A thread for systematically compiling all known effective creativity methods and strategies.

Below, I've included 16 methods that I found posted at http://innovationworks.hypermart.net/m_overview.htm .  

Focused
(Rules for maximizing your creativity)
1. Goal-Storming motivates new ideas by having you brainstorm a different set of ideas for each goal that you want to achieve in the process of meeting your challenge.

Reversals
2. Twisting Goals induces new ideas by having you list actions to achieve the opposite of a goal and then reverse these actions.

Recombinations
3. Deconstruction builds ideas by suggesting alternate components for major variables of your challenge or solution.

Catalysts
4. Single Stimulus triggers new ideas by using a randomly selected concept that is richly associative or highly suggestive.
5. Multiple Stimuli sparks new ideas by having you integrate a set of two to four concepts. These randomly selected concepts are visually interconnected to imply an interrelationship.
6. Joined Stimuli provokes new ideas by having you join together two randomly selected concepts in a unique way and then apply the resulting thoughts to your challenge.

Modifications
7. Idea Fusion kindles new ideas by joining together elements of two existing, but not necessarily related ideas.
8. Dimension Change stimulates new ideas by taking an existing idea and guiding you to change a randomly selected dimension or variable.

Analogies
(How to form an analogy)
9. Function Transplant seeds new ideas by helping you form an analogy between your challenge and a randomly selected machine or device.
10. Activity Borrowing stirs up new ideas by helping you form an analogy between your challenge and a randomly selected activity, behavior or action.
11. Comparison of systems sparks new ideas by helping you form an analogy between your challenge and a randomly selected system, cyclic process, evolutionary process or transformational process.
12. Scientific Adaptation plants new ideas by helping you form an analogy between your challenge and a randomly selected scientific rule, principle or fact.

Perspectives
13. Alternate Views triggers new ideas by having you view your challenge from a randomly selected perspective drawn from one of three categories (Life Perspectives, Occupational Views or Scholarly Views).
14. Person You Know inspires new ideas by having you look at your challenge from the perspective of someone you know.
15. Hybrid Creatures hatches new ideas by having you see your challenge from the perspective of a randomly constructed hypothetical creature or being.

Visualization
16. Guided Visualization stimulates new ideas by having you visualize your role in a story in which you journey to an idea sanctuary and then converse with an expert or participate in an idea stimulating experience. You get a new story with each use.

Creativity is increased by acknowledging that it exists and by nurturing it. Create a sensory stimulating environment, increase awareness of that environment and provide sufficient quiet time to allow that sensory stimulation to be translated into external reality ... a poem, a bridge, a meal, a song, a quilt, a business report, a game, a dance, a garden.
Flood yourself with information in your chosen area of creativity then deliberately expose yourself to information outside your area. Respect and care for your creativity as you would a child. Attend to your needs, listen to your creative inner voice, spend time with yourself. Manage stress in your life as much as possible.
Practice meditation or some kind of peaceful, relaxing activity such as handwork or quiet exercise. Avoid becoming too entrenched in your routines.
Don't allow your beliefs to distort your perceptions. A useful technique is to deliberately and consciously attempt to integrate opposites at every opportunity within your own mind. Develop the attitude that your creative work is important even if others do not share your belief; allow such judgmental attitudes to be their problem, not yours. Practice using affirmations and reframing (seeing things from another angle or in another context) to de-program your self critical habits.
Creativity is not a gift of some sort, it is a state of being ("un etat d'ame", as they say in French). Learning a creativity- increasing technique of some sort will give you some tools and help you, but will not automatically change your point of view about yourself and your creativity; your belief and value systems about creativity and creativity myths must change as well.

Woah! A bunch of methods I found at http://members.ozemail.com.au/~caveman/Cre...ques/index.html .  Go to this url and click on the hyperlinks for the methods listed below.

