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A review by fbroom
Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas by James L. Adams
3.0
Some ideas here and there, personally I was bored at times
a lot of exercises .. many are group exercises
Notes:
Chapter 1: Introduction
The author’s goal is to make us aware of the creative process, blocks that inhibit it and tricks that we can use to overcome these blocks. Our reaction often to a problem is to get rid of it and quickly throw solutions at it, the author calls it “hit and run”. We do this instead of spending some time to actually understand the problem and solve it correctly
Outline to the rest of the book
Chapter 2-5: Conceptual Blocks (mental walls that block the problem solver)
Chapter 6-7: Techniques are will allow you to overcome these blocks
Chapter 8: Conceptualization: (the process by which one has ideas)
Chapter 9: Blocks to creativity at the organizational level
Final Section, resources/books on creativity
Chapter 2: Perceptual Blocks
- Stereotyping: example: the author believes he can accomplish more wearing a tie
- Difficulty in isolating the problem: people getting rid of the symptoms instead of solving the real problem
-Tendency to Delimit the Problem Area Poorly: example: the classic draw four lines without lifting the pencil. You will never find a solution if you constrain your problem area
- Inability to see the Problem from Various Viewpoints: Vertical vs Lateral thinking
- Saturation: Missing out on details because you’re saturated with the data
- Failure to Utilize all Sensory Inputs
Chapter 3: Emotional Blocks
- Fear of Taking a Risk: One solution is to simply write down the consequences of taking that risk
- No Appetite for Chaos: The inability to tolerate ambiguity
- Judging Rather than Generating Ideas
- Inability or Unwillingness to Incubate: Allow the mind to struggle with the problem, forget about it and then come back to it. Incubation is important
- Lack of Challenge Versus Excessive Zeal
- Reality and Fantasy: You should not only be able to vividly form complete images but to also manipulate them
- Of Flow and Angst: At certain times, you can in be in “Flow” totally consumed with your tasks and at times. How to increase those periods of flow?
Chapter 4: Cultural and Environmental Blocks
Cultural blocks: Taboos, “playfulness is for children only”, problem solving is serious business, reason and logic are good, intuition is not. Tradition is preferable to change.
Environmental blocks: distractions, lack of trust, lack of support.
Many psychologists believe that children are more creative than adults only because adults are more aware of the practical constraints
Chapter 5: Intellectual and Expressive Blocks
- Solving the problem using a different language: sticking to one language instead of trying all three (math/verbal/visual) (folding a paper 50 times game if you use visual imagery instead of math you won’t solve it)
- inadequate using of intellectual problem solving strategies
- lack or incorrect information
- inadequate language skill to express and record ideas
Chapter 6: Alternate Thinking Language
- This chapter stresses on alternating between a verbal, a mathematical and a visual approach to solving problems
- One of the things you can do to enhance your seeing ability is to see things and then draw them
- Visual imagery is both how sharp and filled the details are in your image and the second is control (how well you can manipulate them)
Chapter 7: Kinds of Block Busting
- Maintain a questioning attitude (overcome the block that asking questions will make you look stupid, it’s not)
- Work on the right problem (write the problems and the draw connections between them, sometimes it takes an effort to find the real problem)
- Don’t rely on memory Making, make a list of things
- Many creativity techniques have to do with how we can divert ourselves from accepting the first answer and considering other alternatives. One way is to list all the attributes of the object and under each attribute list all the possible alternatives (Improve a ball-point pen: list all attributes: Cylindrical Plastic .. and so on. Now list under each property the possible alternatives (Square, Beaded …) and (Metal, Glass, Paper ..).
- Often people tend to want to solve a big problem (solving the air pollution problem) instead make a bug list of specific things that are getting in your way everyday, this list will then spark ideas.
