One way to accelerate the flow of new ideas is by challenging yourself--that is, by putting yourself in difficult situations in which you're likely to fail to some extent. A challenging situation is like an "extinction" procedure in the behavioral laboratory. We extinguish behavior when we withdraw the reinforcers that usually maintain that behavior. In challenging situations, a great deal of behavior goes unreinforced; it just doesn't work.
When a behavior is unsuccessful, typically it gets weaker. We feel frustrated and upset, and, most important for creativity, there is a "resurgence" of behaviors that used to be effective. We begin trying out every other behavior that ever worked for us in the past under similar conditions. That gets many behaviors competing vigorously, which greatly enhances the generative process. (Our feelings of frustration and confusion are largely byproducts of this stiff competition.)
Say you start to turn a door knob that has always turned easily It won't budge. At first, you start to turn the knob harder; then perhaps you pull up on the knob or push it down. Then maybe you wiggle it. Eventually, you shove the door with your shoulder or kick it with your foot. What you do will depend on your history with doors. Eventually, you'll shout for help--maybe even call out for "mommy," even if your mother is no longer among the living.
It's possible to take advantage of this robust process to spur creativity For example, from time to time we can give students and employees open-ended problems to solve--problems that have an infinite number of solutions. Rather than saying, "Please give me three names for our company's new widget," try saying, "Please give me as many names as possible for the widget." You'll get two or three times as many proposals from which to make a final selection.
"Ultimate problems"--challenging problems that have no solution--can also be used to accelerate creative output. With children or friends or colleagues, try spending 15 minutes a week solving one of these:
o You have 24 hours in which to bring about world peace. How do you do it?
o You have one year in which to clean up all of the pollution on earth and make sure that people never pollute the planet again. What's your plan?
o Aging is a real drag. Eliminate it.
You shouldn't expect to find a real solution, but you'll certainly stimulate a lot of interesting new ideas. This is an example of using a "controlled failure system"--a structured challenge that makes people feel reasonably safe to stimulate new ideas without causing those annoying myocardial infarctions.
Do we really want to place ourselves in situations in which we know we're going to feel frustrated and confused? Emphatically, yes! If you're feeling frustrated, you're in the company of the greatest poets, composers, and inventors of all time, and, more likely than not, you're on the verge of a new idea. Failure is not something to fear; properly managed, it's a great wellspring of creativity
BROADENING
Here's a deceptively simple fact: for repertoires of behavior to contribute to the generative process, they must first exist. In other words, the more training you have and the more diverse that training is, the greater the potential for creative output. Letting kids float around a classroom from one "activity center" to another is not the way to go; when we're on our own, we gravitate toward a very narrow range of learning opportunities. The creative process is spurred on by multiple well-established repertoires of behavior. Traditional, structured, aggressive methods of teaching and training have special value in laying a foundation for creativity
A contradiction? Didn't I say that first-grade teachers were monsters who stifled creativity by doing too much teaching? The problem with traditional education is not that it teaches diverse subjects or subjects that lack apparent utility; the problem is that it doesn't allocate any time and training for creativity as such. Kids need to learn things that they don't want to learn--not just to become good citizens, but also to become more creative people.
If you want to enhance your own creativity, take courses in subjects you know nothing about. Once a year, at least, take a course at a local college in the last thing you'd ever want to know about. Land's own breakthrough invention came about because of training he had in crystallography, chemistry, and other fields. The invention of Velcro, the modern theory of electron spin, and countless other advances were made possible because their creators had training in diverse fields.
SURROUNDING
Finally, you can enhance your creativity by surrounding yourself with diverse stimuli--and, even more important, by changing those stimuli regularly Diverse and changing stimuli promote creativity because, like resurgence, they get multiple behaviors competing with each other. If you put a Mickey Mouse hat and pliers on your desk in the morning, your thinking will move in odd directions during the day Call these items distractions, if you like; they are great reservoirs of creativity.
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