Creative Thinking: What it Is, Why We Need It and How to Learn From It

Creative Thinking: What, Why and How

One of the several thousands of situations NASA was tasked with solving in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the US began sending people into space was the situation that ball point pens did not work well in a zero gravity environment. You can simulate this if you write on a piece of paper with a pen pointing up.

The US spent millions of dollars on prototypes created by teams of brilliant mechanical, chemical and hydrodynamic engineers and a truly remarkably effective ‘space pen’ was created which not only could write in space and on earth but even underwater, thus ensuring America’s dominance as the most technically advanced civilization to ever walk the earth. The Soviets’, NASA’s arch rival, cheaper and arguably more effective solution was to use pencils (Baker, 2008).

The Americans defined the situation as how do we make pens work effectively in zero gravity? The Soviets defined the situation as how do we write in zero gravity? The Americans solved the wrong situation. When the engineers addressed the situation they either assumed what the situation was or they inherited it.

When using creative thinking a rule of thumb is to spend as much time defining and redefining the situation as you do solving the situation (Hurson, 2008). Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself a little bit. Let’s back track a bit, shall we?

What is creative thinking?

Creative thinking is a process, such as brainstorming or lateral thinking (Business Dictionary, 2009), which improves the ability to be creative and be able to look at situations from a fresh and sometimes unorthodox perspective. Creative thinking is a process that helps you be in an optimal state of mind for generating new ideas (Infinitive Innovations , 1997), unique-to-you ideas that you did not practice earlier (CBS Interactive Inc., 2000). This process of creative thinking entails reviewing relevant information, ideas and/or solutions to create new novel ideas and perspectives.

Creative thinking transforms closed-ended situations into open-ended situations, freeing solution providers from their strict logical confines allowing them to think in other than logical terms avoiding blocks by bringing flexibility into the situation definition (Collins, 1981).

Why should we use creative thinking?

Creative thinking allows us to not only solve problems, but it allows us to progress and to create better solutions for already solved problems. Creative thinking allows us to create solutions for situations before they become problems. Creative thinking allows us to recognize that a situation is going to manifest, to understand the ramifications of solutions before we implement them. Creative thinking allows us to unlearn that which we have already learned.