- Another type of list making is making a check list of things to try when solving a problem, for mathematics for example this could be (multiply, divide, eliminate, unify … and so on)
- Interacting with other people to get their ideas
- Crossing disciplines, cultures and changing environments
Chapter 8: Groups
Chapter 9: Organizations
Book Recommendations from the author
Books about creativity
Creativity and Beyond by Robert Paul Weiner
The Act of Creation, by Arthur Koestler
The Creative Process, edited by Brewster Ghiselin
The Mathematician's Mind, by Jacques Hadamard
The Double Helix, by James Watson
The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James
The Starship and the Canoe, by Kenneth Brower
The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder
Origins of Genius, by Dean Keith Simonton
Books about thinking
Mindfulness, by Ellen J. Langer
Intelligence, Creativity by J. P. Guilford
Frames of Mind, by Howard Gardner
Breakthrough Creativity, by Lynne Levesque
Books about memory
Don't Forget, by Danielle C. Lapp
Memory, by Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel
Books about psychology
Creativity in Context, by Teresa M. Amabile
Creativity, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
On Creativity and the Unconscious, by Sigmund Freud
Books about the brain
The Brain, by Richard E Thompson
Maps Of The Mind, by C. Hampden Turner
A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman
Creativity in business
The Knowing-Doing Doing Gap, by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
Stream Analysis, by Jerry Porras
jamming, by John Kao
The Wisdom of Teams, by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith
a lot of exercises .. many are group exercises
Notes:
Chapter 1: Introduction
The author’s goal is to make us aware of the creative process, blocks that inhibit it and tricks that we can use to overcome these blocks. Our reaction often to a problem is to get rid of it and quickly throw solutions at it, the author calls it “hit and run”. We do this instead of spending some time to actually understand the problem and solve it correctly
Outline to the rest of the book
Chapter 2-5: Conceptual Blocks (mental walls that block the problem solver)
Chapter 6-7: Techniques are will allow you to overcome these blocks
Chapter 8: Conceptualization: (the process by which one has ideas)
Chapter 9: Blocks to creativity at the organizational level
Final Section, resources/books on creativity
Chapter 2: Perceptual Blocks
- Stereotyping: example: the author believes he can accomplish more wearing a tie
- Difficulty in isolating the problem: people getting rid of the symptoms instead of solving the real problem
-Tendency to Delimit the Problem Area Poorly: example: the classic draw four lines without lifting the pencil. You will never find a solution if you constrain your problem area
- Inability to see the Problem from Various Viewpoints: Vertical vs Lateral thinking
- Saturation: Missing out on details because you’re saturated with the data
- Failure to Utilize all Sensory Inputs
Chapter 3: Emotional Blocks
- Fear of Taking a Risk: One solution is to simply write down the consequences of taking that risk
- No Appetite for Chaos: The inability to tolerate ambiguity
- Judging Rather than Generating Ideas
- Inability or Unwillingness to Incubate: Allow the mind to struggle with the problem, forget about it and then come back to it. Incubation is important
- Lack of Challenge Versus Excessive Zeal
- Reality and Fantasy: You should not only be able to vividly form complete images but to also manipulate them
- Of Flow and Angst: At certain times, you can in be in “Flow” totally consumed with your tasks and at times. How to increase those periods of flow?
Chapter 4: Cultural and Environmental Blocks
Cultural blocks: Taboos, “playfulness is for children only”, problem solving is serious business, reason and logic are good, intuition is not. Tradition is preferable to change.
Environmental blocks: distractions, lack of trust, lack of support.
Many psychologists believe that children are more creative than adults only because adults are more aware of the practical constraints
Chapter 5: Intellectual and Expressive Blocks
- Solving the problem using a different language: sticking to one language instead of trying all three (math/verbal/visual) (folding a paper 50 times game if you use visual imagery instead of math you won’t solve it)
- inadequate using of intellectual problem solving strategies
- lack or incorrect information
- inadequate language skill to express and record ideas
Chapter 6: Alternate Thinking Language
- This chapter stresses on alternating between a verbal, a mathematical and a visual approach to solving problems
- One of the things you can do to enhance your seeing ability is to see things and then draw them
- Visual imagery is both how sharp and filled the details are in your image and the second is control (how well you can manipulate them)
Chapter 7: Kinds of Block Busting
- Maintain a questioning attitude (overcome the block that asking questions will make you look stupid, it’s not)
- Work on the right problem (write the problems and the draw connections between them, sometimes it takes an effort to find the real problem)
- Don’t rely on memory Making, make a list of things
- Many creativity techniques have to do with how we can divert ourselves from accepting the first answer and considering other alternatives. One way is to list all the attributes of the object and under each attribute list all the possible alternatives (Improve a ball-point pen: list all attributes: Cylindrical Plastic .. and so on. Now list under each property the possible alternatives (Square, Beaded …) and (Metal, Glass, Paper ..).
- Often people tend to want to solve a big problem (solving the air pollution problem) instead make a bug list of specific things that are getting in your way everyday, this list will then spark ideas.
- Another type of list making is making a check list of things to try when solving a problem, for mathematics for example this could be (multiply, divide, eliminate, unify … and so on)
- Interacting with other people to get their ideas
- Crossing disciplines, cultures and changing environments
Chapter 8: Groups
Chapter 9: Organizations
Book Recommendations from the author
Books about creativity
Creativity and Beyond by Robert Paul Weiner
The Act of Creation, by Arthur Koestler
The Creative Process, edited by Brewster Ghiselin
The Mathematician's Mind, by Jacques Hadamard
The Double Helix, by James Watson
The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James
The Starship and the Canoe, by Kenneth Brower
The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder
Origins of Genius, by Dean Keith Simonton
Books about thinking
Mindfulness, by Ellen J. Langer
Intelligence, Creativity by J. P. Guilford
Frames of Mind, by Howard Gardner
Breakthrough Creativity, by Lynne Levesque
Books about memory
Don't Forget, by Danielle C. Lapp
Memory, by Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel
Books about psychology
Creativity in Context, by Teresa M. Amabile
Creativity, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
On Creativity and the Unconscious, by Sigmund Freud
Books about the brain
The Brain, by Richard E Thompson
Maps Of The Mind, by C. Hampden Turner
A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman
Creativity in business
The Knowing-Doing Doing Gap, by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
Stream Analysis, by Jerry Porras
jamming, by John Kao
The Wisdom of Teams, by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith