THE CREATIVE SEQUENCE: 'The Mother of All Wealth Building', as envisioned by Dilip Mukerjea

'The Creative Sequence', which represents Dilip Mukerjea's elaborate 8-stage creative thinking process has been featured earlier in this weblog, together with the 'Lifescape of the Creative Sequence', which is his graphic rendition of the process.

What braindancing masetro has done here, as shown in the foregoing, is a consolidated splashmap of the two features on one single page.

Also, following the ongoing evolution of his consulting work in recent years, the creative thinking process has now taken centrepiece in the whole concept of wealth building.

As Napoleon Hill,  author of the cult classics,  'Law of Success' and 'Think and Grow Rich', has so aptly put it:

"All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginnings in an idea."

and, in a nut shell, creative thinking is thus, in fact, the "Mother of All Wealth Building".

To recap what I had mentioned earlier in this weblog, money in your hands is essentially a function of the creative thinking process.

To put it bluntly, if you want to put money in your hands, change your thinking. As a matter of fact, I believed this is precisely the stance taken by cash flow guru Robert Kiyosaki.

As illustrated in the splashmap, the Creative Sequence, has 8 important stages in the thinking process, and the braindancing maestro has already outlined the salients aspects of each stage:

1. Intake;
2. Cogitate;
3. Generate;
4. Debate;
5. Incubate;
6. Create;
7. Activate;
8. Celebrate;

What I want to do in this post, as well as subsequent posts, is to build on and amplify some of the salient aspects, as follows:

1) INTAKE:

We are sentient beings, and live in a luxury world of sensory impressions - sights, sounds, smells, tastes, etc. - which form the basis of our productive thoughts.

Much of the discoveries and inventions of today have their origins in pedestrian observations. That's to say opportunities are in fact everywhere, but the crux of the matter is whether we see them as they are.

That's why I have always maintained that perceptual sensitivity to the world at large is a very important skill for all of us to acquire and develop in order to thrive in today's rapidly-changing world.

Interestingly, even the great Renaissance maestro Leonardo da vinci (1452-1519), had talked about it many many years ago, since his power of observation was legendary:

"... for the development of a complete mind... develop your senses, especially learn how to see... "

Internationally renowned creativity guru Dr Edward de bono said it best:

"Everyone is surrounded by opportunities. But they only exist once they have been seen. And they will only be seen if they are looked for."

"The reasons that many opportunities pass us by is a perceptual one - we do not recognise an opportunity for what it is. An opportunity exists only when we see it."

He has offered the following expert advice, but stopped short of detailed elaboration:

1) Decide to spend some time and effort in a deliberate and systematic search for opportunities;

[My recomendations: Read Dr Edward de bono's 'Opportunities': A Handbook of Business Opportunity Search', and strategy consultant Michel Robert’s ‘Innovation Formula’ for exact methods of initiating and implementing a deliberate opportunity search process.]

2) Use a scan approach which allow you to broaden the direction of search instead of being too eager to pursue one direction in depth;

[My recommendations: Read innovation strategist Wayne Burkan's 'Wide Angle Vision’, as well as consultants George Day and Paul Shoemaker’s ‘Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals that will Make or Break Your Company’. Both books offer very good suggestions.]

3) When something comes into your view, make an effort to look at it in many different ways;

[My recommendations: Herbert Leff’s ‘Playful Perception: Choosing How to Experience Your World’ is a good book to explore this perspective, where as ‘The Private Eye: A Guide to Developing the Interdisciplinary Mind’ by Kerry Ruef, is worthwhile, too.]

4) Spend some time on a deliberate search for benefits in a situation instead of always expecting the benefits to be self-evident;

[My recommendations: entrepreneur Art Turock's 'Invent Business Opportunities No One Else Can Imagine', shares many interesting as well as refreshing insights, especially from the standpoint of business development.]

Nonetheless, Dr Edward de bono has zero-ed in on what he has termed as "idea-sensitive areas", as follows:

- high cost areas: process bottlenecks; and others in terms of money, time, people involvement, unrelaibility, fault densiy, personal friction, boredom, risk and responsibility;

- specific problem areas that require solutions;

- further development areas, where improvement is an ongoing process;

- emotional target areas, based on emotional feeling or hunch;

- general, where one can start thinking about an area with the view of using the thinking as lead to an opportunity;

Dilip is absolutely right on the ball when he singles out the infinite stimuli coming from Mother Nature, from which we can analyse her attributes, especially from the standpoint of creative thinking to spark off ideas and insights

It is true that Mother Nature has always been modern technology's first teacher.

Man's continuing conquest of powered flight today with the latest Airbus 380 and Boeing 777 has its origins from the study of birds in natural flight. So, are today's nuclear submarines that can submerge below the Polar cap for extended periods. Thanks to deep-sea marine animals.

Likewise, the basic stuff that goes into silicon chips comes from sand. 

Without Alexander Graham Bell's early exposure to understanding how the human ear works, we probably will still be using smoke signals for communications.

Even architect F Buckminster Fuller, widely known as planet earth's friendly genius, owed his design and development of the geodesic domes, which have to date given shelter to millions across the globe, to the eye of the common house-fly.

The tunnelling machines, which were used to build the underground network for Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit System, owed its pioneering design and development to Sir  Marc Isambard Brunel (1769-1849), a French-born engineer who had settled in the United Kingdom.

Interestingly, Brunel had found the inspiration for his tunnelling shield from observing the tunnelling habits of the ship worm, "teredo navalis", a pest that ate the wooden hulls of ships.

[to be continued in the Next Post]

RAPID RECAP: THE CREATIVE SEQUENCE

[Excerpted from the 'Igniting Innovation' edition of 'The Braindancer Series' of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. Please refer to an earlier post in this weblog.]

