Creative Problem Solving

What I want to do now is talk about a  few other kinds of divergent techniques. Creativity has two sides to it. There's being *novel* and being *useful*. There's a *divergent side* – that's having  lots and lots of bright ideas –  and a *convergent* side – that tries to  turn those ideas into something that's more useful and buildable. So, first of all, I want to talk about *oxymorons*.

If you want to use this in a more directed way,  actually as perhaps a way of helping you to ideate about your problem, you want  to focus on something specific. One way to do that is just to look at  something and think, 'What do I normally think of as an essential characteristic of this  thing?' And think of a *concrete feature*. It's hard to think nicely abstractly; think concrete. And then just in some way negate it or remove it. So, I've got a couple of examples here. You might think of the word processor with no cursor.

If there's no cursor, how do you know where you're going to type? Well, maybe that's part of the fun of it, and, in fact, if you've got a touchpad,  I accidentally keep touching my touchpad and the cursor jumps all over the place; actually, that's annoying. But are there some advantages of that? You know – perhaps it helps create juxtapositions that you haven't thought of before (perhaps a good creativity technique)? Could you have a word processor with no cursor? One that you perhaps when you type the text always appeared in a sort of fixed area and then you dragged it to where you wanted it?

So, certainly it forces you to think like that. You might have PowerPoint with no projector, but then you might think, 'Well, if I had no projector, would I still find my PowerPoint useful? Well, perhaps it would help me to guide what I'm talking about.' So, just like here, I'm talking to video, but I also have slides. And they're probably going to end up being edited to different slides by the time you see them. But they're still doing a job for me. So, that's a bit about oxymorons. Let's move on to a different divergent technique – *random metaphors*.

So, the idea here is you think about something;  and my window is closed, so I'm not getting too much direct light, but I'm just glancing around the room. I have here a little bag that I put things in that goes into my suitcase when I travel. And it's got things like, I think, a little hard disk drive in and plenty of teabags because I like lots of teabags. So, random metaphor:

A word processor is like a bag that goes into my suitcase, or a word processor is like a teabag. So, I usually find it, if I want to think of a random metaphor, if you're not careful, 'I think, "A word processor is like..." and then I go for a quill pen'? You know – because – you know – I'm not being that random, so I usually try and really make it random, or... reach for your dictionary! A word processor is like a fingertip, or the word above 'fingertip' was 'fingerprint'.

So, random metaphors. In fact, the first time I articulated random metaphors was one of two times in my life I can remember getting a spontaneous round of applause from an undergraduate lecture. Now, it is quite tough getting applause from an undergraduate lecture. And I won't act it with quite the vigor I did for the lecture, because I'm going to knock the  camera over if I do. But the idea is:

There was Professor Schwartz. And Professor Schwartz is getting on a bit, and he's at this networking conference, a big international networking conference. And he's been around for years, and often behind the scenes – he's the man who was behind the internet – you know. You know about ARPANET and how it all started, but he was one of the key figures. Wi-Fi – you know – again started in the Xerox (inaudible), but Professor Schwartz was the person  they always talked to and

really a lot of the ideas came from. And Professor Schwartz is at the desk, at the lectern in front, and he's talking, he's looking up and he said, 'Ah...' – you know – and he's giving the major keynote for this conference. And he's getting on a bit, so maybe it's the last time  he'll give a keynote. And he's giving this keynote at this conference, and he does it with the vigor and commitment that he always does. And he said, 'The metaphor, the image, the idea of  networking in the next century is...'

(coughing) And he obviously has a little bit  of a problem (inaud.); he's getting on a bit, so you expect this. (Coughing) He sorts himself out, perhaps takes a quick drink of water. Okay, and he continues. 'The image –' (coughing) 'The image of networking for the next century –' (coughing) 'is... The image of networking for  the next century is spaghetti bolognese.'

(coughing) He's getting a bit red in the face by this point, and to be honest, the audience are getting a  little worried. But, anyway, he continues. (coughing) 'The image of networking for  the next century is spaghetti bologn—' (coughing) 'spaghetti bolognese with parmesan on top.' And with that, he falls to the ground.

