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Practice of Creativity: a Manual for Dynamic Group Problem Solving

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Exploring Creativity


The field of creativity is still in its infancy. However, much has been published on the topic over the last 50 years, including numerous books and articles by Synectics consultants. These writings include the 1970 book by Synectics co-founder George Prince, "The Practice of Creativity" considered by many a classic in the field.

Synectics enjoys a long history, one as rich and eclectic as the many new ideas our clients have developed in our sessions with them. Our history provides insights into the evolution of key business issues as well as the growing need for creative answers to those issues.

George Prince and William J.J. Gordon founded the firm in 1960. The two had been part of Arthur D. Little Inc.'s Invention Design Group, a consulting practice responsible for helping companies develop new product concepts. Puzzled by why some meetings were much more fertile than others, Gordon and Prince believed it had less to do with the people in the room and more to do with the dynamics that were operating unbeknownst to those people in the room.

To understand those dynamics, Prince and Gordon taped thousands of hours of new product development meetings. They studied how people were interacting. The tapes revealed significant differences in meetings that generated inventions and those that didn't. The founders then turned their observations into methods that replicated the techniques used informally by successful inventors and entrepreneurs.

Ever since, Synectics has advanced its approaches to helping people in organizations to generate superior ideas, with steadily increasing impact.

Synectics is based on a simple concept for problem solving and creative thinking - you need to generate ideas, and you need to evaluate ideas. Whilst this may be stating the obvious the methods used to perform these two tasks are extremely powerful.

Synectics is an approach to creative thinking that depends on understanding together that which is apparently different. Its main tool is analogy or metaphor. The approach, which is often used by groups, can also help students develop creative responses to problem solving, to retain new information, to assist in generating writing, and to explore social and disciplinary problems.

It helps users break existing minds sets and internalize abstract concepts. Synectics can be used with all ages and works well with those who withdraw from traditional methods. Teacher-facilitators can use synectics in the classroom by leading students to:

* Describe the Topic: The facilitator selects a word or topic then asks students to describe the topic, either in small group discussions or by individually writing a paragraph; e.g., MUSIC.

* Create Direct Analogies: The facilitator selects another word or topic then asks the students to generate a list that would have the same characteristics as those words or phases listed in Step 1 (a direct analogy is set up to make comparisons between the two words, images, or concepts). How are MUSIC and BIAS alike? Ask them to generate vivid mental images. Mental images are powerful tools in the process.

* Describe Personal Analogies: Have students select one of the direct analogies and create personal analogies. Students "become" the object they choose and then describe what it feels like to be that object. How would it feel to be music that is biased?

* Identify Compressed Conflicts: Ask the students to pair words from the list generated in Step 3 which seem to fight each other. Always have the students explain why they chose the words which conflict. Then have the students choose one by voting. How are auditory symbolism and personal inclination different?

* Create a New Direct Analogy: With the compressed conflict pair voted upon by the students, ask them to create a different direct analogy by selecting something that is described by the paired words. How are auditory symbolism and personal inclination like a painting, poem, movie, political party, etc.?

* Reexamine the Original Topic: Return to the original idea or problem so that the student may produce a product or description that utilizes the ideas generated in the process. They may concentrate on the final analogy or use analogies created in the other four steps

For the same thing just different try the following. For best results go through each step, then put it away for a while, then go through the next step. Don't look at any list until you get to the last step, redefine.

Use the dictionary to fully define the word(s).

then

Generate a list of words or topics that:

* are similar to the original word(s);
* describe what it would feel like to be the original word(s);
* are opposite to the original words(s);
* Once again, are similar to the original word(s).
* Look at each list and find words that help you redefine the
direction of your quest.

Examples of Analogies for Students:

There are three types of analogies commonly used with children:

1. Fantasy
Children think of fantastic, way-out and perhaps ideal solutions to a problem: these can lead to creative yet workable ideas, eg. What would be a really unusual way of moving a sleeping cow out of the adventure playground?

2. Direct analogy
Children think of parallel problem situations in real life, faced by people or nature. For example, the problem of moving the sleeping cow might be compared to how cranes carry heavy loads.

3. Personal analogy
This requires children to place themselves in the role of the problem itself &emdash; to be the sleeping cow or "the problem". For example .. 'Imagine you are the sleeping cow in the adventure playground. You want to move to another place where it's quieter, without losing any sleep. What would you do?'

I bought the book because it was in the bibliography of "don't make me think " by Krug. The book gives some interesting advices but my overall rating is "poor". It's creativity seen by a mass production engineer, it's like an art book written by a bank clerk.
And most of all the writing style it's incredibly boring (you know those documents starting with "list of the acronyms used in the document"?)

And please amazon fix this bug with "how do you rate this item?" loosing it's value when you go back to the "write your own review" pressing the edit button. I know I know, it's not the apropriate place, but have you ever tried to go through the contact section of this website?

Good delivery. Easy to unpack and book in good condition.
Thank you

I hate Video reviews.