The Creative Thinker's Toolkit

What, exactly, is creativity? Take a closer look at what makes a creative person in this introductory lecture that explores ancient ideas about creativity (including the muses of the ancient Greeks); debunks common myths about the sources of creativity; and examines how play, passion, practice, and purpose can enhance your own creative thinking.

First, investigate the evolutionary history of creativity in human beings and the fascinating paradox of conformity and creativity—both essential to the survival and development of our species. Then, learn about how modern education approaches creativity in our youth, and several lateral thinking skills to promote more playful ideation.

Using examples of real-life creative icons, investigate two major “styles” of creativity exemplified by Norman Rockwell and Pablo Picasso. The first: adaptors, who are precise, reliable, and detail oriented. The second: innovators, who approach problems from novel angles. Where do you fall on the adaptor-innovator style spectrum? Why is it so important to be flexible?

Focus now on the nature of creative thinking itself, with a look at divergent thinking (which involves intuition and associative thought) and convergent thinking (which selects and develops the most promising ideas). Along the way, you’ll learn skills for balancing these surprisingly complementary ways of thinking in your own life.

There are times when we all want (or need) to be creative on demand. And with the right approach, it’s possible. Here, use Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway as a lens through which to explore four key principles of creativity training: defer judgment, go for quantity, make connections, and seek novelty.

What mindset and attitude do you need to decide which of your ideas to pursue? Professor Puccio reveals the four key principles you need for success: practicing affirmative judgment, keeping novelty alive, checking your objectives to make sure they meet the needs of reality, and—of course—staying focused.

Learn explicitly about creative problem solving, a research-based process that can help close the gap between what you have and what you want. There are four stages: clarify (identifying the challenge), ideate (generating tentative solutions), develop (turning good ideas into great solutions), and implement (moving your solutions from your head to reality).

This lecture focuses on the clarification step of creative problem solving, in which you identify your goal, gather data, and formulate your challenge. Professor Puccio shows you how to use a variety of helpful tools, including finding out the “who, what, where, when, why, and how” of a problematic situation and developing a powerful challenge statement.

Continue learning about clarification with a closer look at some more advanced tools to add to your toolkit. One is webbing, which leverages two probing questions to broaden your perspective and think in abstract terms. The other is storyboarding, a tool designed to tell your story in a visual sequence.

Learn how to brainstorm the right way. Explore the three roles in a classic brainstorming session (the facilitator, client, and resource group members) and try your hand at brainwriting, a variation on brainstorming that involves silent cross-ideation—all while peering over the shoulders of an actual brainstorming session in action.

Get three more advanced tools to help you generate bold, creative ideas. The first is reverse brainstorming, a variation that helps shake things up. The second is forced relationships, which facilitate associative thought and recharge thinking. The third is visually identifying relationships, which uses images and pictures to stimulate ideas.

True creators don’t work in isolation. Instead, they often borrow from or modify the ideas of their predecessors. Here, learn how to incorporate solutions from other people (as well as nature) into your specific challenge with the power of tools in Synectics, which rely on the use of direct and personal analogies.

Attribute listing, which makes small variations to an idea. Morphological matrix, which combines two attributes to create new outcomes. SCAMPER, a mnemonic for idea-spurring questions (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, and Rearrange). Put these fascinating idea-generation tools to work in a series of fun, real-world exercises.

How can you best transform a broad idea into a workable solution that resolves your challenge? Find out ways to make development even more efficient. The main focus in this lecture: the POINT tool, an acronym for a smart, flexible evaluative process that can be used in a variety of ways.

Continue to spur your creative development—this time from the perspective of a designer. You’ll learn the principles of the design-thinking process (including reframing, ideating, and user understanding); explore the benefits of foresight scenarios, prototyping, and solution enactments; and discover how best to leverage the power of design thinking’s user-centered approach.

Creative work involves many difficult decisions. Improve the way you make creative development decisions with the use of several advanced tools that make this natural process more formal and systematic: the seven-step evaluation matrix, solution mapping, targeting, and more.

What’s so creative about implementing your idea? Find out here, as Professor Puccio shares strategies and techniques for moving your solution forward, including using a How-How Diagram to drill down your plan into specific action steps and creating a performance dashboard to visually “monitor” your plan as you’re implementing it.

Assistors and Resistors—a tool that uses contextual thinking to put yourself into the future so that you can examine the forces that will influence the creation and execution of your breakthrough idea. Learn how to leverage forces that propel you toward success, along with other persuasive ways (including the application of stakeholder analysis) to help get your proposed solutions and changes accepted.

Now that you’ve learned the steps of the creative-thinking process, learn how to arrange everything in your toolkit using metacognition and several “metaprocess” skills. You’ll see these tools in action in a variety of scenarios, and you’ll also get the inside scoop on how to dodge common metacognition mistakes.

To maximize the power of creative thinking, you need the right emotional mindset. Professor Puccio offers you tips for doing so by investigating emotional intelligence, revealing the dangers of emotional hijacking, and stressing the importance of reflecting and redirecting to help stave off your fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.

Are you in the right environment to maximize your creativity? What do we mean by creating the right physical and psychological climate? How can sound, light, and time of day affect your creative thought process? What 10 specific psychological dimensions are predictors of high levels of creativity?

Today’s complex world demands more creative leaders. First, explore how evolving theories of leadership have started to embrace the importance of creativity. Then, look at why leadership itself is so crucial to the creative process. Finally, discover how creative problem solving is widely viewed as a core competency of any effective leader.

There are many internal and external barriers out there that can inhibit us from effective creative thinking. But you don’t have to let these physical and perceptual blocks and habits deter you. Instead, learn how to beat them back with research-backed strategies that involve deferring judgment, defocusing, and distancing.

Finish the course with a capstone look at how one can live creatively as well as think creatively. Some of the inspirational principles of a creative life that you’ll look at include reclaiming your creativity, going big or going home, creating multiple options for yourself, and suspending disbelief in order to live and practice a more creative approach to every aspect of your life.