UNIT II METHODS AND TECHNIQUES IN CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION: Creative thinking empowers people by adding strength to their natural

abilities which improves teamwork, productivity and where appropriate profits. An important step of the creativity process is applying creative thinking techniques to help nudge your thinking. There are literally hundreds of ingenious creative thinking techniques for approaching problems in unconventional ways. Some of the techniques for generating ideas are: LATERAL THINKING: Lateral thinking is solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. Lateral thinking, is the ability to think creatively as it is sometimes referred to in business, to use your inspiration and imagination to solve problems by looking at them from unexpected perspectives. Lateral thinking involves discarding the obvious, leaving behind traditional modes of thought, and throwing away preconceptions. The purpose of lateral thinking is to overcome the limitations by providing a means for restructuring, for escaping from cliche patterns, for putting information together in new ways to give new ideas. BASIC NATURE OF LATERAL THINKING:

Lateral thinking is concerned with changing patterns. In a self-maximizing system with a memory the arrangement of information must always be less than the best possible arrangement. The rearrangement of information into another pattern is insight restructuring. The purpose of the rearrangement is to find a better and more effective pattern. A particular way of looking at things may have developed gradually. An idea that was very useful at one time may no longer be so useful today and yet the current idea has developed from that old and outmoded idea. Lateral thinking is also a particular way of using information in order to bring about pattern restructuring.

USE OF LATERAL THINKING: Once one has acquired the lateral thinking attitude one does not need to be told on what occasions to use lateral thinking. Throughout this book lateral thinking is kept quite distinct from vertical thinking in order to avoid confusion. This is also done so that one can acquire some skill in lateral thinking without impairing ones

skill in vertical thinking. When one is thoroughly familiar with lateral thinking one no longer has to keep it separate. One no longer has to be conscious whether one is using lateral or vertical thinking. The two blend together so that at one moment vertical thinking is being used and the next moment lateral thinking is being used. Nevertheless there are certain occasions which call for the deliberate use of lateral thinking. Problem solving Even if one has no incentive to generate new ideas problems are thrust upon one. There is little choice but to try and solve them. A problem does not have to be presented in a formal manner nor is it a matter for pencil and paper working out. A problem is simply the difference between what one has and what one wants. It may be a matter of avoiding something, of getting something, of getting rid of something, of getting to know what one wants. There are three-types of problem: The first type of problem requires for its solution more information or better techniques for handling information. The second type of problem requires no new information but a rearrangement of information already available: an insight restructuring. The third type of problem is the problem of no problem. One is blocked by the adequacy of the present arrangement from moving to a much better one. There is no point at which one can focus one effort to reach the better arrangement because one is not even aware that there is a better arrangement The problem is to realize that there is a problem to realize that things can be improved and to define this realization as a problem. The first type of problem can be solved by vertical thinking. The second and third type of problem requires lateral thinking for their solution. Processing perceptual choice Logical thinking and mathematics are both second stage information processing techniques. They can only be used at the end of the first stage. In this first stage information is parcelled up by perceptual choice into the packages that are so efficiently handled by the second stage techniques. It is perceptual choice which determines what goes into each package. Perceptual choice is the natural patterning behaviour of mind. Instead of accepting the packages provided by perceptual choice and going ahead with logical or mathematical processing one might want to process the packages themselves. To do this one would have to use lateral thinking. Periodic reassessment Periodic reassessment means looking again at things which are taken for granted, things which seem beyond doubt Periodic reassessment means challenging all assumptions. It is not a matter of reassessing something because there is a need to reassess it; there may be no need at all. It is a matter of reassessing something simply because it is there and has not been assessed for a long time. It is a deliberate and quite unjustified attempt to look at things in a new way. Prevention of sharp divisions and polarizations

Perhaps the most necessary use of lateral thinking is when it is not used deliberately at all but acts as an attitude. As an attitude lateral thinking should prevent the emergence of those problems which are only created by those sharp divisions and polarizations which the mind imposes on what it studies. While acknowledging the usefulness of the patterns created by mind one uses lateral thinking to counter arrogance and rigidity. TECHNIQUES: Alternatives/Concept extraction: Concepts are general ideas or general ways of doing things. Every concept has to be put into action through a specific idea. Thinking of a variety of specific ways to implement a concept is one way to generate ideas. Then each specific idea can be mined for additional concepts. Extracting a new concept creates a whole new pathway for generating further specific ideas. Extract a broader concept to facilitate the creation of alternatives. Willingness to look for ideaseven when doing so doesnt seem necessaryis the very essence of creativity. Becoming adapted at working with concepts makes the search for ideas much easier. Focus: Focus, helps sharpen or change your perspective to improve your creative efforts. Focus is not commonly thought of as a tool, but it is. For example, you can learn to focus on areas that no one else has bothered to think about. Doing so may lead you to a breakthrough idea simply because you are the first person to pay any attention to this area. Just moving through a typical day, you can deliberately notice what is going on at any given moment and choose to focus on your surroundings or activities to look for new ideas. The ability to define a creative focus at will provides a big advantage in becoming a more innovative thinker. Challenge: Challenge, helps you break free from the limits of accepted ways of operating. Challenge is key to innovation because it is based on the assumption that there may be a different way to do something even if there is no apparent problem with the current way of doing it. Ways of doing things are only one topic for Challenge. You can also challenge objects, parts of situations, and the current assumptions and beliefs that are controlling our thinking. Challenge seems to mystify some users, while it becomes a powerful tool in the hands of others. When you use Challenge successfully, you can create major breakthroughs. Random entry: Random Entry uses a randomly chosen word, picture, sound, or other stimulus to open new lines of thinking. This tool plays into the power of the human mind to find connections between seemingly unrelated things. First, the person or group lists all the alternatives that they can think of without using the tool, Then they

