The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "Creative Thinking".

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Creative Thinking
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
Creative Thinking
THINKING SKILLS

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Creative Thinking
Thinking Skills
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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INTRODUCTION
Much of the world we have constructed today, particularly
in Western industrialized countries, is the result of years of
scientific rational thinking. The whole basis of why people
work is founded on a view of man as a rational-economic
creature. Yet, despite the wonders of our modern world,
people are still beset by problems in their personal and
working lives for which rational thinking has no answer. This
is why we need imagination and creativity as much as we
need counting and measuring.

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VERTICAL THINKING
When we think vertically, we limit ourselves to what we
already know, what's been done before and the old ways of
thinking. We can build upwards as a result but our progress
is more of the same, or vertical evolution.
However, when a problem has been bugging us and we've
tried every possible solution, it may be time to think
differently. When we're on the wrong ladder, it's no good
going higher; we need to get on a different ladder. When
we're digging a hole in the wrong place, it's no good digging
it deeper; we need to dig a hole in another place.
The alternative to vertical thinking is lateral, or horizontal,
thinking. It is also outrageous thinking, thinking the
unthinkable. One definition of creative thinking is that when
you add outrageous thinking to the present, you create the
future.

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PRIMA!
"Prima", the German word for "excellent!" is a mnemonic
for the five steps in a simple creative thinking model.
P - Preparation Define the problem, goal or challenge. Be as
precise as you can be.
R - Rumination Chew over the facts in your mind using the
features of the imaginative right brain as well as the logical
left brain. This could mean daydreaming about the problem
as well as listing the attributes of the problem.
I - Illumination Let ideas come bubbling up. A relaxation
session or brainstorming session are both good ways to
generate ideas.
M - Matching Match ideas to see if they fit the problem.
Decide which one is the best match bearing in mind your
aims and goals.
A - Application Take steps to apply the solutions.

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HOW TO BE MORE CREATIVE
In our Western education systems, there is a strong bias
towards left-brain thinking. We tend to reward ideas that fit
pre-conceived patterns, systems that adhere to the past and
solutions that can be proved. Creative thinking re-dresses
the balance.
Here are seven ways to be more creative:
1. be more curious about your world
2. be comfortable with paradox and contradiction rather
than wanting everything to be ordered and orderly
3. play around with ideas and see what happens
4. make new connections between objects and ideas that
don't have connections
5. broaden your interests so that your mind is more open to
possibilities
6. break your habits once in a while so that you realise that
there are other ways to do things
7. up your fun and laughter rating.

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THE CURIOSITY OF A CHILD
When we think like an old person, we take so much for
granted: when we think as we did when we were children,
we become more curious, more questioning and more filled
with wonder.
1. Why are leaves green?
2. Who is Father Christmas?
3. What makes us yawn?
4. Where do people come from?
5. Why do we have to go to sleep?
6. What's at the end of a rainbow?
7. What happens when we die?
8. What makes us laugh?
9. Why do people fight?
10. What makes the light go on?
11. Where do animals go when they die?
12. Why do we have to work?

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CREATIVE KIDS
The reason why children are more creative than adults is
that their natural way of thinking hasn't become
conditioned into ways they "ought" to think.
If you want to return to the natural creativity you had when
you were a child, do the following...
1. allow yourself just to wonder like a child
2. be completely present here and now
3. allow yourself to become detached from what you
thought was "real"
4. don't look outside yourself for answers; believe all the
answers are inside yourself just waiting to be discovered
5. don't live for others' views and opinions
6. kick away intellectual mindsets of the ways things ought
to be.

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CURIOSITY
The search for new answers to old problems starts with
being curious about the problem and looking at it with fresh
eyes. Sigmund Freud said that such curiosity came more
naturally to children than adults.
Other great inventors have also recognised the importance
to creative thinking of being curious about the world:
"I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I
did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of
mountains along with the imprint of coral and plant and
seaweed found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer
time than that which causes it and why immediately on its
creation the lightning becomes visible to the eye while
circles of water form around the spot which has been struck
by a storm and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These
questions and other strange phenomena engaged my
thought throughout my life." (Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-
1519)

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PARADOX
It is a peculiarly Western trait to want to tie everything up in
neat bundles and put them away. We prefer solutions to
problems, answers to questions and things that fit into our
existing patterns rather than things that don't neatly fit.
Creative thinking forces us to see things as they are and
accept them, illogical, strange and nonsensical though they
may be. Looking for the unusual and the paradoxical
enhances this kind of thinking.
Everyday paradoxes:
1. The exit is always an entrance.
2. On the top of the summit, you're at the edge of an
abyss.
3. Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard.
4. In every new birth, there is a new death.
5. Change is the only constant thing in life.
6. More haste, less speed.

