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While reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” recently one passage struck me and I thought how could it be applied to creative thinking. That passage was:

“How good people’s decisions are under fast moving, high stress conditions of rapid cognition is a function of training, rules and rehearsal.”

I replaced “decisions” with “creative thinking” in the original statement and I get this:

“How good people’s creative thinking is under fast moving, challenging conditions is a function of training, rules and rehearsal.”

So could this revised statement be true? Can we be more creative and generate better ideas faster if have some rules, train our minds and practice (rehearse). Let’s take a look and see.

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1. Anything goes. 2. Record all ideas. 3. Generate as many ideas as possible. 4. Evaluate later.

Understanding and applying these rules gives us permission to think freely. When everyone in a group complies with the rules the barriers come down and the ideas flow.

Training: Can we train ourselves to be better thinkers? Perhaps it’s actually training us to not be bad thinkers. To do that we need to learn to challenge assumptions. Learn to recognise associations that are limiting our thinking and step around them. We need to train ourselves that it’s ok to have grand visions and then design the way there.

We can use observation, discussion and critiques to understand how other people innovate and teach ourselves in the process.

Practice: If we understand the rules and can apply what we learn then we have a suite of creative thinking tools we can apply every day in our work, and in other personal and community projects.

If we accept that rules, training and practice can increase our ability to generate ideas, think creatively, and innovate at speed; is there anything that could slow our thinking down?

One of the points that Gladwell makes in Blink is that people often wait for more information, analysis, or the opinions of others to support their own decisions. With each additional piece of data comes assumptions and associations and thinking becomes more conscious and linear. He argues that when you move away from trusting your instinctive responses the quality of your decisions fall. His argument is that those with a trained mind focused on the right elements can make instant and accurate decisions.

Transferring that thought to creative thinking we could say that by applying the rules, our training and practice, the quality, quantity and spontaneity of our ideas will improve.

Tim Brown, CEO of the innovation and design firm IDEO, talks about some of these themes in this recently released TED video
“forgetting the adult behaviors that are getting in the way our ideas.”

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I’ve been reading two books recently and picked up a theme from both that’s worth mentioning.

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In Edward De Bono’s “Thinking Course” he talks about the Intelligence Trap and two ways that it manifests it’s self. The first is that intelligent people take a position and use their intelligence to defend that point of view. Equally, the speed in which an intelligent person can dispose of another’s argument simply reinforces the original position. And there’s the trap!

Does this imply that creativity and innovations come from those who are less intelligent? Not really. What it does say is that you need to look out for embedded attitudes that might be inhibiting your creativity.

Have you ever listened to or read an interview of a successful person where they’ve said “If I’d known then what I know now I probably wouldn’t have done it.” What got them through the hard time and past the failures? Was it simply naivety, was it just guts and determination, or was it a grand vision. It was probably all of those things and more. They certainly broke out of the Intelligence Trap and shattered the Curse of Knowledge.

How did they break the trap and shatter the curse? I think it was Openness. They were able to look for and consider alternate view points. They did it by challenging assumptions about the current state. They did it with passion, not for their current position but for finding something new, something not yet discovered.

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I recently wrote a post about collecting ideas. In that post I listed some reasons why collecting ideas and reviewing them can be a great source of inspiration when you need a creative push.

One of the inspiration techniques I suggested was to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into a new solution. It’s interesting when you see an innovation that has combines several ideas or trends to solve a problem, provide a solution, or approach an existing situation in an innovative way.

The concept of SPIN Farming is a fascinating example of how trends or ideas from unrelated areas have been applied to small scale farming.

I’m not suggesting that the inspiration for SPIN Farming came directly from looking outside of agriculture for new ideas, however it is a good example of trends from other industries combining to enable a whole new approach – in this case applied to farming. SPIN Farming is not a return to the methods of our grandparents, but a total re-think and application of new methods.

So what is SPIN Farming? SPIN stands for S-mall P-lot IN-tensive

SPIN is a non-technical, easy-to-learn and inexpensive-to-implement farming system that makes it possible to earn significant income from land bases under an acre in size. Whether you are new to farming, or want to farm in a new way, SPIN can work for you because:

• Its precise revenue targeting formulas and organic-based techniques make it possible to gross $50,000+ from a half- acre.
• You don’t need to own land. You can affordably rent a small piece of land adequate in size for SPIN-FARMING production.

What trends and ideas do we see applied in the SPIN method? An obvious trend is miniaturization. This directly challenges the large scale corporate farming practices and makes sub-acre sites into profitable enterprises. It even looks fun. Over the last two decades enhancements in technology have taken the power of large enterprise main frame computers down to very portable powerful and affordable laptop and hand held devices.

In recent years micro-financing has been very successfully applied in some of the worlds poorest communities. Again, this is an example of the large “lending beast” being scaled down, made more user friendly and made accessible to people who really need it.

Localization is another trend at work here. Farmers markets and localised produce have become very popular in many heavily urbanised areas. Interestingly there are many parts of the world where weekly local markets have never been out of fashion.

There are also similarities in the SPIN approach to just-in-time manufacturing processes. Conventional farmers sow a large crop at one time, then harvest a large crop at one time. The spin methodology has sequential sowing and sequential harvesting. The harvest is just enough to fulfil the market demand with no loss in productivity.

We can see that the SPIN farming technique combines several ideas that exist in other industries; miniaturization, localisation, and just in time production.

So what can you be inspired to do by looking around, observing, and collecting ideas. What ideas from outside your industry can be sliced and diced, combined, and applied to your business or project. Where will your next innovation come from?

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