Saturday, October 13, 2018

Wikipedia Trail: Creativity to Edward de Bono

Since I am giving a talk on creativity at the end of this month (here's my presentation site), I thought I would start a Wikipedia trail at creativity and see what happens.

CREATIVITY. The article is HUGE, of course, and what interests me most are the theories of creativity. I have read something about convergent and divergent thinking, so I decided to go there next.

DIVERGENT THINKING. Here is the definition: "a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions." Rather than being associated with intelligence, it is more associated with a range of personlity traits: "Divergent thinking is found among people with personality traits such as nonconformity, curiosity, willingness to take risks, and persistence." (Whoa, sounds like growth mindset, doesn't it?) The article reports a study in which sleep deprivation negatively impacts divergent thinking.

From this article, I went to a related article:

LATERAL THINKING. This is an idea put forward by Edward de Bono. I really like how it is juxtaposed with critical thinking: "Critical thinking is primarily concerned with judging the true value of statements and seeking errors. Lateral thinking is more concerned with the "movement value" of statements and ideas. A person uses lateral thinking to move from one known idea to creating new ideas." I really do NOT like the term critical thinking... so now maybe I understand why: I am a lateral thinker, not so much a critical one. Or, rather, I am at my best when I practice lateral thinking; I can do critical thinking but, ugh, it's just so boring.

Since I did not know who Edward de Bono was, I looked him up for my last item:

EDWARD DE BONO. Oh my gosh: he is from Malta!!! And he is the six hats guy! I know about the six hats too. No wonder I like his lateral thinking idea; I am a big fan of the six hats! He's still alive, and he is 85 years old. I need to learn more about him and his work.

So... I am very glad indeed that I did this Wikipedia Trail. Although the downside is that I will probably end up with more books to read on my Kindle, ha ha.

Yep...... I just bought this book. And he has a lot of others that look fantastic! Whoo-hoo! Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step:


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