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Explore the power of collaboration and insight in creative problem solving. Learn about the five stages of the collaborative process and discover how sparks of creativity can lead to innovative solutions.
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A Small Spark By Christian Grondin And Andrew Heineck
The Inklings • J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis both wrote great stories. • Neither were particularly good writers. • Formed a group with other known writers. • Brought segments of their works and presented, giving constructive feedback. • The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia were written during these sessions.
The First Cash Machine • John Reed came up with idea for street level cash machines and wireless credit cards. • Came up with the idea on a beach holiday while he was thinking about the company. • This led to blueprint for idea. • “Reed’s spark came when he was alone and away from the office” • These ideas allowed Citibank to become the lead customer bank for the next decade.
The Five Basic Stages • Psychologists discovered 5 stages to describe the collaborative process: • Preparation: This involves a period of working hard, studying the problem, and talking o everyone else working on it. • Time off: the team members change context and engages in other activities, often in conversation with others. • The Spark: During the time off, a solution appears, but that solution is deeply embedded in the knowledge and social interactions of the preparation and time-off phases, and it builds on sparks that others have had.
The Five Basic Stages 4. Selection: An “Aha!” feeling doesn’t always mean that an idea is good. Creative people are very good at selecting the best ideas for follow-up, or they collaborate with others in selecting them. 5. Elaboration: Working out the idea typically requires a lot of additional ideas. Bringing them all together always requires social interaction and collaboration.
Bottema’s Mirrors • Hubble Telescope launched into orbit with faulty mirrors. • Project required 1000’s of scientists and engineers, and government would not pay for a new telescope. • NASA’s experts got together for a last ditch effort to save the project. • Bottema came up with idea to place 10 coin-sized mirrors that corrected the image, but couldn’t install them.
Crocker’s Spark • Jim Crocker (engineer) had been studying the problem around the clock. • He was in the shower when he noticed the shower head was mounted on adjustable rods. • He could picture the mirrors on it, which caused his spark. • After this, a long elaboration stage took place to apply this concept to ten mirrors in the telescope (5300 parts)
Thinking Outside the Box • The “Aha!” moment was explained by Karl Duncker. • He believed that some problems could only be solved so quickly that it could not be the result of incremental reasoning. • He proved it by asking subjects a series of twenty questions. • First, subjects were drawn to one incorrect solution, and had to break free of it in order to see the correct answer.
Metcalfe • Janet Metcalfe (psychologist), an expert in metacognition, wanted to take another look at how the brain works when it solves a problem. • She pressed a clicker every 15 seconds so the subjects would right down how close they thought they were to a solution. • For Algebra problems, they got steadily warmer. • For insight problems, they kept feeling cold until they figured out the answer.
Weisberg • Weisberg believed, unlike Duncker, that experience helped solving insight problems. • “You have to know how to think outside the box.” • Hints didn’t help, so they trained the subjects by making them draw lines outside of triangles. • When presented with hints, subjects process them better after seeing the problem.
How Duncker was Wrong • Past experiences does not block creativity. They help eliminate false assumptions. • Breaking out of the fixation does not result in immediate insight. That requires prior expertise. • Priming one’s mind with prior training helps immensly.
Confabulation • People forget how their insights came about. • Maier put two ropes in a room, each hanging from the ceiling, such that subjects couldn’t hold the end of one and reach the end of the other. • Asked to come up with solutions. • For the fourth solution, Meyer would hint by purposefully walking into rope as he walked across the room. • This gave the subjects a moment of insight that they would not have discovered independently.
How Insight Emerges • This is a step-by-step (linear) process, conscious or unconscious. • People steadily got to a solution, even if they felt cold up until the moment of insight. • Even though Reed and Crocker were far away from others when they had their creative sparks, collaboration played a part in creating the ideas that they put together.
Test Question What are the five stages of the collaborative process?
Problem- just for fun • You have two ropes • They burn at inconsistent rates (that is, they burn faster along some segments of the ropes, slower at others) • They burn for exactly 30 minutes each. • You don’t have a stop watch. • How do you get them to burn for 45 minutes?
