[MUSIC] So as we've learned, creativity is a process of changing perspectives and building new perspectives. We've discussed why we have no choice but to make some sort of perspective to interpret the world. We've discussed the functional aspects of the perspective. The parts, actions, goals, event and self-concept or PAGES which is the model that we've gone through. We've also discussed what a new perspective gets us. Insights, inventions and enlightenments are all the products of creativity even though they are very distinct in their own ways. Now we can ask a crucial question, how do we think beyond our perspectives to generate creative products. How do we change some of our current pages such that we can generate insights, inventions and enlightenments? >> Well, first and foremost, you gotta be willing to go exploring, so I think that's the overarching message. When you're willing to be creative is you have to back off your current story and be willing to explore a different kind of perspective. And without knowing, if you're going to come up with anything, and where it's going to take your story. >> Right, but exploring is difficult when you basically have no map and no understanding of where you are. >> Right. [LAUGH] >> Or where you've been or where you're going, right? You're sort of starting with the blank- >> Yeah. >> Slate, so how do you get around that? >> Well actually, that's the thing. You don't want to start with a blank slate. I think that's maybe a counter intuitive element here, is you don't want to be throwing darts into a void. >> Right. >> You want to start out by saying well, what is my current perspective? Can I actually turn my attention to articulating and making explicit my current parts, actions, goals, events, self-concept? Because if I can do that, then I know what it is I'm supposed to be changing. >> Right, and so we talked about the idea that it's inevitable that we have perspectives, right? So we just have to understand what that is before we can proceed to change it in some systematic way. >> Yeah, often it's we assume it. We're not necessarily very aware of it, so by simply making ourselves more aware of our current perspective, then we've opened it up for flexible thinking. >> Right, so is there, sort of, one easy way to do that or is this a- >> Yeah, it's funny. So when we looked at the research it seemed as if a lot of people talk as if either there's one thing you do when you're creative. You make distant associations. And then there's another group of people that says, yeah, there's one way to do it. You have to combine things that you've never combined before. >> Right. >> And then there's another group of people that says well, there are 8 billion ways to be creative. Sort of you put socks on your head or you rattle teeth, or whatever. >> Or wear a thinking hat or whatever right. >> [LAUGH] Exactly, there are books of countless techniques to make you creative. But if you peel back all of that it looks as if there are four main cognitive mechanisms or tools for thinking that we can to use to change of perspectives. >> So one is association right? >> Right so clearly we sometimes make associations and draw on associations we've made in the past. And we've also combine, we form combinations of things and merge or blend things together. We also make analogies or metaphors. And then we recategorize, right? We shift something from one category to another. >> Yeah. >> And those four cognitive tools that covers most of the turf for how we change our perspectives. >> Well that's helpful. >> Yeah, so let's go through them, let's start with analogy. >> Analogy is a special form of similarity. The most obvious form of similarity is when one item is just like another. Maybe a, this bicycle is just like that bicycle. Now, a bicycle is not like an elephant, right? So that's a case of dissimilarity. But a line of bicycles has a kind of similarity to a line of elephants. The pattern is consistent, and that's what an analogy is, pattern similarity, rather than similarity on the surface. At this high level, thinking about analogy as a similarity of patterns, we find that some people talk about it as metaphor rather than analogy. That's fine, good metaphors and good analogies are both good because they identify a similarity in patterns. One can be thought as being like another because of some underlying consistency. For example, ignorance is a wall, Is a metaphor that indicates that like a wall, ignorance can be a barrier to progress. >> That analogies and metaphors are dissimilar on the surface makes them hard to spot. For example a bank account doesn't seem much like a bath tub, but just as water flows into a bath tub accumulates and then drains so too can money flow into a bank account, accumulate, and then drain. If the bathtub drain is wide open, then a small flow of water from the faucet won't keep the tub filled. And so it is with bank accounts. If withdrawals are greater than deposits the account balance drops too. Keep pushing on that analogy and you will form an enlightenment. Looking for patterns of stocks and flows is a general way to think about any system. Be it a supply chain, a cell in our bodies or the planet's climate, analogies are useful because they provide us a useful way of thinking about something that we might not otherwise have noticed. >> To experience the effect of analogy on the creative process we can think about a specific problem. For example, let's imagine that we work at a company that sells paper towels. First, let's start with our current perspective. What would the pages include in this situation? Well, without getting into too much detail and just to be illustrative, the parts might include the paper towels themselves, a cardboard tube to wrap them around, and a plastic wrapping to serve as packaging. The actions might include using more or less paper in each roll. Putting more or fewer rolls together in one package. Setting at a price that is higher or lower. Putting particular words and images on the packaging, things like that. The goals might include selling more paper towels. Increasing profit margins on each sale. Increasing market share. The events might include making the paper towels. Consumers buying the paper towels. Consumers using the paper towels. The self concepts might include being a maker of paper towels and being a user of paper towels. Once we've generated some thoughts for the pages then, then a useful process is to consider different aspects from each of the pages in turn. Now one for the parts, later one of our goals and so on. We don't want to get stuck thinking about just one aspect from our perspective. Considering different aspects gives us different starting points for recalling information that might be useful. This is why breaking down our thinking on a problem uses PAGES is a good starting point for creativity. Then for each aspect we can think about possible analogies. For example take the paper towel itself. What is it like? Well, it's a little like toilet paper in that it's paper that comes in a roll and it's perforated to be torn off sheet by sheet. It's also a little bit like a tissue in that it's paper that you use once. Could paper towels come in boxes like tissue so that you can grab one at a time without tearing it of? I don't know. That's a simple little analogy that indicates a simple possible invention. Maybe it's out there somewhere already. Surely there are many other analogies to be found and thinking about the different aspects of PAGES could help us find them. >> Analogies make patterns salient. It's not obvious that a bank account is like a bathtub, it may not even be obvious that a paper towel is like a tissue. Once that's how we're thinking about it though, other interpretations can fade to the background, that is analogies can lead us to take a different perspective. For example, what kinds of solutions might you offer to reduce crime in cities? In a recent study, Lera Boroditsky and Paul Thibodeau demonstrated that we get quite different sets of solutions to a problem depending on which analogies we used to describe urban crime. If urban crime is described as a virus, then the solutions are predominantly shaped around social reforms, such as changing laws. However, if crime is described as a monster in our community, then the solutions focus on dealing with the individuals involved. So taking a different perspective generally leads us to take our stories In different directions and to look for different kinds of resolutions. Analogies by providing shifts and perspective can therefore change which creative products we generate. >> So more generally, how do we find analogies? Well, there are two main ways we know about for finding good analogy. The first is to think more abstractly about our stories. Rather than thinking about, say a bank account in terms of some specific bank and money and fees and everything else, we can think of it more abstractly, as a place to store something until we need it again later. Or, we can think of a bank account as a product offered by a company. Many people actually running banks view it in this way. And that leads to thinking about what other products their customers might want, that banks could be like supermarkets with many products so that there can be one stop shopping for consumers financial needs. To find analogies then, one main approach is to abstract away from the surface elements of your particular story. Those tend to limit you from finding analogies. Instead you want to think about the underlining patterns and where else those patterns might occur. For example, designers, architects, engineers, and others are learning to ask whether nature has already generated a good solution to their problem. How do we lay out solar panels to gather the most energy from the sun? Well, I don't know, how do sunflowers do it? How can buildings shrug off rain and dirt? I don't know, how do leaves do it? And so on and so on. The second way to help find analogies is to talk about your story with different kinds of people. After all, the creative process is about shifting perspectives. There's no need for you to do all the work yourself or to have all the knowledge yourself. It turns out that when we talk to people about our stories we're often pulled away from the minute details that can consume our own thinking. So it helps us to be a bit more abstract. In addition by talking to different kinds of people we're going to think differently about our story because of how we think to communicate to a different kind of person. And further, they will have to come back to us with different knowledge than we have because they're different than we are. all told then, talking about our stories to different kinds of people is a second way to improve our chances at generating an analogy that we can use to change our perspective or to build a new perspective. [MUSIC] Analogy is on the tools we have for thinking beyond our current perspective. We can help ourselves find analogies as part of the creative process and so help ourselves take our stories in new directions and form new products.