select a random word or other random stimulus. Then they juxtapose the stimulus alongside the focus topic and generate ideas to connect the two. Random Entry is one of the easier tools to use with untrained groups, so long as the leader knows what he or she is doing. Provocation & Movement: Provocation & Movement, help us move from a provocative statement to useful ideas. Employees are often admonished to think outside the box with no instructions for how to do so. Provocation & Movement designate a formal process that enables you exit the box with easeand return with a compelling list of innovative ideas to consider. First participants learn the definition of a Provocation, or PO. Then they prepare for the uncomfortable fact that Provocations are deliberately unreasonable ideas that would be immediately vetoed by those who do not understand the process. Trained Lateral Thinkers know that these ideas are only posed to change perception and offer a new starting point from which to move to more practical alternatives. They use Movement techniques to get from the Provocation to an idea that could work. Harvesting: Harvesting is applied toward the end of a thinking session in order to bank ideas that may prove to be valuable in the current situation or in the future. Harvesting both increases the number of ideas that are saved and provides a way to organize ideas by how developed they are at present. Harvesting helps you spot ideas that could be implemented right away as well as those that need more work. By Harvesting, you can avoid moving too quickly to choose among all of the ideas youve generated. Instead, take a longer look and make the most of the yield. Treatment of Ideas: Treatment of Ideas helps develop ideas and shape them to fit an organization or situation. Treatment is particularly useful for working with Beginning Ideas to make them more specific and practical. One Treatment method is called Shaping. Here you think of any constraints that might interfere with the execution of the idea. Then you shape the idea to fit within these constraints. Treatment of Ideas Example: The human resources department of a large organization was generating ideas on how to market their lateral thinking classes internally. One idea was to offer the services of those who had already been trained to generate innovative ideas for those who had not had the training. One of the constraints was that the trained lateral thinkers had their own jobs to do and were not readily available. Using Treatment, several ideas were generated for shaping the idea to address this constraint:

Publicize a set weekly time that the team would be available for a one-hour idea generation meeting.

Have focus areas submitted to the team online and then have team members contribute ideas individually when their schedules permitted.

The department chose to go online with their offer. Once the team produced several winning ideas for various departments, word began to spread about the power of Lateral Thinking. Eventually over 1,000 employees were trained and began to use the tools for themselves. GENERATION OF ALTERNATIVES: The most basic principle of lateral thinking is that any particular way of looking at things is only one from among many other possible ways. Lateral thinking is concerned with exploring these other ways by restructuring and rearranging the information that is available. In the natural search for alternatives one is looking for the best possible approach, in the lateral search for alternatives one is trying to produce as many alternatives as possible. One is not looking for the best approach but for as many different approaches as possible. Search for alternatives one stops when one comes to a promising approach. In the lateral search for alternatives one acknowledges the promising approach and may return to it later but one goes on generating other alternatives. CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS: Assumptions play a vital part in creative thinking. Challenging assumptions means things you take for granted. Many both conscious and unconscious assumptions restrict creative thinking. Managing assumptions is very important for your success. Cliches are stereotyped phrases. Basic ideas are themselves patterns that can be restructured and broken down. In problem solving, one always assumes certain boundaries. These limits are often self-imposed, so step outside the limits. In challenging assumptions one challenges the necessity of boundaries and limits and one challenges the validity of individual concepts. book about it. In practice the inclusion of lateral thinking under logical thinking only blurs the distinction and tends to make it unusable but not unnecessary. SUSPENDED JUDGEMENT: Judgment is suspended during the generative stage of thinking in order to be applied during the selective stage. The nature of the system is such that a wrong idea at some stage can lead to a right one later on. Judgment needs to be suspended in lateral thinking otherwise good ideas that are not fully formed can be destroyed along with bad ideas. In practice judgement may be applied at any of the following stages: Judgement as to whether an information area is relevant to the matter under consideration. This precedes the development of any ideas. Judgement as to the validity of an idea in one own internal thinking process. Dismissing such an idea instead of exploring it.

