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Creativity in Science and Engineering (copyright 1998, Ronald B. Sandler) is an excellent overview of creativity in general and the current status of industrial management of creativity as a resource. Mr. Sandler discusses "some of the personality traits associated with unusual creativity and innovation" and suggests: "The way to increase the productivity of creative people is simple: give them resources (time, equipment, money) and stand out of their way!" He looks at "how creativity occurs," "the managment of creativity," "issues in education of creative students," and "Sternberg's theory of creativity." |
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| What is Creativity? presents the work of researchers including Robert E. Franken (Human Motivation), Robert W. Weisberg (Creativity -- Beyond the Myth of Genius), and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Creativity -- Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention). Mr. Franken notes "Tests of creativity measure not only the number of alternatives that people can generate but the uniqueness of those alternatives. The ability to generate alternatives or to see things uniquely does not occur by chance: it is linked to other, more fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or unpredictability, and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown." |
| Dimensions of Creativity (UCLA Course Syllabus). "Extraordinary accomplishments have fascinated people over centuries. There is an abundance of explanations, theories, and myths trying to decipher the origin and nature of creativity. One instrumental goal of this course is to gain an overview of a number of different theoretical approaches (i.e., psychometric, biological, cognitive, developmental, contextual, and computational)." Syllabus contains extensive bibliography on creativity research, including references such as Boden, Csikszentmihalyi, Perkins, Sternberg, and Weisberg. Good resource. |
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Analogies from 2D to 3D Exercises in Disciplined Creativity. Berkeley computer science professor Carlo H. Sequin observes that "human creativity relies to a large part on our ability to recognize and match patterns, to transpose patterns to different domains, and to find analogies in new domains to new facts in old domain." He asks: Where does creativity come from?" and "What is good design?" and discusses the role of pattern-recognition and pattern-transposition in progressing from two-dimensional drawings to three-dimensional models." How Do Creative Thinking Techniques Work? and Free Brainstorming Training, tutorials published by the British Brainstorming.co look at "how new ideas happen" and posits that "creative thinking is all about merging two previously uncombined thoughts, products, or processes." Free training offers ideas and practice in "how to brainstorm," "rules of brainstorming," "principles of brainstorming," and "advanced brainstorming tools." Creativity Techniques. "[Lists] a number of creativity techniques to help with creative thinking. Like most tools these creativity techniques all have their good and bad points. I like to think of these creativity techniques as tools in a toolbox in much the same way as my toolbox at home for DIY. It has a saw, spanner, hammer, knife and all sorts of other things in it, they are all very useful, but you have to pick the right tool (creativity technique) for each job. We will try and provide a little guidance along with each tool to let you know whether it's best used for cutting paper or putting in nails." |
| Want to know more? Search Amazon.com for books about creativity and other interesting subjects. | |
| Visit Web Mystery Magazine for articles, columns, and reviews by best-selling mystery & true-crime writers. |
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| "Oh!
What a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive."
Sir Walter Scott |