Now, to this day, I'm never sure whether the spontaneous applause was because of the  skill of my acting at that point or was because they thought I'd actually died  and were glad that the lecture had ended. However, I'll let you make your own  decisions on that one. The crucial thing is, imagine this conference happened. Everybody goes home afterwards and they think – well, first of all, they mourn the passing of Professor Schwartz because he was such a figure in their area. But then they start to think – now, I don't know

if you know any networking people; networking people do *layers* a lot; they talk about layers. So, if it had been lasagna, they'd have understood. But it was spaghetti bolognese. And this parmesan cheese was  clearly critical – you know – he *died* getting those words out. What did it mean? Can you imagine the creativity of the ideas as all those people went back to laboratories and said, 'What was it he meant? What could be the meaning behind this?'

Whether any of them would be the meaning that Schwartz had in his head, who knows? But so much creativity. So, Choose your random metaphor; take it from the dictionary. Glance around your room. But imagine you've been given that metaphor  by the ultimate person in your discipline. What does it mean? Play with it. Live  with it. And see if you get some ideas.

Okay, let's move on; more – oh,  more brilliant, so we've had the genius in your field; now we have the brilliant designer... *of awful things*. So, one of the reasons you might come to a  design is because there's something existing and it doesn't work very well. So, either you're going to completely redesign it; you're going to do a new word processor, for instance, or you're just going to fix some feature that's wrong with it. And there are things about it you *hate*.

They're really bad, and the users hate them as well – really bad. Imagine that actually you know the person who designed it was an absolutely brilliant designer in their area. Now, obviously they made a bit  of a hash up because things are going wrong. But that feature that's causing problems – imagine it was done *for a reason*. So, and I hadn't thought of examples  before then,

but I was mentioning actually with touchpads when the way my finger touches it and the text goes all over the place. That's a terrible thing to happen, but does that make me think about my writing more? I mean, actually, I think it doesn't. But never mind; let's imagine – what are the positive things behind the fact that when my thumb touches the  touchpad, my cursor jumps all over the place? If you can imagine that there  was a really good reason for that, even though it doesn't work for other purposes, one is you start to have new ideas, but the other thing is

if that reason actually  is an advantage, it's happening for people, if you change it without being aware of that, if you edit and change the software, you might get rid of the problem that people are having, but you also might lose that advantage. So, by understanding the advantages of the thing that you're going to deal with, then you can start to change it in a way that preserves those strengths as you get rid of the weaknesses. So, this is a bit like bad ideas – analyzing those bad ideas.

And, in fact, the prompts that I gave you for the bad ideas you can apply to the software. You know – what is *good* about it? What's *really bad* about it? Not just the surface thing that's bad about it? You know – so the fact that my thumb when it touches the touchpad makes the cursor jump, in itself that's not a bad thing. The problem is that as I type, my typing goes into a random place. So, what's really deep? What's not just the surface thing that's wrong? What are the deep things that are wrong? But also, what's good? What's positive?

Okay, and last on these, this  series of divergent techniques, I want to talk about *arbitrary constraints*. Now, in one sense, you'd think being divergent is about breaking boundaries, living without constraints,  opening up. Weirdly – and this is something that's been found again and again in the creativity literature – is: *sometimes adding constraints can help people be more creative*. So, when you start with that blank piece of paper,

it can be hard, can't it? The tabula rasa. '...Ah!' – you know. I want my wonderful bright idea.... Nothing comes. What happens often is if there is a constraint, so 'I'm going to design a new word processor, but it has to look exactly like the existing spreadsheet,' or 'I'm going to design a new mobile phone, but it has to

work when somebody's holding it in their left hand while bicycling.' You put a very strong constraint on it – you know. 'I'm going to design a chair, but it's going to be a metal chair, not a random chair – it's going to be made of metal, or papier-mâché.' You put a constraint. When you do that, people are forced – one is it makes it more concrete; so, it's in some sense easier, but you're also forced to be creative about that process, about pushing those constraints together. In reality, we always work within  constraints, but sometimes adding constraints

– now, they could be silly constraints or they could be just more fixed ones that make sense but aren't necessarily really given by the problem. Now, you might later on remove the constraint. But *adding the constraint helps you to think more clearly and more concretely*, and *often more creatively*. So, you can do that with *materials*. Another way you often do that is with *time*. I don't know if you've noticed it – if there's a hard deadline,

have you noticed the way you just, you think you're going to work  hard on it, and you do, and... Not a lot happens. And then, suddenly, as  the deadline approaches... and all sorts of stuff happens. So, sometimes, not having much of something or having been forced to do something is better than having complete freedom, even if you want to think out of the box and creatively.