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PLAYING WITH IDEAS
The route to creativity is to see things in ways that nobody
has seen before.
1. Albert Einstein, the father of modern science, imagined
how his theory of relativity could work by lying on a
grassy hillside and picturing himself riding on a sunbeam
into the universe
2. Steven Spielberg, director of the science fiction film
"Close Encounters of a Third Kind", imagined the
spaceship he used in the film by standing upside down
on his car bonnet and looking at the night lights of Los
Angeles.
"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be
solved by the level of thinking that created them." (Albert
Einstein)

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KEATON'S DOOR
The great comedian, Buster Keaton, was one of the most
original and inspired creative thinkers of the era of silent
movies.
He was once asked onto the set of a film to help a director
who had put a character into a predicament from which
there appeared no logical escape. The character had to get
out of a room through one of two doors. One door led into
an adjoining room where there was a group of people
whom he did not want to meet. The other door led to the
outside where the plot had inconsiderately placed a vicious
barking dog.
Without even stopping to think, Keaton provided a solution.
All the character had to do was to take the door off its
hinges, open it a bit to let the dog into the room and then
escape the snatches of the dog's teeth by swivelling the
door around full circle, leaving the dog on the inside and
himself on the outside.

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NEW CONNECTIONS
An excellent way to increase your creative repertoire is to
take two separate everyday objects, say a pen and a pair of
glasses, and make new useful connections with them.
This is what one inventor did when he was puzzling one lazy
morning in bed about how to invent the perfect egg-cup
that would adjust to fit all shapes and sizes of egg. Suddenly
a bed-spring collapsed with a twanging sound, and the
perfect egg-cup, a coiled metal spring to support any kind of
egg, was invented.
Try this trick for yourself. Put together two unconnected
objects in the room right now - such as a stapler and a pair
of scissors - and find a use for them.

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BROADER INTERESTS
Most of us neglect our natural creativity because we stick to
familiar patterns of work and thinking. To open up our
thinking we should broaden our interests.
1. read poetry instead of business reports
2. attend church if you think you are an agnostic
3. assess the merits of a different religion from your own
4. spend a day with a female manager if you aren't sure
about the value of equal opportunities
5. if you think all accountants are dry as dust, go to an
accountancy convention and prove yourself wrong
6. invite the person you most dislike for a drink after work
7. have a chat with the person who falls out with you most
at work and just sit and listen to their ideas for an hour
8. eat something you have always disliked.
9. take a trip to a part of town you never had any interest
in before.

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ILLOGICAL THINKING
One of the least logical thinking systems in philosophy is the
Oriental school of Zen Buddhism. Zen attempts to go
beyond the confines of logic to enlightenment.
Zen means "meditation". It takes problems and presents
them in ways that make you think. One "koan", or problem,
with no intellectual solution, asks: "what is the sound of one
hand clapping?" and another: "when a finger points at the
moon, the imbecile looks at the finger.“
A Zen tale tells of a Zen master who came across a disciple
walking on water. "What are you doing?" he cried. "Crossing
the river," replied the disciple. "Come with me," ordered the
master and together they walked a great distance until they
found a ferryman. As they climbed onto the boat, the
master said pointedly: "This is the way to cross a river."

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UP YOUR FUN RATING
American management guru, Tom Peters, says that the
creativity of a workplace can be measured by a
"laughometer".
Humour is one of the greatest creative devices: it jolts us
out of our normal patterns, it puts together ideas that
shouldn't go together and it is available to everyone.
Whether your fun is to have managers taking on the roles of
the team, days when people get to do anything they like or
crazy days when everyone dresses up, increase your fun
rating.
"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a
necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life
through the wrong end of a telescope and that enables you
to laugh at life's realities." (Geisel Theodor Seuss )

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WORKPLACE CURIOSITY
These are management writer Tom Peters' tips on how to
increase curiosity at work:
1. hire curious people
2. encourage wacky ideas
3. don't shut out the child from the boardroom
4. be irreverent about everything, big and small
5. have fun
6. break habits
7. give a prize each year for the craziest new idea
8. encourage people to learn, even in off-beat subjects like
aromatherapy and cybernetics
9. get people to broaden not deepen: have the accountant
swap jobs with the sales manager for a month
10. read literature and novels
11. make everyone take a break.

