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 Basic Idea
Generating
The
bottom line to a successful idea-generating
process is to honor the voices in the room and
to use different thinking styles. That’s right,
intermix the different temperament patterns as
well as the divergent perceiving and convergent
judging focuses and activities.
Alex
Osborn, the advocate of brainstorming, compared
divergent and convergent thinking to driving a
car. Imagine, he said, that when you are using
divergent thinking, your foot is on the gas
pedal, all the way to the floor. There are no
obstacles, and the roads are in perfect
condition. The ideas flow.
When
using convergent thinking, it’s as if your foot
is on the brake, evaluating, selecting, and
judging ideas.
His
point was this: it is critical to facilitate
creative thinking by honoring both processes and
keeping them separate. If you don’t, it’s as if
you had your foot on the gas pedal and the brake
at the same time. You wouldn’t get very far, and
it wouldn’t be good for the transmission
either.
In
essence, from a psychological type perspective,
Osborn said to honor the perceiving processes
and then honor the judging processes. First,
generate information and ideas using Si, Se, Ni,
and Ne, and then call on Ti, Te, Fi, and Fe for
making decisions.
Divergent thinking. Convergent
thinking. Sounds simple, and sometimes it’s
challenging.
By
using divergent and convergent thinking, you are
asking people to stretch from their comfort
zone.For them to
do that, they need to trust you. With the tools
provided in this book, along with the right
attitude of honoring the many voices of
creativity, you will succeed in building trust
in your abilities to guide the process for
generating new ideas that will become useful.
And with that trust will come commitment for
doing a good job, confidence in the creativity
of yourself and others, competency in using the
tools and methods, and capability to use the
right techniques at the right time.
Step 1:
Divergent Thinking
Here are some
examples of divergent thinking triggers:
- List all the uses you can
think of for a shoe.
- Generate meanings for a
nutshell.
- List all the resources
available for your next project.
- Make as many sentences as
you can using all of the following words:
candle, hope, tissue, egg.
Notice how
each is an open-ended exercise. No evaluation is
required or asked for. None of the questions
asked you to meet any criteria whatsoever. The
responses are free from any restriction, even if
they are outside the parameters you perceive in
the question. That’s an important point.
Generally,
though, we unconsciously know there are “right”
answers and that there is only one right answer
to every question. To truly appreciate the gift
of divergent thinking, a change of attitude is
required. People need to be open to the idea
that there may be many “right” answers.
The goal of using
divergent thinking is to generate as many
potential “right” answers as possible. In order
to do this, the potential “wrong” answers must
be included. One of the benefits of using
divergent thinking is knowing that in the second
phase, during convergent thinking, the best
responses will be selected and ideas not worth
considering will be left behind, modified, or
saved for later.
How do you
get outrageous ideas? Ask for them! Research
conducted in the ’50s showed that when
idea-generating participants are asked to
generate outrageous ideas, they do. When they
are not asked for outrageous ideas, they are not
as likely to offer them up. Try it out, and see
for yourself.
Step 2:
Convergent Thinking
Here are some
examples to demonstrate convergent
thinking.
- Which shoe idea is the
most novel?
- Rank your meanings of the
nutshell from the most personally meaningful to
the least.
- Select the resources that
are most challenging to maintain.
- Of all the sentences you
made, which is the most intriguing?
Notice each
statement or question asks you to use
“narrow-down” thinking. During the convergent
stage, we apply critical thinking; that is, we
use some criteria to evaluate, select, and
analyze the output from the divergent
phase.
If the
divergent output is kept in the verbal realm,
only in talking or in conversation, it is quite
challenging to do a good job in the convergent
stage. As a result, one of the standards for
idea generating is to capture the ideas in a way
that makes it easy to evaluate the total output
later on.
Also, if all
the idea generating is conducted interactively,
you are pulling only on the extraverting
processes—Se, Ne, Te, and Fe. By doing this
you get ideas that fit what is (Se), what might
be (Ne), how to organize using principles (Te),
and how to organize to meet people’s needs for
harmony and connecting (Fe).
For balance,
consider including opportunities for reflection
time for the other four voices to be heard—Si,
Ni, Ti, and Fi. Factor in occasions to welcome
ideas from what was in the past (Si), conceptual
considerations and meanings (Ni), framework fit
(Ti), and personal values (Fi).
Cognitive
Processes and Idea Generation
Adapted from Marci Segal, Creativity and Personality Type:
Tools for Understanding and Inspiring The Many
Voices of Creativity (Telos Publications,
2001) *Used with permission.
Divergent and
Convergent Thinking in the Eight Cognitive
Process Voices
This chart shows how each
cognitive process voice may contribute to
diverging and converging activities. Use it as a
guide to broaden your approach to stimulate
creative thinking.
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• <
DIVERGE |
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PERCEPTION |
JUDGMENT |
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Creative
ideas—
where they come from.
Consider
using each of these: |
Creative ideas—
how they
are evaluated. How well do ideas meet these
criteria? |
Extraverted Sensing (Se)
Change
what is.
|
Extraverted Thinking (Te)
Improve
efficiencies, structures, measurements, and
organizing principles.
|
Introverted Sensing (Si)
Change
what was.
|
Introverted Thinking (Ti)
Improve
understanding of how something works.
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Extraverted iNtuiting (Ne)
Change
what might be.
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Extraverted Feeling (Fe)
Improve
harmony among people.
|
Introverted iNtuiting (Ni)
Change
the representation of the future.
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Introverted Feeling (Fi)
Align with
values, personal and corporate.
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Adapted from Marci Segal, Creativity and Personality Type:
Tools for Understanding and Inspiring The Many
Voices of Creativity (Telos Publications,
2001) *Used with
permission.
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