In this lesson, we're going to  now look at convergent techniques. I'm just going to take us to that formula  for creativity: *structure plus diversity*.   So, on the left, we've got the problem – the thing that we're looking for solutions to. We've then got this – and on the right the solution. The initial stages we've been thinking about are these divergent stages,

the jumps of insight, and the bad idea is a particular example of that. But then we need to go and sort of tighten down towards a single solution because in the end what we've got to do is deliver to somebody, whether it's a piece of software or whether it's a design, but something that actually solves the need and can be used. In fact, if we think about a divergent thinker, we're thinking about somebody who's creative, who thinks differently,  who's perhaps exciting or interesting,

maybe just a little mad, but in some way perhaps a positive image from a creativity point of view. However, if we think about *convergent thinking*,  it feels actually *conservative*; it feels *uncreative*; it's all about the sameness, about plodding and about going down the same paths, maybe just a little bit boring. It seems like there's a gulf between the two, as if there couldn't be any connection between them.

But in fact, if anything, that's far from the truth; the two actually are all about *working together*. What we'll do is going to remind ourselves about some of the reasons why we might want divergence in the first place, and that will help us to see why convergent thinking is also very, very important. So, let's first of all – why do we need divergence? Actually, the answer is *sometimes you don't* – you don't need to always be a divergent thinker.

Sometimes, the ant-like plodding from place to place works. You might have a problem. There might be a standard process that gives  you a solution that everybody's happy with. You know – if that's the case, no need to have lots  of bright wild ideas; you just do the same thing. For instance – you know – somebody comes to you; they're wanting a new website for a trucking company, and you happen to have a few years ago done – a different trucking company; you take the general

pattern for that, you reapply it to a new one, and everybody's happy. Easy peasy. Of course, we know that design doesn't always  work like that. Sometimes there is no obvious right solution. To talk about 'the solution', there's *a* solution, not necessarily the right solution, and often what we do in design is we start with a problem, generate lots of different initial ideas, and then just sort of have a feel of how good they are – you  know. And some you might instantly reject and

say 'that's terrible', others you think 'oh yes, that's really good', others a bit in between. There are lots of these times when we have to generate lots of different ideas and then make decisions between them. There's another time when we need divergence  as well, though, which is when we get to a problem. So, sometimes we start with a problem – well, we  always have a problem; we have our initial need; we think we know where the solution is. So, for instance, imagine our website again. We've got a standard theme and way of building websites that we use time and time again.

Somebody comes with a new need for a website. We think, 'That's fine. We'll just put it into our standard framework.' So, you start off with your standard process,  you think it's going to work, you start with it ...and then you get stuck. Something happens  in the middle; there is some problem, some technical issue, some aesthetic issue that  actually blocks you. So, for instance, you might be using your standard theme to your website, but maybe it's designed implicitly assuming that there was never a huge category with lots and lots of pages in.

And for some reason maybe it's lots of products or something like that – you end up with one of these categories and the menu ends up with lots and lots of items – so many that it doesn't fit on the page, and there's no nice way to scroll, and you think, 'Ah! It's failing!' And then what you do is you start to think of alternate ideas. You might start to look at other frameworks, other themes. Some of those will encounter problems as well, but eventually you try and find something  that is not your original idea of how you

proceed but gets you to the solution. So, that's another reason why you want divergence. So, what about *convergence*? You know – so, obviously we need divergence. We've got reasons why that might happen. Where does convergence come into this? What we're going to do is start off with those ideas where you have lots and lots of ideas. You've got a problem, you've generated lots of ideas, and then you need to filter them down.

So, part of convergence is about going from all those ideas to *one solution*. One way you do that is simply to  look at them, decide some are just non-starters, put those in the bin; progress the others a little  bit – you know – develop them a bit more. This is a classic thing you'll have done if you're involved  in graphic design, for instance. You often generate lots and lots of ideas, some of them that you decide you don't like, some of them the customer doesn't like, others you start to develop a bit and you look at them in more detail.

Perhaps eventually plump for one of them, generate the solution from that. So, there's the process – there's a bit of extra generation going on, but a lot of it is just about filtering. It's about throwing out and ending up with one of them. *Evaluation is the key to this.* And this is why in user interfaces, a new user experience, evaluation is such an important thing. Sometimes you can't actually work out what you want, so you generate lots of things and then you evaluate them and see which has worked out good.

