Creative Ideas by Stepping Out of The Stream

Chapter 2 excerpt from The Power of Thinking Differently by Javy W. Galindo

Though we may immerse ourselves in a diversity of ideas, another observer on our tour may note that it is often our own rigidity in thought and behavior that prevents us from truly entering the intersection. In other words, the accumulation of knowledge can help with creativity, but is useless unless we are able to synthesize it in unique ways. For example, no matter how many areas of study we participate in, it is only by letting go of our dominant perceptions of a hammer that we can make new associations, such as realizing its potential as a garlic crusher, percussion instrument, or fly swatter – though I do not advocate the latter.

It is in this spirit that creativity speaker Ernie Zelinski believes that being creative is the key to living in a changing world.

Creative people are flexible people. Taoism extols the virtue of flexibility. What survives on earth is what effortlessly adapts to the changing environment and changing circumstances. Your flexibility will help you change plans in midstream, respond to the unexpected at a moment’s notice, or rearrange a schedule without experiencing emotional turmoil.12

Perceiving the world with fresh eyes can often make one more flexible and less bound by dominant ideas within a particular field. In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn notes, “almost always the men who achieve…fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.”13 For instance, it was an artist named Samuel Morse that invented the telegraph, while an accountant designed the Coca-Cola logo. This goes to show that expertise does not always lend itself to creativity, and that novice perspectives may be more insightful that we think.

So while the previous perspective described the creative process as the stepping into a stream of intersecting ideas, the natural converse to this notion articulates the creative process as the stepping out of a stream. While the intersection model emphasizes entering into new connections of ideas, this stepping out model emphasizes exiting out of firmly engrained beliefs, paradigms, and perceptions. As a result, it is often referred to as, divergent, breakthrough, out-of-the-box, or lateral thinking.

The later term was made famous by psychology professor Edward de Bono. Lateral is meant to contrast logical, straight ahead, brute force linear thought that he terms vertical. Instead of approaching a problem through the use of familiar concepts, lateral thinking requires that a person explore new and unconventional ideas and perspectives. Lateral thinking refers to following a path of inquiry that veers off from the more common, predominant path; one that looks for a new angle of entry to a solution. It is best epitomized by the notion that it is not possible to look in a different direction by looking harder in the same direction.14

The intersection and lateral thinking models are really two sides of the same coin. Stepping into a stream of intersecting ideas often requires that we step out of old ones. However, in addition to generating new ideas in general, books pertaining to the stepping out model often specifically refer to it as a process for problem solving; especially solving nonlinear problems where logical deduction must be bypassed in order to find a solution. Mathematician and researcher David Perkins refer to these types of problems as rompecabezas, which in Spanish means head breakers.15 He presents the following example.

Someone brings an old coin to a museum director and offers it for sale. The coin is stamped “540 B.C.E.” Instead of considering the purchase, the museum director calls the police. Why?16

By stepping into the intersection we may be able to think of several possible reasons why the museum director called the police. But, lateral thinking emphasizes stepping out of our dominant stream of thought and wading through these possibilities in order to find solutions that breaks through our common perceptions. The solution is to making sense in a way that was not initially apparent, and provides an aha moment of clarity similar to the haha moments of understanding the punch line to a joke. In the case of this coin rompecabeza, a cognitive snap of clarity may occur if one were to realize that any coin made prior to the birth of Christ would not know to reference his birth.

Perkins describes this creative process with the analogy of panning for gold in the Klondike.17 There are seemingly lots of possible solutions to these problems, just as there is lots of ground to cover in the Klondike. Also, we often limit what we think is possible due to preconceptions and past experience, just as the those panning for gold often limit their exploration to a small area due to past success there. But it is only by thinking beyond our common perceptions that a musician can find a new sound, the dancer can find a new movement, the community organizer can find a new solution to a community problem, and the engineer can debug an elusive design flaw.

It is only by venturing out into the unknown that you may find what you currently do not know.

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