Random Input
Problem Reversal
Ask Questions
Applied Imagination - Question Summary
Lateral Thinking
Six Thinking Hats
The Discontinuity Principle
Checklists
Brainstorming
Forced Relationships/Analogy
Attribute Listing
Morphological Analysis
Imitation
Mindmapping
Storyboarding
Synectics
Metaphorical thinking
Lotus Blossum Technique
In the realm of the senses
Use of drawing (from Robert McKim's Experiences in Visual Thinking
IdeaToons
NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Techniques
Assumption Smashing
DO IT! method of Roger Olsen
LARC Method
Unconscious Problem Solving
Simplex
The TRIZ method
Fuzzy Thinking
Breakthrough Thinking

Hey Shawn,
You are amazing...........
Is there something that you don't know?lol,lol
Gooooood work,
Take care,
Stella

Shawn IS amazing, and he has a ton of knowledge! I admire and respect that quality in him!

I tell you, I learn SOOOOO much at this site, I love it here!

Love, Dara

Ah yes it's good to know that there r other intelligent people out there.

ROCK ON SHAWN!!

Some techniques I employ:

Place yourself in an impossible situation (try to solve an up 'til now impossible problem).  The mind will scramble around and find a solution.  Paraphrasing Joseph Chilton Pearce.

Allow yourself the luxury of making mistakes.  When you stop making them is the indication that you have succeeded.

Perceive before you judge.

Like your observations better than others.  Only use criticism to learn not engage in a battle.

Sit in the middle of polar opposites and hold the tension, do not be attracted to any pole.  Wait for the third thing to come.  This is the transcendant function.  I call this fire sitting for obvious reasons.  Paraphrasing Carl Jung.

Create a thought experiment to represent the problem at hand.  Freely use your imagination.  This is the gedanken (thought experiment) used so successfully by Einstein.

Develop without fear internal characters that you dialog with.  Many great men in history did.
Phillipus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim,-Paracelsus- the father of modern medicine and modern pharmocology used little people in a bottle to dialog with. (sixteenth century)
Socrates had a genius that whispered in his ear.
Jung had a three foot dwarf with wings that was his advisor, his name was Philomont.

Intend to have a dream about the problem.  Apply the resultant metaphoric symbols to the problem.
This is the cornerstone of major scientific discovery.  It is the product of the right brain cooperating with the left brain.
Aesclepius a sixth century BCE Greek and the father of Western medicine would tell people that came to him to dream of the snake and come back, he would then prescribe for them.  His disciple/priest, Hippocates, that ran one of the three hundred healing temples dedicated to him is famous for the Hippocratic oath taken by physicians.  The symbol for medicine is the entwined serpents-the caduseus-a symbol seen in visionary dreams.

And last and as important as any of the above sweep the legs out from the ego.  Frequently admit that you don't know anything, this keeps the ego at bay and allows the entrance of the genius within (Socrates) to emerge.  I call this the Niels Bohr (the leader of the quantum elctrodynamics movement) strategy.  He was almost incomprehensible when lecturing, he was so uncertain.  This is the true 'uncertainty principle' applied to the ego.

Thank you, pariah, for the inspiring line.  

Thank you, too, synchronox, for elaborating on your methods. I'll have to think about them more before commenting on them.  On a sidenote, it's interesting that Einstein said his thoughts were similar to a play with symbols, which were mostly visual, but also 'muscular'!  Interesting indeed, wouldn't you say?

Interesting in light of a recent comment I heard from a neuroscientist that all abstract thoughts are the product of neurons not connected to motor-neurons!
 

Thanks for the observation Shawn.

Today, an experiment to set up an OBE using instructions beforehand to go to the foot of the bed and look at myself as I slept using a new concept I had come up with in the morning as a result of doing a gedanken experiment.  
I took an afternoon nap.  I was awakened by my dog wanting attention and telling me there were strangers in the driveway.  He then rushed out to bark.  I had to deal with them.  
No OBE, but a fragment of a dream I had already partially decoded in my sleep (frequent happening) that gave me a new view of myself leading to a new view of androgeny and how to look at the world in a binocular way creating a 3D image of the world using the left and right brain view symultaneously.  Normally, each hemisphere is slightly out of sync with the other-one leads the other follows and supports.  This dominant/subordinant relationship leads to no simultaneous views only one supporting the other's view of the world.  I have a trerrific experiment that I would like to do to support this, but alas, no laboratory of this type available to me.  The experiment would show how personality shifts through the lens of the ego and how the psyche is distorted in certain people causing many emotional problems as a result.  