This has – in one sense, there's a model of  creativity that's going on here, which is   a variation of this diversity plus  structure. It's about *generate and filter*. The diversity is the generation – you generate lots of ideas, and then you filter them down. And this does work, not a hundred percent but quite a lot of creativity can be seen in these terms. So, one way to think about this is about typing  monkeys, and you might have heard the story about

if you have enough monkeys or you leave  a monkey long enough, eventually it'll type out the complete works of Shakespeare. You might have to wait a very long time for your one monkey. But instead of that, perhaps you don't have one monkey – perhaps you have four monkeys or rooms full of monkeys. So, imagine a warehouse and in the warehouse there's desk after desk after desk. And each day trucks come and throw loads of bananas into  the warehouse.

And in the warehouse there is row after row after row after row of typing monkeys. And then there's the *assessor*. And the assessor is a human. And she wanders up and down the rows of monkeys, looking at what they're typing. A lot of the time it's just gibberish. And every so often she comes across something, and perhaps it says, 'To be or not to be. That is the question.' She looks at that and she thinks, 'Wow! That's profound!',

pulls out the sheet of paper from the monkey's typewriter, perhaps puts a new one in for the monkey, then takes it to the warehouse door. And the warehouse has a door with a letterbox on it. Only most letterboxes are for posting things into the house. This is for posting out. So, she takes the piece of paper with 'To be or not to be. That is the question.', folds it up, posts it out through the letterbox. Outside the letterbox – it's a bit like Big Brother House – there's always press people waiting.

And when they see the the sheet of  paper pop out, they all pounce on it and look at it. And it says 'To be or not to be. That is the question.' And everybody goes, 'Wow! That's profound! There must be somebody really creative inside that warehouse.' Now, the question just to think about for a second is: Where is the creativity?

Is it in the rows and rows and rows of typing monkeys? —which is the divergent part of this process. Or is it in the assessor who looks at that piece of paper and thinks, 'Oh, that's a good one!'? Is it half and half? Or perhaps if you had  either the typing monkeys or you had the assessor on their own, there would be no creativity. It's actually when the two come together. So, let's go back to our filtering and evaluation.

So, one model, I said we have the selection or  the evaluation side, which is like our assessor; we have the generation side. Now, in  fact, things are never quite that simple. Our generation is not quite like typing monkeys,  and our assessment isn't always independent of our generation. Even in this model we've got, if you were doing this, if you've generated lots of ideas and then chosen some of them and tried to  develop others, quite likely in your final solution

you will have used elements of both or multiple ideas that you developed. So, you developed two ideas, went forward with them; you might choose one as the dominant one, but you might well use bits of inspiration from the other as you develop that into your solution. Even the ones that you reject quite early in the process, again there might be bits from them that have influenced what you're doing further on. So, it's not quite a matter of just choosing which one.

It's not like that assessor just choosing the best sheet of  paper that's got the best words on it, but actually a little bit of a more feedback process going on, even at this stage in this simple model. This takes us to the second kind of  convergence, which is about being analytic. So, here again, think about all of these ideas  that have been generated. What you also might do, and some of the things we've talked about doing already have elements of this,

is just look at all of those ideas – before  you start selecting them, before you choose which ones develop, just look at them and  think about them. And as you think about it, you build an understanding of the domain, of the problem space and perhaps of the set of potential solutions; so, you're starting to build this understanding of what's going on. When you've built that understanding, then  you're in perhaps a better position to be really clear about what your *criteria* are. So, you might know your criteria upfront.

They might be really simple ones like which is the fastest, which is the most efficient. But often life is a little bit more fuzzy than that, and it's actually only as you understand the problem can you start to formulate your criteria with which you're going to use to choose which ideas to take forward. You might be able to use that understanding  to actually ignore the ideas then and jump straight to a solution – say, 'Aha! Given what I've seen with all these ideas, actually now I know how to solve the problem.' And you go off and do it. You might use that understanding to generate new ideas.

And then, of course, from those new ideas you might generate new understanding. So, there's lots of ways you can use that understanding. But crucially, this is part of that process where you take that divergence and use it  in order to generate analytic understanding, models, concepts of what's going on. I think of this a bit like a cartographer. So, people have gone out into the field, they've gone in expeditions, they've come back and they've told you

they followed this river, they followed that path, they might have measured heights of mountains and done all sorts of things like that. And then, you're the cartographer and you've drawn the map. Now, you've got the map. Once you've got the map, you can then start to ask questions about, 'Well, if I want to go to somewhere new – somewhere perhaps that none of my individual people have gone to but they've perhaps surrounded in different ways, they've looked at from different directions,

