain pen. Others work as a team on innovations or inventions, such as Vic Mills and Norma Lueders Baker, some of the P&G researchers who created Pampers nappies.
What is certain is that an inquiring mind will always be concerned with better understanding the world around us and improving some accessible aspect of it, or creating something new and surprising. Creativity includes not only the quality of bringing something new into the world, but also the quality of responding satisfactorily or solving a problem where others see no solution.
Can we learn to be creative?
I remember, many years ago, when I was playing one of the first electronic games, I found myself at a dead end: the hero of the game was moving through ascending tunnels, facing a great chasm between the last step beneath his feet and the next level; the blank black screen suggested a flaw in the game’s design, because the hero had no wings, no flying machine, and could not jump that high. The solution I found was to simply have him step into the void, and the steps began to appear one by one under his feet. Then I realised that I was being asked to think differently than would have been predictable.
Learning to be creative, some writers say, is about the ability to look in a different way at the problems that need solving, or at situations and circumstances that require new solutions. It is like walking on a path that has been trodden by others and being able to step back, look at it from the outside, and try to imagine a better path, a boardwalk, a suspension bridge, etc.
“Creativity is the art of expanding possibility,” says Anthony Weston. “It is the art of finding unexpected space in problems that seem totally stuck to everyone else. It is the ability to think ‘out of the box’ while the rest of us barely realise that we are in a box. Despite what we’re often told, creativity in this sense is a readily learnable skill.”[1]
The author argues that it is a vital skill to be able to see the world in terms of what is possible, not just what is present. At the level of thinking and reasoning, for example, even the best argument or explanation has to be evaluated in the light of what else might be possible. “By showing us the world, or some part of the world, as it could be, creativity gives us a whole new view of the world as it is… After all, ‘What about other options?’ is not exactly a hard question to learn to ask.”[2]
Americans have a term for the creative disposition—”thinking out of the box”—suggesting that habitual, routineised, template-driven thinking seems to be confined in a closed space where it cannot expand and evolve.
This view is shared by Edward de Bono, an inspiring and provocative theorist and practitioner of creative thinking, which he calls “parallel thinking.”[3] He suggests that the traditional Western way of thinking, philosophising, and reasoning is being overtaken by the new challenges of the evolution of the world, the complexity of life.
The ancient founders of Western thought—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—can no longer help us with many of the new social, moral, educational, technological, or economic problems that are emerging and rapidly succeeding one another. What the author criticises is the widespread tacit belief that the evolution of society and our capacity for judgement will automatically bring us new ideas and new solutions.[4] In my opinion, this also reflects an unfounded confidence in the irreversible progress of humanity, in the ascent of its members, taken as a whole, on the ladder of humanisation.
De Bono criticises the traditional adversarial attitude that Western thinkers adopt when confronted with a problem and proposes the cooperative attitude of parallel thinking. He offers two different images to illustrate the two approaches: in the first, to carry a weight resting on a sledge, several penguins pull the sledge in different directions; in the second, all those involved pull in the same direction.[5] Among the many characteristics and principles of parallel thinking are “no politics and power play”, “caution in its place”, “expression of feeling”, “searching for value”, “thinking about thinking”, “removal of the ego”, “use of full intellectual power”, “one thing at a time”, “shortening meeting times”, etc. With regard to “time and space for creativity”, the author suggests replacing the aggressive attitude of “squeezing in” a new idea with the more permissive attitude of giving freedom of action to the person who consciously engages in the creative process on his or her own initiative.[6]
Ways to stimulate our creativity
It is impossible, when reading about creativity, not to feel the desire to explore our abilities in this field of imagination, of freedom to manifest ourselves as superior beings. It is an almost magical realm, because it is impossible to explain and fully understand its characteristics, its potentiality, which suddenly, through a spark, becomes a creative act. And its materialisation in the form of something new brought into the world, something new and remarkable, brings incomparable spiritual rewards. The creative dimension of human beings, as created beings limited by time and space, always recalls the primary and inexhaustible source of the Creator. And when the creative individual recognises her image in the image of her Creator, more love by gratitude is born: “I praise you [Lord] because I am fearfully and wonderfully made!” (Psalm 139:14).
There is much that can be said about methods of stimulating creativity, and in upcoming articles I will expand on the subject. But to begin with, I will present two of these methods that are within our reach.
The first method I would like to introduce is the daydreaming method. It is a technique inspired by psychotherapy.[7] A daydreaming session takes place in semi-darkness with a group of 6-7 people lying comfortably on the floor in a star shape with their heads towards the centre. The session can last from half an hour to two hours. At the beginning of the session, the coordinator introduces some neutral images to facilitate the detachment from the surrounding world and the opening of a shared imaginary space for the whole group. Then the coordinator introduces images related to the problem to be solved. The group produces fantasies, dreams, a scenario with images directly related to the problem, which also contain ideas, more or less articulated.
The ideas, no matter how preposterous they may seem, are recorded for later analysis. At the end of the session, the coordinator gradually brings the group back to reality with increasingly “realistic” images. This technique can be useful for an architect designing a hotel, a decorator designing an office building, a gardener planning a park, a fashion designer creating a wedding dress, a furniture designer or a pastry chef, and so on.
The second method is called brainstorming. Brainstorming, as the name suggests, is a technique of intentional mental wandering which, if successful, prevents the narrow selectivity that ordinary, routine thinking applies to the data of a problem. If the individual suppresses his strict censorship of logic, of ingrained common sense, of rigid reason, he is likely to become more creative. The advantage of brainstorming is that it excludes competition or comparison between participants—and therefore minimises conflicts between them. In addition, the constraints of our own insecurities, hesitations, and fears of how we will be perceived disappear and we become more uninhibited, more prone to free imagination. This method is particularly recommended for professional teams, but also for groups of colleagues, collaborators, friends, and others, ideally 7-8 people.
The essence of this technique is to separate the critical mind from the creative one, to temporarily suspend rational criticism. Meetings are organised to discuss a given topic,[8] observing the following rules: do not memorise what others say; do not memorise who said what; do not reply to what anyone says. It is preferable to have a discussion coordinator who, at the end of the discussion, takes stock of the solutions formulated, however far-fetched they may seem, without evaluating or categorising them and without revealing the names of their authors.
