In common with other writers, designers, and artists, I have always been fascinated by the creative process itself. I watch documentaries about Leonardo da Vinci, the Disney Imagineers, or the divine Bjork, always hoping that I’ll find the “magic key” to their inventiveness.
It seems there are two camps of creators. One group, the Instinctuals, have spontaneous access to their imagination at all times. Robin Williams, for example, could do long stand-up comedy “riffs” and wild improvisations.
Surrealist painters like Leonora Carrington generate images onto canvas directly from their dreamworld.
The other group, the Methodicals, have to work more deliberately, relying on techniques that help crack open their Unconscious.
In the ‘70s, David Bowie would cut up sentences from the newspaper, and then assemble them randomly to “find” new song lyrics. (Later in the ‘90s, he hired a programmer to create “Verbasizer” software for this task.)
To break out of mental ruts, Einstein would conduct “thought experiments,” such as imagining himself traveling on a beam of light, to give him fresh perspectives on physics problems.
I’m an engineer by training and temperament — logical analysis and formal procedures are my default operating mode. I’ve always admired people who create spontaneously and take great leaps of imagination, but I seem to be incapable of that feat.
So to invent anything new, I have to adopt methodical techniques that get me out of habitual mental patterns. For that I rely on Lateral Thinking procedures.
In 1967 the psychologist Edward de Bono published his landmark book The Use of Lateral Thinking. The point of Lateral Thinking is to break out of “mental ruts” that people get stuck in, due to our attachment to conventional patterns.
In order to create anything new, we need tools that deliberately break us out of our habituated thinking patterns.
Lateral Thinking offered a deliberate formal process for generating “crazy” ideas to stimulate creative invention. These procedures are especially helpful for analytical thinkers like myself.
The primary tool that de Bono recommended was called “Po.” He coined this new word as an abbreviation of Provocative Operator, and because the po syllable fit within kindred words such as Possibility, Potentiality, Hypothesis, and Poetry.
The function of Po is to break current mental patterns and stimulate alternate perspectives.
You deliberately use a random, crazy, maybe impossible, “seed concept” as the stepping-stone to a more useful idea. You withhold any judgement of the Po Seed temporarily, to see whether it can take you in new directions.
Po: What if… we lived in a world where, for a month every year, medical doctors and sanitation workers exchanged jobs?
In such a world, doctors would certainly get a better perspective on public hygiene. Sanitation workers might have useful ideas for improving the way that hospitals could improve infection control.
The seed idea may be crazy, but it’s just the stepping-stone to new perspectives.
Earlier this week I saw a mother holding her small son’s hand as he walked atop a low wall, so that he could enjoy being “taller” than her. I used that trigger image as the seed for a Po idea:
Po: What if… we lived in a world where children floated in mid-air, like balloons? And once they reach puberty, they finally become grounded.
Holding this “impossible idea” for non-judgmental consideration, I can use this thought-experiment to ask questions that might lead to practical uses.
What advantages might “floating children” offer to parents? It would be easy to locate your child if you got separated in a crowd, because they’d always be in view from hundreds of yards away.
In our world, it is a nightmare if a small child gets lost in a large and noisy crowd, since there’s no easy way for the parent to locate them.
Taking inspiration from the “floating child” idea, maybe we could invent small “beacon” laser-flashlights that could be given to children.
If the child gets lost, their parent can use a radio-controller to remotely activate the beacon laser, colored purple for example, which when pointed upwards is visible for miles, even in daytime.
The “floating children” idea could also be the inspiration for a “speculative fiction” story: a group of teenagers who buy puberty-blocking drugs on the black market, so that they can remain “floating” into adulthood. The story could explore the tension between childhood innocence and the avoidance of adult responsibilities.
From the impossible idea of “floating children,” we now have a plausible invention with practical utility, and a possible YA story.
The above is just one example of using the Po tool — there are other variations. You can deliberately pair a random word or image with whatever problem you’re working on: riffle through a dictionary, pull a tarot card, take a photo of whatever’s on the TV at the moment, etc.
Or impose new constraints on the problem: ask the guitarist in your band to instead play drums on a new song. Her unfamiliarity with drums might give the band a fresh sound.
During the Apollo 13 rescue crisis, because of an explosion in the main Command Module, the three astronauts had to spend 90 hours in the tiny Lunar Module (LM). Never designed to support life for an extended period, the LM’s air-scrubber was inadequate, and the capsule began to fill with dangerous levels of carbon dioxide.
The NASA technicians at Houston Ground Control had to quickly figure out how the astronauts could assemble an improved air-scrubber system using only the spare parts available in the spacecraft.
Po: build a better air-scrubber out of random parts such as plastic bags, duct tape, spacesuits tubes, and athletic socks.
Forced to focus on the materials at hand, the engineers came up with an ugly but effective solution.
After the successful rescue, this unplanned “creative experiment” gave NASA new ideas for improving scrubber designs in future spacecraft.
Knowing that I have a “Po toolbox” available has given me new confidence in my creative ability. Surprisingly, it has also opened up my own latent intuitive instincts — I’m much more likely to try wildly bizarre ideas now than I was in the past.
(Maybe not as wild as Bjork’s fashion choices though…)
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