Creativity and Generating Research Ideas

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Creativity and Generating Research Ideas

• Strategies from the field---

Joyce E. Juntune, Ph.D. Department of
Educational Psychology Institute for Applied
Creativity http//creativity.tamu.edu
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Creativity Generating Ideas

• Creative thinking
• requires that we
• think in new directions.

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Breaking Mental Set
Thinking outside of boundaries - a deliberate act
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Creativity Generating Ideas

• Creative thinking gives you an edgea way to look
  at things differently.

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Ideas have a life span
Why new ways of thinking--
Grow? develop? serve a purpose? need to be buried
and go on to create new ideas
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Meet change with new ideas

• Invention of telegraph
• Pony Express? bought faster horses
• That failed? hired better riders
• That failed? went out of business

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Creativity Generating Ideas
Strategies
Information
Focus
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Focus (deBono)

• Area Focus
• separate where why
• spend time just thinking about

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Focus (deBono)
New ideas for Ideas around the subject of
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Focus (deBono)

• Area Focus
• Focus creative energies on opportunities as
  well as problems

Wrong ? fix! Working ? why?
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Focus (deBono)

• Area Focus
• Build a creative hit list.

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Movement Ladder
decrease drop-out rate
Why?
Why else?
Why else?
Focus improve achievement scores in low SES
schools
How?
tutors
How else?
How else?
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Random Entry (deBono)

• Used to generate unique ideas.
• Great for idea improvement

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Random Entry (deBono)

• Select a random object.
• Write the object word.
• List words that come to mind when thinking of the
  object .

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Random Entry (deBono)

• See where the random word leads your thoughts on
  the Focus.

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Random Entry (deBono)
Random Object
New Ideas

Focus
Trigger Words
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Creativity Generating Ideas

• Combination and collaboration leads to new ideas
  and insights.

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Combine unrelated ideas
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Zones of Acceptance
rejection
indifference
acceptance
  Sherif, M. (1961). Univ. of Oklahoma,
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Creativity Generating Ideas
Creative thinkers create order in disorder
disorder in order (Montouri, 1996)
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Creative strategies

• Force a shift in perspective
• See a different point of view
• Provide new input to improve output

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Creativity Generating Ideas
The future belongs to people who see
possibilities before they become obvious. Ted
Levitt