Creativity techniques

Creativity techniques are heuristic methods to facilitate creativity in a person or a group of people. Generally, most creativity techniques use associations between the goal (or the problem), the current state (which may be an imperfect solution to the problem), and some stimulus (possibly selected randomly). There is an analogy between many creativity techniques and methods of evolutionary computation. In problem-solving contexts, the random word creativity technique is perhaps the simplest such method. A person confronted with a problem is presented with a randomly generated word, in the hopes of a solution arising from any associations between the word and the problem. A random image, sound, or article can be used instead of a random word as a kind of creativity goad or provocation[1][2].

History

The history of the development of various creative problem-solving techniques extends as far back as antiquity. See History of creativity for details.

Inspirational questions

What can I substitute to make an improvement? What if I swap this for that and see what happens? How can I substitute the place, time, materials or people? What materials, features, processes, people, products or components can I combine? Where can I build synergy? What part of the product could I change? And in exchange for what? What if I were to change the characteristics of a component? What happens if I warp or exaggerate a feature or component? What will happen if I modify the process in some way? What other market could I use this product in? Who or what else might be able to use it? What if I did it the other way round? What if I reverse the order it is done or the way it is used? How would I achieve the opposite effect?

Who else has solved this probortunity? What similar area of expertise might have solved this probortunity? Is there anyone else in the company who knows how to solve this? What else could we use to solve the probortunity? Where else might this probortunity have been solved? What other companies might know how to solve this? What similar problems have been solved, and how? What other industries face the same probortunity and what do they do about it?

How would they think? What objects and items would they be using? Where would they be doing it? How would they see the problem? What action would they take? How would they explain the problem? How would they solve the problem? What does your situation or your probortunity remind you of? What other areas of life/work experience similar situations? Who does similar things but not in your area of expertise?

What would my perfect solution be? What effect would my ideal solution have? What if money/morals/laws did not matter at all? What would I do if I had unlimited power and resources? What would my ideal solution look like?

See also

• Association
• Creativity
• Decision tree
• The journalist's question
• Imagination
• Ideas banks
• Metaphor

External links

• About-Creativity.com - Artists share their creative techniques
• American Creativity Association
• Crack the barriers to creativity
• Creativity Techniques - an A to Z
• Overview of Creative Methods
• WATIZIT Creative Idea Generation Tool