you can start to plot a route on the map. It doesn't mean you won't have problems. There may be, for instance, a narrow chasm that was deep so you can't cross it but just wasn't very apparent to the people. So, it doesn't mean you won't have any problems, but certainly you're in a position to enter that territory in a  way with confidence you wouldn't have otherwise. Now, if you think about that in terms of the  web design or graphic design problem,

by having an *understanding* of the problem area, suddenly you're able to sometimes jump to that solution or to at least see ways past problems that you  can't do just by randomly trying things. So, in a way on its own, what divergence is being like is a divergent creativity on its own with nothing else; it's a bit like playing darts – you know – with a blindfold on. So, you can throw your darts and if you throw enough darts, sure enough, you'll probably hit the dartboard.

When you have that understanding that's come from analysis, it's like playing darts with your eyes wide open.

You've probably all heard that phrase  'thinking out of the box'. Everyone tells you, 'Think out of the box.' And it sounds so easy, and yet it's so difficult. If we're talking about theory and creativity, then we've got to think about *de Bono and lateral thinking*. So, if you're thinking out of the box, then lateral thinking is almost, not quite but almost, the same thing in different words.

And this idea of doing things that are breaking the mold, that are not following a line obviously covers a lot of creativity  techniques, but particularly lateral thinking, de Bono's lateral thinking. The idea there is you've got, wherever you are, you've got your problem; you've got your start point. *Linear thinking*, in de Bono's terms, is very much about trying to follow the standard path, going along. So, if you're doing mathematics, you might pull the standard techniques off the shelf.

If you're writing a poem, you might be thinking line by line and thinking how each line fits and rhymes with the one before – if you're doing rhyming poetry, that is. So, it's all about following the same path of reasoning going on and on. *Lateral thinking is about trying to expand.* So, instead of following the same path of  reasoning, are there *different places to start*? You know – are there different ways of thinking  from the way where you are?

So, it's about trying to expand your idea of where you are outwards. So, that might be thinking of different solution strategies, so it might be thinking of different ways to start. Crucially, though, if you want to see out of the box  or get out of the box, you actually often need to *see the box*. If you're literally in a cardboard box, you know you're in it. But mental boxes – you don't actually know you're in them. It's not that there's a cardboard wall and you don't go beyond it.

It's more like a hall of mirrors, so you  never realize there's anything outside at all. Sometimes, *unusual examples* can help you see that. And that's, again, part of the reason for the bad ideas method, like *random metaphors* – things that, as soon as you've got something that *isn't in the box*, even if it's not a very good thing, it  helps you to realize because you say, 'Well, *why* isn't this a good solution? Why doesn't it *work* as a solution?'

And as you answer that question about why, what you're doing is you're *naming that cardboard wall*. And once you've named the cardboard wall and you know it's there, you can start to think of what might be outside of that box but perhaps is a better solution. If you think about some of the analytic method— combining those, those are about building a map of the territory, which is very much about naming the box, naming the walls, naming the boundaries, and by naming them, by seeing from a  distance what is there,

being able to then think of alternative solutions that are completely different. So, both alternative solutions help you to see the territory, help you to see the box. Of course, by seeing the box, that gives you the potential to have alternative solutions and actually you can iterate back and forth between those and hopefully build a better understanding  of what is there and what is constraining you. If you understand what's constraining you, then you can start to break those constraints.

How might we is a method that helps us to understand design problems by translating them into actionable questions. It ensures we are solving the right problem, leaving enough space for the ideas to be innovative but giving enough focus so everyone knows what to do. Let's look at an example. In this school, all classes have plants. Some are doing fine. Some are struggling. But most of them die very quickly, although the students put a lot of effort into caring for them.

How could we help them? Start with uncovering problems. In general, the students lack knowledge about plants. There are so many! It's difficult to remember what each one needs. There is also poor care tracking. It’s hard to keep track of what needs doing and what was already done. These problems are complex and difficult to solve. Let’s use the How Might We ideation system to generate creative solutions. How might we + intended action (as a verb) +

For + the potential user (as a subject) + So that + Desired Outcome. Start with the problems you uncovered. Our first HMW could be something like “How might we prevent plants from dying?” Great start. But it's not specific enough. Also, positive language encourages creativity and opens up possibilities. So “improved plant care” would be more effective than “prevent plants from dying”.