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THE SPARK OF CREATIVITY
There are many reasons why we hesitate to unleash our
creativity at work:
1. organisations distrust employees who think differently,
seeing such behaviour as subversive and dangerous
2. the organisation discourages lateral thinking and
rewards conformist thinking
3. the organisation regards creative thinking as childish,
immature, silly and nonsensical
4. the organisation is frightened of ideas which they don't
understand and control
5. the organisation fears the change in power.
Yet most, if not all, successful organisations started at one
time with a spark of creativity and may in a climate of
intense competition, need to re-ignite that spark again in
order to survive.

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FLUENT AND FLEXIBLE
Creative ideas that develop from existing objects and
concepts can be fluent or flexible.
1. fluent ideas are those ideas which flow from existing
uses. In the case of thinking of alternative uses for a pile
of redundant bricks, fluent ideas could include: building
a wall; building a patio; building a shop; building a
fireplace.
2. flexible ideas are those ideas which don't flow from
existing uses but break new ground. In the case of what
to do with a pile of redundant bricks, flexible ideas
could include: - storing water on them; warming
bedclothes on them on cold nights; raw material for
sculpting; playground blocks for children; inventing a
new sports game, the brick putt.

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ATTRIBUTE LISTING
One way to develop new ideas from an existing product or
idea is to look at the attributes, or component parts, of the
existing product or idea.
For example, the main attributes of a brick are: its weight;
colour, strength, familiarity, hardness, roughness. If we take
one attribute, its weight, we can then develop more ideas
for its use based on ideas about the brick's weight. These
could include using the brick as: a paperweight; a doorstop;
an anchor; a tent flap anchor; a projectile in a riot; an iron; a
press for crushing grapes and so on.
Similar ideas can be developed for every other attribute
such as the colour (a background for a mural) and roughness
(a new form of sanding surfaces).
Attribute listing is a left-brain technique (listing) combined
with a right-brain technique (new inventions).

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CRAZY PEOPLE
Being creative requires a willingness to see things in crazy
ways.
Abraham Maslow described creative people as "being
attracted to the unknown, the mysterious, the puzzling.
They are more spontaneous, less controlled, expressive and
don't fear ridicule."
Frank Barron saw creative people as combining opposite
extremes: "they are more primitive and cultured, more
destructive and constructive, crazier and saner, than the
average.“
One organisation in Germany has set out to employ a court
jester who can question the status quo, poke fun at how
things have been done and be irreverent about what is
currently held sacred.

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WACKY IDEAS
The science magazine "Focus" trawled through patent
records to find the wackiest ideas that failed to make it as
useful products. They included:
the portable office tie which allowed the user to slide
calculator, pen and notebook into slots at the back
1. the sticky bomb, a World War Two device that stuck to
its target before exploding
2. a car-powered washing machine
3. a greenhouse helmet which fitted over the head and
released oxygen from tiny plants for the person to
breathe
4. an atomic-powered flying saucer patented by British
Rail in 1990
5. gas-filled lounge furniture that floats to the ceiling when
you want more space
6. the toe tube which funnels your breath so that it warms
up your bed on a cold night.

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THINKING OUTSIDE THE LIMITS
Thinking outside our limits is also known as lateral thinking,
out-of-the-box thinking and creative thinking. It means
looking at familiar things in unfamiliar ways.
You can practise this kind of thinking with these pointers:
1. let go of old ways of seeing, thinking and doing
2. question what you see, remembering that we distort
what we see with our perceptions
3. have a clear understanding of what outcome you desire
but divorce the outcome from the method
4. be aware that thinking in familiar patterns can limit your
options of what is possible
5. free yourself from judging your own ideas
6. find a stream of creative ideas by thinking more like a
child
7. take risks and dare to do things differently
8. be absolutely sure that you will succeed.

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THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn