a 2-days program on Creativity & Thinking

1. Creativity @ the Workplace
THINKING

2. Thinking is not intelligence.
Thinking unintelligently = ends in outcome
Intelligence – Thinking = useless

3. Thinking is not a function of
education.
Educated = not necessarily good
thinkers

4. Thinking = not sum of info
Knowledge hoarding

5. Thinking is more than LOGIC
Look, explore, choose, design,
evaluate, hunches

6. Thinking
Automated / autopilot

7. The human tendency is
to consciously think
only by exception
~Stephen Reid~

8. Our brain
• Conserve energy  patterns of thought and
behaviour

9. Our brain
• Conserve energy  danger

10. When learning something new, it is an
extensive from a previous knowledge or a
completely new knowledge?
Suspending knowledge is worthwhile.

11. Types of Thinking
• Compound thinking
– Associational
– Relational
• Habit thinking
– Overlearnt
– Habit + Associational / Relational = rigid
– Obscure conscious attention, blinding (new) info

12. Types of Thinking
• Figural = images, figures, people, places,
things, memory, imagination
• Semantic = verbal info, spoken / written,
rhythmic, frequency, syntax, rules, cultural
• Symbolic = signs, characters, letters, tokens,
musical notation

13. Types of Thinking
• Positional thinking
– Time --- past / present / future
– Physiological influence
– Availability

14. Thinking
Left
Right
rational
abstract
logical
creative
critical
imaginative
analytical
intuitive

15. Fundamentals in Thinking
Understanding
Manipulating
Generating
• Recall
• Summarize
• Symbolize
• Categorize
• Role-taking
• Analyze
• Apply
• Induce
• Deduce
• Solve
• Brainstorm
• Synthesize
• Predict
• Evaluate
• Question

16. Logical & Creative Thinking
• Dependent on each other
• Past experiences
• Increase opportunities

17. Creative Thinking
Analytical
•
•
•
•
•
Logic
Unique
Few answers
Convergent
Vertical
•
•
•
•
Creative
Imagination
Many possible answers /
ideas
Divergent
Lateral

18. Creative Thinking
Analytical
Creative

19. Design
Analytical
Constructive
Left / Right
Brain
Linear
Thinking
Converge /
Diverge
Lateral
Parallel
Critical
Logical

20. Thinking Processes
perceiving
imagining
recalling
Judging
conceiving
comparing
reasoning
analyzing

21. Perception determines what we
know; judgment decides what we
know about what we know.
Philip Goldberg

22. We are beginning to realize that
most of the trouble with our
thinking results from our inability to
do anything about this first stage
Edward de Bono

23. Thinking Stages
Judgement
Perception

24. Jung’s Psychological Functions
sensation
feeling
thinking
intuition

25. Are you intuitive?

26. Bloom’s Taxonomy

27. Divergent vs Convergent
Basic Thinking Patterns

28. Types of Patterns
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sequences
Cycles
Processes
Similarities
Probabilities
Maps

29. “the purpose of perception is to
allow patterns to form and then to
use them… the purpose of thinking
is to find familiar pattern and so
remove the need to think any more”
~ Edward de Bono ~

30. Capturing new ideas, engaging in
challenging tasks, broadening
knowledge, interacting with
stimulating people and places
~ enhance brain’s ability to innovate
Robert Epstein, PhD
Director Emeritus of Cambridge Center for Behavioral
Studies, 2008

31. Seventy-four city employees in
Orange County, California, participated in
creativity training consisting of exercises that
focused on these four proficiencies. Eight
months after the training, the employees
increased their rate of new idea generation by
55%, brought in more than $600,000 in new
revenue, and saved about $3.5 million through
innovative cost reductions.

32. RECOGNIZE THAT EVERYONE HAS
THE ABILITY TO BE CREATIVE

33. CHANGE YOUR CURRENT PATTERNS
OF THINKING

34. The ‘Whole Brain’ Thinking
More
concrete
Convergent
Thinker
Pragmatic
CORTEX / THINKING SELF
More
abstract
Conceptual
Analytical
Synthesizing
Fact based
Quantitative
Visual
Sequential
Emotional
Humanistic
Detailed
Expressive
Planned
Divergent
Thinker
Metaphoric
Organised
Realistic /
Common
Sense
Logical
Musical
Conserve
Feelings
LIMBIC / FEELING SELF
Idealistic
Intuitive
Expressing
Feelings
Instinctual / Spiritual