Avoid suggesting a solution. You might be tempted to be more prescriptive. “How might we provide an app for students so that they keep the plants in good health?” But maybe a paper tracker would be enough. That's why it's better to keep solutions out of HMW questions. Keep your HMW broad. “How might we improve plant water scheduling for students so that daisies are adequately watered?” This is too specific.

We're leaving unaddressed problems, excluding potential users, and the outcome is not all that we desire. Focus on the desired outcome. “How might we improve plant care for schools so that plants always have moist soil?” Moist soil is not a foolproof indicator of a healthy plant. Ask the class cactus. In this case, plant health is the desired outcome, not moist soil. With these tips in mind, our final HMW question is:

“How might we improve plant care for schools so that plants stay in good health? Remember that creating effective HMW questions is an iterative process. Repeat the steps as needed in your project.

In this video, I'm going to give you an exercise to do. It's going to be an exercise in *bad ideas*. This is where I tip your brain  towards madness. But hopefully – the boundary between creativity and genius and total madness is often said to be a thin one. So, by pushing you a little towards madness, I  hope to also push you a little towards creativity,

and hopefully you can control the madness that  comes there, but we'll see as it goes along. So, what I want you to do is – you know how hard  it is to think of good ideas; everybody says, 'Ah, let's have a brainstorming session – have lots of ideas!'... So, if it's so hard to think of good ideas, why  not think of a *bad idea*? So, what I'd like you to do as an exercise is just to think of a bad idea,

or a silly idea, a completely crazy idea. Now, it might be about something that you're doing at the moment. It might be a particular problem you've got. And so, what would be a really *bad idea* for sending notifications to people about something you want to get an engagement? Perhaps you could send them an email every three seconds or something like that. So, it could be that kind of bad idea, or it could be just an idea from the world.

So, and it could be a Heath Robinson sort of bad idea – something complex and arcane and that. Or perhaps – and this is probably a good one to start with – just an oxymoron. So, something like a chocolate teapot. So, something that *appears* to be really crazy, really silly: a car without an engine, I remember once in a session we had this, that doesn't seem like a good idea. So, you've got your bad idea – maybe a chocolate teapot or maybe the car with no engine

or something like that. And what I want you to do now is I'm going to take you through some prompt questions. First of all, this was a bad idea, right? The reason you chose it was because it was a bad idea. So, what I want you to do is say to  yourself, 'What is bad about this idea?' So, think of the car without an engine. What's bad about a car without an engine? Well, it doesn't have an engine; it's obvious, right?

So, you start off with that. Now, you might think a bit more. But then I want you to dig and say, 'Well, *why* is that a bad idea?' Well, it's not got an engine – it can't go anywhere. Then dig a bit back further. So, are there things that you can think of that are like that that have that property – so, for instance, the  car without an engine can't go anywhere. Are there things that can't go anywhere  that are actually a good idea? Well...

a garden shed – a garden shed doesn't go  anywhere, but that's not a bad idea. And, in fact, there are things you might not – you  might want to have something that can't be stolen. You don't want that to go anywhere, so that's  not a bad idea. So, if you can think of things that appear to share the bad thing but actually aren't bad, what's the difference? Why is not having an engine, why is not being able to go anywhere bad for the car but not bad for the garden shed?

And as you dig into this, hopefully  you start to understand better these things. You can also go the other way around.  So, you *know* this is a bad idea, but maybe there's something good about it. It hasn't got an engine – it's not polluting. Wow! We've got a green car! It will be green because all the moss will grow on it because it doesn't drive anywhere, but – you know – this is good, surely.

So, then you can think to yourself, 'Well, okay, if this is a good thing,' you can do the same sort of thing: 'Why is that a good thing?' Well, it doesn't choke you with its pollution. If you're finding this difficult, and  particularly this is true about the bad idea bit, you want to... with the bad idea, you want to change that bad thing into a good thing, and so this is whether you want  to find a good thing in the bad idea or you want to find a good use for the thing you've identified  that's bad. You might try a *different context*. So, if you take the car off the road and put it perhaps into something where it's

moved along by something, perhaps sitting on the back of a lorry; why, you might want that. Well... you might want it so you can easily move your car. You might put it on something that's dragged along. So, you sometimes change the context and suddenly something that seemed bad suddenly is not so bad. So, the final thing you could do with your bad idea is *turn it into a good idea*.

