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Thinking tools

By Debbie Carter (March 2008 Issue)
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Last month, we started to examine ways of making connections between seemingly unrelated concepts or ideas. We continue that theme this month by looking at two more exercises designed to help us make the creative connections necessary for innovative thinking.

We start with a game called Bridge, which explores how you move from one item to another by looking for common features, shared concepts or some other similarity. The aim is to arrange a ‘bridge’ between two chosen ends.

Obtain five random words and select two of them to form the ends of the bridge. Arrange the remaining three to form the bridge connecting each word. For each link in the bridge, describe the basis of the connection with the next one. Remember that, to make as secure a bridge as possible, you can experiment with the selection and order of the end and linking words.

EXAMPLE The five random words are pants; password; committee; aspirin, and coffin.

Your immediate thoughts might be: ‘aspirin’ and ‘coffin’ as the end words with the links as follows: ‘aspirin’ to ‘committee’ involves headaches; ‘committee’ to ‘pants’ is usually male dominated; ‘pants’ to ‘password’ is recognition among males; ‘password’ to ‘coffin’ as death gives everyone the password to the next life.

Further thoughts may well produce another construction: bridge ends of ‘committee’ and ‘aspirin’; ‘committee’ to ‘coffin’ lots of dead-weights in a committee; ‘coffin’ to ‘pants’ represents a need to cover up; ‘pants’ to ‘password’ could be a special window for use and, finally, ‘password’ to ‘aspirin’ to unlock inflammatory responses.

You can use the same set of words but try different ends to the bridge, or change the middle connecting words, or try with six or seven random words.

The second exercise is similar to the Bridge but it is more difficult because the type of connection is fixed in advance. The link from one random word to the next has to be defined at the start. Possible links or connections are: concepts, functions, values, associations and utility.

EXAMPLE The chosen link type is concepts and the five random words are net; cup; sandals; ham, and aluminium.

You might choose to start with ‘aluminium’ and, with the concept of structural support, lead to ‘sandal’; from ‘sandal’, using concept of human convenience, move to ‘cup’; using the concept of container, progress to ‘net’ and, using the connection to fishing net and the concept of eating, move to the final word ‘ham’.

A second option might be by using the word ‘ham’ as a human design and move to ‘sandals’; from there, the concept would be open design, so the following word would be ‘net’; it is a tension structure so we move to ‘aluminium’ and, taking the concept of light and strong, we arrive at the final word ‘cup’.You can vary the game by using a different link with the same words.

Remember:

The use of creativity is the best way to develop the mental skills and habits of creative thinking, and to improve those skills you need to practice. Here are some essentials to remember when carrying out the exercises.

  • There is no need for a time limit to the exercises or games
  • Avoid simple similarities based on letters, spelling and so on.
  • There is no one ‘right answer’; any answer that fits the stated requirements of the exercise is equally valid.

These exercises are taken from How to have Creative Ideas: 62 exercises to develop the mind, Edward de Bono, Vermilion, 2007. For further information on the work of the De Bono Foundation UK visit www.debonofoundation.co.uk

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