 Judgement as to its correctness before offering an idea to others. Judgement of an idea offered by someone else either in refusing to accept it or in actual condemnation of it. In this regard judgement, evaluation and criticism are regarded as similar processes. Suspension of judgement does not imply suspension of condemnation it implies suspension of judgement whether the outcome is favorable or otherwise. The suspension of judgement can have the following effects: An idea will survive longer and will breed further ideas. Other people will offer ideas which their own judgement would have rejected. Such ideas may be extremely useful to those receiving them. The ideas of others can be accepted for their stimulating effect instead of being rejected. Ideas which are judged to be wrong within the current frame of reference may survive long enough to show that the frame of reference needs altering. DOMINANT IDEAS AND CRUCIAL FACTORS: A dominant idea is the organizing theme in a way of looking at a situation. It is often present but undefined and one tries to define it in order to escape from it. A crucial factor is some element in the situation which must always be included no matter how one looks at the situation. DOMINANT IDEAS: The dominant idea resides not in the situation itself but in the way it is looked at. Some people seem much better at picking out the dominant idea. Some people seem much better at crystallizing the situation in a single sentence. This may be because they can separate the main idea from the detail or it may be because they tend to have a simpler view of things. In order to be able to pick out the dominant idea one must make a conscious effort to do so and one needs practice. Hierarchy of dominant ideas: As soon as one starts picking out dominant ideas one becomes aware that there are different degrees of comprehensiveness of dominant ideas. The dominant idea may include the whole subject or only one aspect of it. Thus from an article on crime one might pick out the following dominant ideas: Crime. Behaviour of people. Violence. Social structures and crime. The trend of crime.

What can be done. Clearly crime and the behaviour of people are much wider ideas than violence or what can be done but all of them are valid dominant ideas. There is a hierarchy which extends upwards from the more specific ideas to the more general. In picking out the dominant idea it is not a matter of searching for the most general and most comprehensive idea for this may be so very wide that it is impossible to move outside it at all. In picking out a dominant idea it is not a matter of having to justify to someone else that the idea is the dominant idea which covers the whole situation and which cannot therefore be challenged. It is a matter of picking out an idea which seems (to oneself) to dominate the issue. Crucial factor A crucial factor is some element of the situation which must always be included no matter how one looks at the situation. The crucial factor is a tethering point. Like a dominant idea a crucial factor can immobilize a situation and make it impossible to shift a point of view. Like a dominant idea a crucial factor may exert a powerful influence without ever being consciously recognized. Very often a crucial factor is an assumption atleast the crucial nature of that factor is an assumption. Once the factor is isolated one challenges the necessity for it. If the factor is found not to be crucial then the tethering effect of that factor disappears and there is more freedom in structuring the situation in a different way. There may be one crucial factor, several crucial factors or none at all. Different people may choose different crucial factors. As with finding the dominant idea what matters is that one identifies what seems to be a crucial factor in one own view of the problem. MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS: . Many problems challenge us with too many possible solutions, though yet uncovered, only some of which may be new and useful. This process drains the swamp, so to speak, by systematically arranging appropriate and promising aspects of the situation and combining them just as systematically in order to identify new and suitable combinations. The object is to break down the system, product, or process problem at hand into its essential parameters or dimensions and to place them in a multi-dimensional matrix. Then to find new ideas by searching the matrix for creative and useful combinations. Some combinations may already exist, others may not be possible or appropriate. The rest may represent prospective new ideas. Morphological Analysis Steps 1. Determine suitable problem characteristics. The individual problem solver or a facilitated group brainstorms to define problem characteristics, also referred to as parameters. 2. Make all the suggestions visible to everyone and group them in various ways until consensus is reached regarding the groupings. 3. Label the groups reduce them to manageable number. Rather than reaching for a recommended number, consider the capabilities of the group and the time

available. Consider also that there are computer applications and other tools that can assist the process. When working with the tangible aspects of something like a consumer product, for example, the labels gleaned from the groupings might include parameters such as product ingredients, color, textures, temperature, and flavor as well as package size, shape, function, and graphics. In the case of manufacturing issues, parameters might include material, function, process, construction, maintenance, and the like. 4. The next step is to fill a grid or grids with lists of parameters arranged along the axes. Now combinations can be identified within the grid. Depending on the number of items in play, great numbers of combinations may be available. 5. Eliminate those combinations that are impossible or undesirable to execute, put aside those that you do not want to eliminate but do not want to execute, and develop as many of the rest as possible. BRAINSTORMING: Brainstorming is a group or individual creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members. Brainstorming is a process for developing creative solutions to problems. There are four basic rules in brainstorming (Osborn, 1963) intended to reduce social inhibitions among team members, stimulate idea generation, and increase overall creativity:
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No criticism: Criticism of ideas are withheld during the brainstorming session as the purpose is on generating varied and unusual ideals and extending or adding to these ideas. Criticism is reserved for the evaluation stage of the process. This allows the members to feel comfortable with the idea of generating unusual ideas. Welcome unusual ideas: Unusual ideas are welcomed as it is normally easier to "tame down" than to "tame up" as new ways of thinking and looking at the world may provide better solutions. Quantity Wanted: The greater the number of ideas generated, the greater the chance of producing a radical and effective solution. Combine and improve ideas: Not only are a variety of ideals wanted, but also ways to combine ideas in order to make them better.

Bibliography: http://www.ideaconnection.com/thinking-methods/lateral-thinking-00012.html http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_00.htm http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/tutorials/whatisbrainstorming.html