Dave Jarman & Lorna Tutton

Dave & Lorna’s Creativity Challenge

“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to always

be right by having no ideas at all.”

Edward De Bono

In this session

• Creativity exercises

• Attitudes to creativityo Divergent and Convergent approacheso Principles of Creativity

• Creativity Challenge

• Tactics for generating more ideas

Creativity exercises

• Individual exerciseo 1 minute to identify as many different

ways of using the object as you cano Theory of Categories

• Group exerciseo 2 minutes to identify as many different

ways of using the object as you cano Theory of Variety

Different approaches

Convergent thinking

• Good for evaluating

ideas

• Rubbish for generating

ideas

Divergent thinking

• Good for generating

ideas

• Rubbish for evaluating

ideas

Principles of creativity

• Suspend judgemento Only converge after diverging! o Quantity not Quality

• Feed your brain something different – variety

• ‘As if’ – free your mind

• Involve other people but don’t be

intellectually precious

Idea-generation Challenge

• ’50 things challenge’

• In groups:o I want 50 ways in which the lives of

researchers at the university could be improved

o Quantity not quality!o What ways might other people suggest?

o Colleagues, supervisors, partners, Gandhi, Gandalf, Colonel Gaddafi?

Tactics for a more creative life…

• Do the things you don’t normally doo Different activities in…o …Different places with…o …Different people

• Take an alternative route

• Write your ideas down

• Share even the silly ideas with others

• Have more holidays (or at least days away)

• ‘As if’

• Put a different sock on first in the morning…

“Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created

them.”

Albert Einstein