‘idea creativity’
December 17, 2010 by admin
Classic de Bono Message – first published 15th December 2003
I continue to be amazed that so many people do not understand the ‘logical’ basis of creativity.
Essentially this is the behaviour of information in self-organising systems that inevitably form asymmetric patterns. All this is laid out in several of my books. Whenever I talk to audiences of top physicists and mathematicians they are full of agreement. There is no mystique. Yet serious people still treat creativity as some mysterious event about which nothing can be done except wait for it to happen.
I am writing here about ‘idea creativity’ not about artistic creativity. Once again we have the usual failure of language to distinguish between the two. That is why it was necessary to create the term ‘lateral thinking’.
I applaud this – which I receive as the reflection and reinforcement of the requirement for better communication – leading to better understanding and therefore thinking. Many appear to spend (or is it waste) their significant intellect deciphering rather than applying their creative knowledge, skills and abilities instead of actually resolving problems, converting challenges into solutions and action plans, playing with the rules and regulations that we humans have duplicated across our existence, reducing the coincidence of an actual solution converted to be productive. And this is none-so-the case than with respect to mature individuals who have been ‘retired’. What a depth of creative solution finding has settled in that particular pot. So yes, let’s treat creativity as without mystery event, without event, as an ability with which the majority of us were born but which still labours under the cloud of perceived misconception and misinterpretation. WE can do whatever we are prepared to take responsibility for – and it takes us all – just one voice is OK but it takes togetherness to actually get things done, so that we can have the designed future about which we, as a group, envision. And it will take leadership and good management by trained thinkers to turn this particular vessel about, to sail against the wind which blows upon us all. Our destination will be determined by how we set the sail….and the sale.