Now, you might have already done this as part of that process. So, what's good? When you've identified something that's good about it – like the car, that it wasn't polluting – try to hold on to that, try to  keep that and retain that good feature. But where you found the things – and you really dug down to *why something's bad*, not just the superficial – you know – 'it doesn't have an engine'; well, that's not bad in itself,

but the fact that means you can't  drive anywhere – okay, that's bad. So, can you change that badness but still  retain the non-pollutingness? So, perhaps we're going to have a truly green car. Perhaps we're going to have roads with sort of little wires you connect into and – you know – a bit like Scalextric cars and can drag the cars along so they don't have an  engine and they're being powered elsewhere. You may, as I said, change the context entirely. So,

instead of it being a car for driving around in, instead just – I've already mentioned this one – stick your chickens in it and suddenly it becomes a hen coop. And I think if you go around the world, you'll find a lot of old cars, usually actually with their engine still  sitting in them, that are being used as hen coops. If you had a *complex idea* – and this is true it could be for a simple idea – but in doing your thinking, there might be just something  about it, something small;

it wasn't necessarily the whole thing. So, actually... the idea of the gap in the engine, perhaps you decided that would be really good, actually having the engine not there because you could put things in the front, and for whatever reason you think it's easier to put things in the front than the back. So, perhaps that becomes your  idea, that actually you'd quite like to be able to put your luggage in the front of the car;  you'd like more room in the car for luggage. And then perhaps you'll put an engine back  in the car, but thinking about how you actually

improve access for luggage. If you've had one of those Heath Robinson complex ideas, Wallace and Gromit-like ideas, then actually you may not be trying to make the whole thing into a good idea. But within it, some little bit of that complex mechanism might be something that you've thought about, you've realized and  suddenly think 'Ah!' and do something just with that. And I'll leave you with a glass hammer.

You've probably all had some problem you've worked at. And you keep going at it, and you keep going at it... Nothing seems to work. You go away. Suddenly, the next day you think, 'What problem? It's easy!' It's something I said I've certainly had, and I'm sure you've encountered. And psychologists and other people studying creativity have looked at these kind of issues – why it is that we get to these impasses and how it is that we break out of them.

*Fixation* is one of the keywords that psychologists use here: the way in which when you start to deal with a problem, you have some sort of approach, some sort of way of dealing with it, and it's incredibly hard to stop just continuing with that same way. Once you've got that original idea, that original approach, it's very hard to go to a new one. And sometimes – you know – an approach that might work for one problem doesn't work for

another, but of course if you're stuck in that approach, you can't try other ones. This can get worse depending on how you encounter the problem. And this is sometimes used in sort of trick questions to get you thinking down the wrong track and then it's very hard to get down the right one. And this is sometimes called – if I can say it right! – the *Einstellung effect* which is about being fixed in a position.

These guys called Luchins and Luchins back – I think – in the 1940s did experiments with water jars. And you've probably seen this sort of puzzle. You've got a number of jars, and the idea is they're different sizes and you're trying to get, say... two pints of water and you've got a 17-pint jug and a 3-pint jug and you've got to pour water back and forth. And there sometimes are really complicated solutions where you have to like fill one up from another, and then what's left in this one is some nice magic amount.

So, if you've got a 3-liter jug and a 7-liter jug and you fill the 7-liter one and you pour it into the 3-liter jug and then throw the three liters away, you've got four liters in your 7-liter jug. And you have these complex solutions. So, what Luchins and Luchins did was they gave people a number of examples which they worked through which required that kind of complex solution. And then they gave them four more. But the four more they gave them were ones where you could actually solve it very, very simply. You know – possibly just filling up two and pouring them into another.

So, some subjects were given that; some were just given the four easy problems. The ones who were just given the four easy problems solved it in the easy way. The ones who *started off with the complex ones applied the same complex heuristics* to the easier problems and took *much longer* to do it. So, they got so stuck in their ways having been introduced to this set of problems. One that I encountered myself, and this gives you an opportunity to laugh at me if you want to,

because you'll probably, most of you I'm guessing might find this easy, but I was in university and I was once given this puzzle. And the puzzle starts off – and there is this stage where you're driven down the wrong path – anyway, so I'm giving you a hint by telling you that. So, you often get these puzzles where you're supposed to chop things up into identical pieces. So, I've got a square up there, and obviously you can chop a square into four identical

smaller squares. Or you can chop it into four triangles. So, the triangles are all the same shape as each other, the same size as each other. In mathematical terms, they are *congruent to* each other. But they're not necessarily squares. I've got some triangles, and we can chop the triangles into four; they're different kinds of triangles in different ways. And on the right I've got one of the ones you sometimes see as a trick puzzle in books; and – or sometimes actually cut out pieces as a sort of trivia-type puzzle.

