Creativity and Innovation Notes

Mind-Mapping

• Mind-mapping is a visual note-making technique that can be done individually or in a group.

• It enhances productivity by improving learning and thinking.

• It uses cortical skills like word, image, number, logic, rhythm, color, and spatial awareness.

• Mind-mapping unlocks the brain's potential.

Guidelines for Mind-Mapping

• Mind Maps are open to interpretation.

• Start in the center with an image of the topic using at least three colors.

• Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions.

• Select key words and print using upper and lower case letters.

• Each word/image must be alone and on its own line.

• Lines must be connected starting from the central image.

• The central lines are thicker, organic, and flowing, becoming thinner as they radiate out.

• Make the lines the same length as the word/image.

• Use colors as your own code throughout the Mind Map.

• Develop your own personal style of Mind Mapping.

• Use emphasis and show association in your Mind Map.

• Keep the Mind Map clear by using radiant hierarchy, numerical order, or outlines.

Benefits of Mind-Mapping

• All ideas are related, providing additional depth.

• It encourages thoughts to grow outwards.

• Ideas expand and radiate creative thinking.

• Mind Maps work with the brain and encourage associations between ideas.

• Each branch is associated with a previous branch.

• It complements how the brain works and can lead to significant results.

SCAMPER

• SCAMPER is a strategy to help students generate new ideas.

• It supports creative and divergent thinking.

• It helps you to think about changes that you can make to an existing product to create a new one.

• It uses changes as starting points for creative thinking and to use your imagination.

How SCAMPER Works

• Each letter refers to:

  • S → Substitute.

  • C → Combine.

  • A → Adapt.

  • M → Modify.

  • P → Put to other use.

  • E → Eliminate.

  • R → Rearrange.

• Take an existing product, idea, or service you want to improve or develop.

• Ask about each of the seven elements.

• Use the questions to brainstorm about values, benefits, services, product features, pricing, and markets.

• Check your answers.

• Are any answers practical?

• Could you employ any of these to establish a new product?

• Explore good ideas further.

SCAMPER Techniques

Substitute

• Thinking about substituting part of the product or process for something else.

• Questions to be asked:

  • What other purpose?

  • What other times?

  • What other place?

  • What other components/materials/parts?

  • What else instead?

  • Who else instead?

Combine

• Combine two or more parts of the product or process to make something new or to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.

• Questions to be asked:

  • What technologies can be combined?

  • What part/material can be combined?

  • What idea, purpose, and units can be combined?

Adapt

• Thinking a way on which parts of the product or process could be adapted or find a way to change the nature of the product or process.

• Questions to be asked:

  • What photo or sound can be added?

  • What color or form can be added?

  • Which extra function can be added?

Modify or Magnify

• Think a way on changing certain part or all of the product or process, or twisting it in an unusual way.

• Questions to be asked:

  • What other meaning?

  • What might I add?

  • Which other shape might I adapt?

Put to Other Use

• Think a way on how you might put a certain product or process to other use or how you might reuse something from somewhere else.

• Questions to be asked:

  • Can I use it in other industries?

  • What else can the product/service can be used for?

  • Which other possible uses are there if it’s modified?

Eliminate

• Think of the product in the end if you eliminate certain parts of the process and consider what you might do in that situation.

• Questions to be asked:

  • What is non-essential or unnecessary?

  • What would happen if it was made smaller?

  • What would happen if those rule are eliminated?

Rearrange or Reverse

• Think of what you might do if parts of the product or process worked in reverse or were sequenced differently.

• Questions to be asked:

  • What can be arranged in a different way?

  • What can be turned/twisted?

  • What can be reserved/turned up side down?

Six Thinking Hats

• The six thinking hats is a tool to boost the productivity of creative thinking by dividing up the different styles of thinking into six "hats“.

• Hats help groups and individuals to do parallel thinking.

• You can ‘Put on’ and ‘Put off’ hat.

White Hat

• Neutral hat, talks only about facts, figures, and data.

• Be like a computer while wearing the white hat.

• Exclude emotion.

• What information do we have?

• What are the facts?

• And/or what information do we need?

• Two levels of facts: Believed facts and checked facts.

Red Hat

• Gives you an opportunity to express feeling and emotion.

• Intuition and hunches.

• Likes and dislikes.

• Legitimize the emotion as part of the discussion.

• No need for justification.

Black Hat

• Black hat thinking is concerned with caution and care.

• Hat of survival.

• Base of critical thinking.

• The risks, dangers, and potential problems need to be considered.

• Most abused hat.

• As we are naturally programmed for this.

Yellow Hat

• Develop ‘value sensitivity’ (opposite to danger sensitivity).

• Naturally not programmed to do so unlike the black hat.

• Yellow hat looks for the positive side and benefits.

• I know the risk of doing it, now I need some yellow hat thinking on it!.

• Why something may work, though it is outrageous.

Green Hat

• Hardest hat to wear.

• Hat of creativity, new approach to problems.

• Generation of new ideas and find new alternatives.

• Collecting the idea with the green hat then do some yellow and black hat thinking on it.

Blue Hat

• Should be used in starting and ending sessions.

• Setting the thinking tasks: why are we here?

• And what do we want to achieve?

• Focus and control of the process.

• Decide the sequence of other hats.

Strategies and Programs

• Blue, White, Green - Initial Ideas

• Blue, White, Green, Yellow, Black, Red - Choosing between alternatives

• Blue, White, Black, Green - Identification of solutions

• Blue, Black, Green, White - Fast feedback

• Blue, Yellow, Black, White - Strategic planning

• Blue, White, Yellow, Black, Green, Red - Press improvement

• Blue, White, Green, Red, Yellow, Black - Problem-solving

• Blue, Red, White, Yellow, Black, Green - Performance assessment

Bionics

• Bionics is the application of methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of modern technology.

• The bionic method attempts to derive direct approaches to solutions from analogous cases in the animal or vegetable kingdom.

• For example, many ideas for aircraft development are taken from insects and birds.

Six-Step Bio-Inspiration Strategy

• Exploring nature.

• Attraction of attention.

• Identification of inspiring natural solutions.

• Exploration of the identified natural solutions.

• Reformulation of the identified natural solution.

• Find design problems where the solutions can be used.

Exercises

Min Specs

1. Want to develop an even more effective set of creative rules?
   Why not have a group create its own framework and identify only what they need to move forward?

2. With Min Specs, first have a group brainstorm all the do’s and don’ts of approaching and completing a current challenge, project, or initiative.

3. Next, ask your team to reduce the list to the bare minimum you need in order to achieve your goal.

4. The result is a list of minimum specs you can use as a framework for moving forward swiftly, effectively, and in a way the group has all agreed on.

5. Applying this can remove roadblocks, push a team forward, and help inform creative projects – all with a self-directed list you can amend and update in the future.