The Creativity Cycle.

How do we become creative? How does cognitive (or technical creativity) come about? The answer is that there are no "set in stone" rules, procedures or guidelines for creativity. There is not a set of algorithms for creativity. However, we can use a set of informal procedures for creative thinking. (Please read the earlier blog posts on creativity and creative thinking).  The informal procedures are as following:

The Creativity Cycle.

1. Research and data gathering: This is the preliminary stage of learning about the problem to be solved. When we have a problem to be solved that others have experienced; we should research to see what others have done before to resolve the same problem This prevents from "reinventing the wheel" so to speak. We do not waste time coming up with the same set of solutions that already exist to the same problem. In the case of unresolved problems, it still does not matter. Research into various existing approaches should be gathered and examined for their strengths and weaknesses. Research should seek as many approaches and solutions without worrying too much about their relevance to the problem at hand. This is because in creative thinking, we must be open to ideas from various sources. Some things that we can do are:

• collect any relevant information from scientific or technical sources or experts.
• study the history of the problem. That is, the origins and the course of events that the problem has taken.
• perform case studies of the people who have dealt with similar problems.
• give deep though to analogous situations.
• discuss with people who are involved in the problem resolution endeavour.

2. Explore the connections between ideas. The data or information gathered from the first stage is examined in order to find connections between ideas. The ideas that have been collected or while the data or information is being collected, they must be examined and reflected upon. This is in order to develop a hierarchy of rank of importance of the different pieces information. In this way, special connections between ideas can be identified. Creativity , in essence,  is borrowing ideas from one field and applying it to another. We have to be persistent and spend extended periods of time in order to sustain a lot of different ideas in the mind, some of these ideas will be held in the background while others might enter into the unconscious thinking process.

3. Relax and wait. As stated in the previous paragraph, because of our persistence in thinking and holding many thoughts in our minds, we should pull back and divert our minds to some other issue. Ideas can come in many ways. They can come from viewing a television program, while having  shower or reading an article about an unrelated matter. It will  be very good to do something that relaxes the mind and body. We could even forget about the less important ideas so that focus can be on the more important ones. In this way the more important issues will surface to the top. Time allows for the gestation of ideas. If we cannot think of anything , then further research can be conducted.

4. Apply, review and follow-up. Once new ideas have surfaced we need to examine them in order to be sure that they can solve the problem. We can think of ways to further improve the ideas and how best to implement them. Successful solutions and the the entire creativity process should be reviewed so that we can do better later on.