And the idea there is to have four pieces that will make up that 'L' shape. And certainly there may be other ways of doing it, but the way I've always seen is with these four pieces like that. So, they're all 'L' shapes themselves and they fit together. How about cutting things into three? Well, obviously, the 'L' shape is an easy one, and things that start off with three degrees of similarity like a triangle or hexagon are relatively straightforward.

So, the crucial question is, can you chop a square into three pieces that are congruent with one another? Not all squares, but some shape – they could be triangular; they could be more complex – that are each identical. Can you do it? Now, my guess is you've probably already thought of how to do it and you'll be right. It took me three days to solve this because I was a mathematician and the whole thing was framed in geometry, mathematics,

and I was trying to apply really complex mathematics. And despite numerous hints, it took me three days to solve this. If you haven't solved it, you're probably a budding mathematician. So, *fixation is a problem*. There's also – fixation is more about the methods you use to apply things, but there's also *bias* – when you *evaluate* things. When we look at them, we have tendencies to see things in one way or another. And that's about all sorts of things.

That can be about serious personal issues. It can be about trivial things. Often, the way in which something is *framed* to us can actually create a *bias* as well. A classic example, and there are various ways you can do this, is what's called *anchoring*. So... if we're asked something and given something that *suggests a value* even if it's told that it's just there for guesswork purposes or something,

it tends to hold us and move where we see our estimate. So, you ask somebody, 'How high is the Eiffel Tower?' You might have a vague idea that it's big, but you probably don't know exactly how high. You might ask one set of people and give them a scale and say, 'Put it on this scale. Just draw a cross where you think on this scale, from 250 meters high to 2,500 meters high, how high on that scale? And people put crosses on the scale – you can see where they were, or put a number.

But alternatively, you might give people, instead of having a scale of 250 meters to 2,500 meters, you might give them a scale between 50 meters and 500 meters. Now, actually the Eiffel Tower falls on both of those scales: the actual height's around 300 meters. But what you find is people don't know the answer; given the larger, higher scale, they will tend to put something that is larger and higher even though they're told it's just a scale.

And, actually, on the larger scale it should be right at the bottom. Here it should be about two thirds of the way up the scale. But what happens is – by framing it with big numbers, people tend to guess a bigger number. If you frame it with smaller numbers, people guess a smaller number. *They're anchored by the nature of the way the question is posed.* So, how might you get away from some of this fixation? We'll talk about some other things later, other ways later. But one of the ways to actually break some of these biases and fixations is to

*deliberately mix things up*. So, what you might do is, say you're given the problem of building the Eiffel Tower. And the Eiffel Tower I said is about 300 meters tall, so about a thousand feet tall. So, you might think, 'Oh crumbs! How are we going to build this?' So, one thing you might do is say, 'Imagine, instead of being 300 meters tall, it was just *three* meters tall. How would I go about building it, then?' And you might think, 'Well, I'd build a big, perhaps a scaffolding or 30 meters tall.

I might build a scaffolding and just hoist things up to the top.' So, then you say, 'Well, OK, can I build a scaffolding at 300 meters? Does that make sense?' Alternatively, you might, say, perhaps it's *300,000 miles tall* – basically reaching as high as the Moon. How might you build that now? Well, there's no way you're going to hoist things up a scaffold – all the workers at the top would have no oxygen because they'd be above the atmosphere. So, you might then think about hoisting it up from the bottom, building it,

building the top first, hoisting the whole thing up, building the next layer, hoisting the whole thing up, building the next layer. You know... like jacking a car and then sticking bits underneath. So, *by just thinking of a completely different scale*, you start to think of *different kinds* of *solutions*. It forces you out of that fixation. You might *just swap things around*. I mean, this works quite well if you're worried about – that you're using some sort of racial or gender bias;

you just swap the genders of the people involved in a story or swap their ethnic background, and often the way you look at the story differently might tell you something about some of the biases you bring to it. In politics, if you hear a statement from a politician and you either react positively or negatively to it, it might be worth just thinking what you'd imagine if that statement came to the mouth of another politician that was of different persuasion; how would you read it then? And it's not that you change your views drastically by doing this, but it helps you to

perhaps expose why you view these things differently, and some of that might be valid reasons; sometimes you might think, 'Actually, I need to rethink some of the ways I'm working.'