THE CREATIVE SEQUENCE

[Extracted from the 'Optimum Performance Technologies' weblog.]

Let's take a quick look at how the creative process has evolved over the years.

In a nut shell, the creative process is generally viewed as a logical patterned sequence of steps or stages through which we move on to define, clarify & work on a problem, & then produce a solution to that problem.

Way back to the 1920s, I remember that psychologist Graham Wallas had formally pinned down the process to 4 primary steps or stages, as follows:

1) Preparation - defining the issue, observing & studying;

2) Incubation - laying the issue aside;

3) Illumination - the moment when a new idea finally emerges;

4) Verification - checking it out;

Then, in the 1950s, advertising executive Alex Osborn, who coined "brainstorming", expanded the process to 7 steps or stages:

1) Orientation - pointing out the problem;

2) Preparation - getting pertinent data;

3) Analysis - breaking down the relevant material;

4) Ideation - piling up alternatives by way of ideas;

5) Incubation - letting up, inviting illumination;

6) Synthesis - putting the pieces together;

7) Evaluation - judging resulting ideas;

Towards the early seventies, Alex Osborn apparently teamed up with educator Sidney Parnes to found the Creative Education Foundation, which then systematised the process as follows, which eventually evolved as the well-known CPS process:

1) Objective Finding - identifying goal, wish or challenge;

2) Fact Finding - gathering data;

3) Problem Finding - clarifying problem;

4) Idea Finding - generating ideas;

5) Solution Finding - selecting & strengthening solutions;

6) Acceptance Finding - planning activities;

Since then, I have learned that many creativity researchers as well as creativity consultants have come out with their own variations, but it seems that the basic CPS methodology has always remain intact.

One good example is Min Basadur, who wrote 'Simplex: A Flight to Creativity', among other books. He has outlined his complete methodology under four phases:

1) Generation (of new problems and opportunities);

2) Conceptualization (defining & understanding the challenges, & creating new, potentially useful ideas);

3) Optimization (of practical solutions);

4) Implementation (of the new solutions);even though it still adheres to the principal steps of the original CPS methodology.

The breakdown of steps looks like this:

1) Initial scan - problem finding;

2) Gathering facts - fact finding;

3) Defining problem -problem defining;

4) Generate solutions - idea finding;

5) Evaluate solutions - evaluating & selecting;

6) Plan action - action planning;

7) Gain acceptance - gaining acceptance from stakeholders;

8) Take action - taking action steps;

9) Evaluate action - monitoring progress & evaluating results;

Another example is Paul Plsek, who wrote 'Creativity, Innovation & Quality', with his synthesis model, designated as 'Directed Creativity', comprising also four phases:

1) Preparation:

2) Imagination:

3) Development:

4) Action:

which in turn is broken down into the follow steps as he describes it:

"We live everyday in the same world as everyone else, but creative thinking begins with careful observation of that world coupled with thoughtful analysis of how things work and fail. These mental processes create a store of concepts in our memories. Using this store, we generate novel ideas to meet specific needs by actively searching for associations among concepts. Seeking the balance between satisficing and premature judgment, we then harvest and further enhance our ideas before we subject them to a final, practical evaluation. But, it is not enough just to have creative thoughts; ideas have no value until we put in the work to implement them. Every new idea that is put into practice (that is, every innovation) changes the world we live in, which re-starts the cycle of observation and analysis."

In reality, I have observed that all the subsequent methodologies in use today or in most ongoing creativity training programs still more or less resonate with the original model as conceived by Graham Wallas.

One thing we should all be very clear about is that the creative process begins with deliberate preparation & ends with critical evaluation, prior to planned implementation.

The complete cycle therefore reaffirms that both creative, imaginative & analytical, logical thinking processes are needed.

More importantly, the total creative process requires a drive to action & the implementation of ideas.

We must do more than simply imagine new ideas, we must work consistently to make them concrete realities.

My good friend, Dilip Mukerjea, Learning Chef & Braindancer, writing in a recent subscription issue of his 'The Braindancer Series' of bookazines, shares his version of the creative sequence, with a little twist:

Step 1: INTAKE

Use Nature's attributes to get started. Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Observe the workings of Nature, & study the behaviour of plants & animals: they lead to ideas & to breakthrough solutions.

Step 2: COGITATE

Use Nature's infinite stimuli, think about possibilities. Suspend judgement. Let your mind play with the concepts of making strange familiar, & the familiar, strange.

Step 3: GENERATE

Having prepared your mind, start generating ideas. Go for quantity; quality will emerge from quantity. Don't analyse or priorities. Just let the dam burst! Capture your ideas in hard copy by writing & drawing.

Step 4: DEBATE

Dialogue & debate your outpourings with colleagues, friends, family & diverse members of society. Agree to disagree, wherever relevant. The divergent outbursts from Step 3 could now converge to help you focus on probabilities.

Step 5: INCUBATE

Sleep on it! Do not hard focus on your ideas. Let your subconscious play with possibilities. Your analysis through debate in the preceding step, will metamorphose into a synthesis for concepts to emerge in fuller form.

Step 6: CREATE

This is where ideas become inventions: the pathway from concept to creation.

Step 7: ACTIVATE

Prototype your creations, fine tune them via experimentation, then let them loose in accordance with your well-designed business model!

Step 8: CELEBRATE

Rejoice! You have now conquered the challenge of having moved from concept to cash! Innovation is ablaze!

It is pertinent to point out that the first two steps are preparatory steps for the mind to open to new ideas & fresh insights, by making analogies, with Mother Nature as our best teacher!

Here's a lifescape of the creative sequence created by Dilip Mukerjea.