I'll post this now so I don't lose it, some intermittant thing with the computer

Second part of the post:
Now to Your observation.  You said:
"On a sidenote, it's interesting that Einstein said his thoughts were similar to a play with symbols, which were mostly visual, but also 'muscular'!  Interesting indeed, wouldn't you say?

!

My guess, he was using the right brain to retrieve information which employes symbols instead of words using the images of the body as image carriers.  This would coincide with riding elevators in space, being on oncoming trains, etc. in his boylike gedanken experiments.

There are also techniques, that various people use that relate to which function is the individual's main one.
For instance, one woman does not dream, she dances her dreams, sits down and then interprets each body movement as a part of the dream: as I did this turn, it meant this...... and so on.
Another told me she did not dream, I asked what else she did, she responded and told me she painted.  I interpreted her ainting as if they were dreams, all her symbols resided there.
and:
"Interesting in light of a recent comment I heard from a neuroscientist that all abstract thoughts are the product of neurons not connected to motor-neurons"

Two guesses here.  First, the neo-cortex is not connected to motor-neirons except through certain gates.  As in the Gnostic Center in the left templar region.  The old smell, lizard brain is the main control center for motor neurons.  (I like the old designations better than the new ones).  So, first abstract thinking, and then to motor control to write it down or speak it.
The second is a more remote possibility, as in dreaming, there is a possibility that the physical motor signals are shut off to allow the exclusive thought process to occur.  I know when you sleep this occurs, I nave no evidence of its possibility while engaged in other functional activity.

hello synchronox,

about Einstein's "muscular" comment, one possibility I thought corresponds to motor-like commands being used that do not result in any motor movements, but rather are involved with the 'manipulation' of symbols and thought content.  My own experience is that conscious muscular coordination is akin to the volitional coordination of symbols and thought content, which are often visual/geometric in nature, but more often than not, the representation (of thought content and symbols) is not bound to any particular sensory modality, as though one is conscious solely of the 'meanings' of the symbols without there being any corresponding sensory representation, and that the manipulation (or 'play') of these symbols is akin to volitional muscular coordination, which includes the properties of intentionality and exertion.

For instance, close your eyes and move your body around. Become very conscious of your bodily movements thru space.  Now, shift gears and sit down and think about something, preferably mathematical.  And become very conscious of the way you manipulate and control your mental symbols and thought content.  Isn't this experience of manipulating symbols and thought content very similar to moving and controlling your body in the dark, both being characterized as of a 'muscular' nature?

Just a thought.

take care,
Shawn

Yes,  the mind is a biodynamic computer that can be trained in a variety of configurations, I believe.  
In fact, when someone is psychically traumatized, I observe an 'immune system response' of the brain to protect the original personality of that child causing havoc to the child's personality that can only be reversed by seeing the distortion, (that is one of the things I do everyday).  
Some time ago I came across a comment by Steven Hawking.  He said that he knew he was about to spend the rest of his life in a wheel chair and prepared for that eventuality by developing a new way of thinking.  I never followed it up.  Are you familiar with this?

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with Stephen Hawking's new way of thinking, but am now curious and will see if I can dig up anything  :)

Shawn,
I just re-read your reply in #10 above.  I realize that I did not pay it the justice it deserved.  I am not quite sure what this means or demands, I take back my non specific reply to it and have to now study the area around my belly button for an answer.
Or break down and do it.
John

Hi everybody, i have just joined the list, interested in the creativity methods, especially for new product development.

I tried Shawn's link, but the page isn't there, am i late?

"http://innovationworks.hypermart.net/m_overview.htm[/url] . "

Shawn, do you know the new destination?

thanks a lot,

 

Can I quote this in my Theatre of the Mind podcast? The link to the site you have as resource is not active.

Shawn:

I am not sure if I understand this right above.

Example here given with Dirac?


Paul Dirac:

http://www.aias.us/Pub/Other%20Papers/Paul...metry%20(2).pdf

Picture is link

So today I want to move it up a notch being well aware fo the disciplines involved, now brought together?

See:

Expanding Consciousness