The document discusses creativity and how it is more than just arts and invention, exploring concepts like divergent thinking, brainstorming, and Carl Rogers' view that creativity requires a visible product. It also analyzes why creativity tends to decline with age as we prioritize competencies for dealing with reality, and proposes approaches like brainstorming and embracing childlike thinking to help revive creativity.

1. Chapter 3:
where has all our creativity gone?
By: Aj Sounay Phothisane

2. What is creativity?
• Creativity is embedded in many fields of
human endeavor but limits to the field of arts
and invention.
• Looking towards to these visible environment
(arts and invention) our conception of
creativity to us is “marketable or functional
commodities” of someone else’s product
value when attempting to assess the degree
of creativity.

3. What is creativity?
• Our interest is application of creativity both
working environment and life
– Developing new products and services
– Find opportunities for economic and personal
growth
In managerial term “surmounting (surpass) barriers
to desired goals and objectives”

4. What is creativity?
• Carl Rogers (1954) states that “there must be
something observable, some product of
creation” in order for us to talk usefully of
creative process having taken place”

5. What is creativity?
• Conditions for constructive creativity: “Inner conditions” are
closely associated with our creative potential
– Openness to experience
• Permeability of boundaries in concepts, beliefs perceptions and hypothesis
• Tolerance for ambiguity where ambiguity exists
• Ability to receive much conflicting information without forcing closure upon
the situation
– An internal locus of evaluation
• A belief that the value of our creative products is established not by the praise
and criticism of others but by ourselves.
– The ability to toy with elements and concepts
• The ability to play with ideas, colors, shapes, relationships
• To shape wild hypothesis
• To express ridiculous
• Translate from one form to another
• To transform into improbable equivalents

6. Creativity Vs. Innovation
Innovation: the process of introducing new and
creative products
Characteristics of adaptors and innovators?
– Adaptors prefer to improve things by small
evolutionary modifications
– Innovators prefer to throw away the mould (the
original of a product) and do things in totally
new, revolutionary ways.

7. Continuous improvement is
innovation?

8. The down turn in creative thinking
• As young children, we produce uninhibited
drawings but technically and grammatically
incorrect descriptions of the world we find
ourselves in.
• In our adulthood, we develop of competencies to
deal with life problem.
– Our artistic endeavors become secondary
• Dealing with reality is paramount. We do
something needs creativity but others are less
likely to see them interestingly or creative and
chances to be creative diminish accordingly.

9. The down turn in creative thinking
• Two major explanations of this creative
downturn:
– Lost control of certain thinking operations that are
fundamental to creativity
• Childlike thinking operations do have a place in adult
problem solving
– We have creative imagination in childhood life, but not for
adulthood life
• Existence of various psychological blocks > hinders
(obstacles) our ability to get ideas
– The cause are innate (natural) and maturity of human

10. MindSpring theory
• Prince (1976) created his MindSpring theory to show
the relationship between our learning and creative
problem solving skills and to show why creativity
diminish by the time we reach maturity.
• Six thinking operations involved in learning and
problem solving:
– Wishing
– Retrieving
– Imaging
– Comparing
– Transforming
– Storing

11. Example: MindSpring theory
• We are sitting at the personal computer trying to
use a new piece of software when the machine
responds with an incomprehensible error message
or refuses to do what we want it to. What will you
do?
• I wish I had just saved all the work I have done in the
last hour.
• I wish that I could back-track from this impasse.
• I wish I knew how to get out of this mess.
• I wish I knew what I have done wrong, so I don’t do it
again.

12. Example: MindSpring theory
• Meaning that we make an attempt to determine
what really is our problem
“We start retrieving and past experiences of using
computers. We form mental images of these
situations replaying in our minds. We compare
these past experiences with the present situation
and transform or adapt them in line with our most
recent perceptions. Finally, all of this we store away
this new experiences for future reference

13. Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a group of people get together to produce
ideas, solve problems.
– A key characteristics and benefit is the much larger quantity or
ideas produced compared with individual problem solving or the
use of previous group problem solving techniques. Not all the
ideas produced will be brilliant, but there are usually many
useful ones.
• This productivity of brainstorming groups has several
factors
– The power of association of the human mind is well known
– The effect is a dramatic increase in the number of ideas
produced
• Alex Osborn (1957) refers to “social facilitation”

14. Creativity revived
A good start to revive creativity back:
– Welcome every ideas: no matter how wild it is, it has
some merit. If nothing else it will fire our or some
else’s imagination
– Hold back on criticizing an idea – Don’t be too quick
to criticize somebody’s idea. Make sure you
understand another person’s idea before you
evaluate.
– Remember that we always have some knowledge or
experience that can help us solve a given problem

15. Creativity revived (Cont.)
A good start to revive creativity back:
– Don’t be afraid to indulge (free yourself) in some
childlike thinking – as in wishing, imagination, mental
playfulness.
– Never forget that other people perceive problem
situations in ways different from you – treat this as
advantage, a way of helping you get different
viewpoints that help you establish which is the most
appropriate one to work with
– Always think of a mistake or failures as an opportunity
to learn, not as a thing we did wrong. If we just forget
about it, we could do it again.

16. The rules of brainstorming
• No criticism is allowed – evaluation of ideas
must be withheld until later
• Free-wheeling is encouraged – just let the
idea flow out, the wilder the idea, the better.
• Quantity is wanted – the greater the number
of ideas, the more likely is the chance of
having useful, interesting or appealing ones.
• Seek combination and improvement – try to
build on other people’s ideas