This week, we will closely examine Elaborate and Associate's third and fourth critical thinking skills from the book, The Creative Mindset: Mastering the Six Skills That Empower Innovation.

"Elaboration illuminates the arbitrary way in which we have organized our language and our thinking."

- Jeff and Staney DeGraff

3. Elaborate - Connecting different elements to make something new.*

Elaborating is linking different thoughts and ideas and creating something new. The book provides three elaborating techniques to facilitate creating something new.

They are:

• Random Words: The random words technique harnesses William James's "stream of consciousness" theory to stimulate creativity. By selecting a random word and generating descriptive words associated with it, individuals create a list that is connected to a specific challenge or problem. This process, inspired by celebrated authors like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, encourages free-flowing ideas and unconventional associations. The goal is not to use all the words but to provoke new perspectives and connections, fostering creative problem-solving. Embracing the randomness of words allows individuals to tap into their mental processes and approach challenges with fresh insights, potentially leading to innovative solutions.
• SCAMPER Technique: The SCAMPER Technique, developed by marketing executive Alex Osborn in the early days of television advertising, provides a structured approach to creativity. Osborn's mnemonic, SCAMPER, stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Magnify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, and Reverse. By asking these questions, individuals can stimulate creativity and generate innovative ideas. This technique focuses on action verbs that mobilize ideas, similar to the concept of random words. It encourages users to think critically about various aspects of a problem or idea, facilitating the generation of valuable variations through novel connections and perspectives.
• Thinking Hats: The Thinking Hats technique, developed by physician Edward de Bono, employs six different approaches represented by colored hats: Objectives, Information, Emotions, Judgment, Optimism, and Creativity. Each hat signifies a specific type of thinking and role within a group, enabling individuals to explore a problem from various perspectives. By donning these metaphorical hats, individuals can uncover blind spots and generate innovative solutions by considering different aspects of the challenge. This technique facilitates lateral thinking, encouraging creativity and offering new angles on familiar problems. Drawing on the concept of perspectivism proposed by Friedrich Nietzsche, it emphasizes the importance of considering multiple viewpoints to overcome entrenched beliefs and explore alternative solutions based on real experiences.

"Analogies can transfer information we believe we understand in one domain, the source, to help resolve a challenge in an unfamiliar area, the target."

- Jeff and Staney DeGraff

4. Associate - Leveraging previous experiences and solutions for the current situation.*

The concept of Idea Bridges is discussed in the fourth critical thinking skill. The concept of Idea Bridges is to use analogies or metaphors to spur creative thinking and generate new ideas. 

There are three techniques used to Associate. They are:

• Adaptive Reasoning: Adaptive reasoning encompasses creative pattern-seeking beyond language, extending to visual elements like symbols in art, musical motifs, and physical movements in theater and dance. It involves finding suitable metaphors for complex situations, yet caution is advised as metaphors can oversimplify ideas. For instance, comparing balancing a government budget to balancing a checkbook may seem apt, but it overlooks the nuanced realities of investment returns. This challenges artificial intelligence as faster connections sometimes equate to better outcomes. Therefore, thoughtful, careful, and rigorous analogies are essential in adaptive reasoning.

• Imaginary Friends:  The Imaginary Friends technique involves role-storming by imagining how someone like Steve Jobs would approach a given challenge. By considering perspectives from individuals outside our own experiences, we gain fresh insights and see the problem in a new light. While we can't honestly know others' thoughts, speculating based on their known approaches to creativity can offer valuable suggestions for our work. This method leverages the analogy of applying someone else's mindset to our challenges, fostering creativity by exploring unfamiliar perspectives.
• Synectics: Synectics, a group creativity technique coined from the Greek term "syndetic," fosters innovative problem-solving through metaphorical exploration. Developed by George M. Prince and William Gordon in the 1950s, it involves a facilitator guiding a group on an analogical journey called an "excursion." Solutions are generated and reintegrated by making parallel associations with a problem statement in alternative domains. The process includes root cause analysis, metaphorical excursions, and force fitting, akin to continuous improvement methods. Synectics emphasizes divergent brainstorming followed by convergent selection of the most feasible solutions. Through metaphor-based exploration, this technique encourages thinking beyond conventional approaches to tackle complex challenges creatively.

* DeGraff, S., & DeGraff, J. (2020). The Creative Mindset: Mastering the Six Skills that Empower Innovation. Berrett-Koehler.