The document outlines an agenda for a creativity workshop with the following key points: 1. The workshop will be split into two sections - the first from 1:30-3:00 PM will focus on concepts and discovery. The second from 3:15-4:30 PM will summarize the discussions. 2. Participants are asked to think of 3 or more creative or innovative ideas in preparation for discussion, which can be from the past. 3. The abstract describes an approach to improving creativity using matrix algebra to represent ideas as matrices of features and attributes, and defines operators to generate, evaluate, and improve ideas based on their novelty and usefulness. The goal is to stimulate and operationalize the creative process.

1. Creativity Workshop Agenda
1:30 – 2:00 PM Concepts
2:00 – 3:00 Workshop - Discovery
3:00 – 3:15 Break
3:15 – 4:30 Workshop – Summary
Request of Participants
Participants are kindly requested to think of 3 or more ideas they consider
creative or innovative. The ideas do not necessarily have to be something
new or something they have created or developed. Ideas from the past are
perfectly acceptable.
Be prepared for discussion.
Abstract of Workshop
Improving Creativity Using Matrix Algebra
Creativity begins with ideas. Scholars have addressed the conditions, factors, and processes
that stimulate creativity. We present an approach for stimulating individual creativity. We
introduce a matrix-representation schema for ideas, as well as, a set of operators to explore,
evaluate, and improve ideas. We consider ideas as specifications of artifacts that can be
conceived and developed. Artifacts can be physical, intangible, or a mix of both. We define
an idea as a matrix construct of features and attributes. Consistent with scholars’ definition
of creativity as the ability to create artifacts that are simultaneously novel and useful, we
propose a novelty matrix, a usefulness matrix, and a way to integrate the two into a single
creativity matrix. We also define a set of creativity operators that use our matrix-expressed
ideas as operands to generate, evaluate, rank, and improve ideas. The idea matrix and the
set of creativity operators are intended to stimulate and operationalize creativity during an
artifact’s development process. We illustrate our approach by considering real-world
artifacts.
Keywords: Creativity, ideation, idea generation, idea evaluation, creativity
improvement
Learning Outcomes
 Definitions of creativity and innovation
 Difference between the two
 How to represent a creative idea
 How to evaluate an idea for its creative intensity
 How to improve the creativity of an idea