Tag: ideation

The ebb and flow between divergent and convergent thinking

Design Thinking, Featured, ThinkingPublished onUpdated on63 Comments on The ebb and flow between divergent and convergent thinking

I thought I would take the opportunity to return to an article I wrote a few days ago. My blog post outlined a few of the key issues for developing creative teams. The article that inspired it from HBR[1] gave a broad definition of innovation and creativity which resonated strongly with my own experience in schools.

According to the author, Roger Schwarz[2], researchers commonly make a distinction between the definition of creativity and innovation.

Innovation involves two stages—the generation of new ideas and the implementation of the ideas. Creativity is considered to be the first stage of innovation.

I would call implementing ideas Prototyping and this typically comes after a range of ideas have been sorted, filtered and judged in different ways during Ideation. I always see a change in the energy levels during Ideation as people begin to flex their creative muscles more intensely.

Later in the article Schwarz outlines a conflict in factors that affect innovation, explaining that a different type of thinking is needed.

Creativity and the second stage of innovation require different individual skills and team structures and processes. The idea generation stage is often referred to as divergent thinking or exploration. The implementation stage is often referred to as convergent thinking or exploitation. Unless you plan to have your team hand off its creative ideas, you will need to create a team that can operate in both modes, switching among them as appropriate.

This whole area is invariably complex and more research is needed. However even from my own experience the requirements on an individual are much more intricate. I agree that we need to be in a divergent thinking state when we generate ideas, but this changes when we have to decide on which ideas are worth investing further in. It changes to a convergent thinking state. In order to identify our choices we have to narrow our field, we have to purge the ideas that don’t make the cut. For us to successfully judge a set of ideas we have to be able to converge and begin to make choices. Thinking big (divergently) and generating ideas at this stage would certainly be counterintuitive.

The ebb and flow between divergent and convergent thinking at the ideation stage is quite important and much more frequent than is suggested in the article. Idea generation is but one part of Ideation. Of course we may identify Emergent thinking as well at this stage which is exploratory and helps when we want to develop our ideas further. I see Ideation being made up of the sequence below:

  1. Generate Ideas (Divergent or Open Thinking)
  2. Explore and develop ideas (Emergent or Exploratory Thinking)
  3. Judge and shortlist (Convergent or Closed Thinking)

It is extremely useful to have a language for the thinking state or mindset needed. I would highly recommend sharing the definitions and helping others understand them. Talking explicitly about the thinking that is needed to be most successful helps signpost people to such expectations, and has helped countless teams of adults and students I have worked with. Don’t let this be a wishy washy stage, identify a process, like the sequence above and stick to it. Trust in the process.[3]

Once ideas have been explored and narrowed down then a team would move on to implementation. Taking a concept into a working or minimal viable prototype phase. Again the type of thinking here is not simply convergent as Schwarz outlines, in my opinion it is equally fluid and perhaps also made up of the combination of divergent, emergent and convergent thinking states.

  1. Harvard Business Review  ↩
  2. Roger Schwarz is an organisational psychologist, find him on Twitter @LeadSmarter  ↩
  3. And the force.  ↩

How One Man Overcame Ridicule and Changed Rocket Science Forever

Creativity, SciencePublished onUpdated on30 Comments on How One Man Overcame Ridicule and Changed Rocket Science Forever

The New Horizons space probe has been on a decade long mission to reach the dwarf planet Pluto, and the imagery is amazing. It would seem that this is just the first waypoint. Next on the itinerary is a Kuiper Belt object, 1 billion miles away.

[UPDATE] “As of March 2019, New Horizons was about 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion kilometres) from Earth, operating normally and speeding deeper into the Kuiper Belt at nearly 33,000 miles (53,000 kilometres) per hour.”

Imagine for a moment how complex the New Horizons project has been. Persisting for over a decade with such a specific purpose. But in many ways, the first part of the journey was the hardest. Leaving our Earth’s atmosphere is hard – gravity will do that for you.

Robert Goddard is now considered one of the founding fathers of modern rocket science. He was visionary. It is due to his discoveries and his own form of persistence that we even have interplanetary missions.

One of the reasons I share the story with you is that it wasn’t such a smooth ride for Robert Goddard. The number of doubters speaking out against him at times must have felt like a gravitational force he may never draw away from. The creative conflict in his story is intriguing. We may add his tale to many who were considered ahead of their time, but ostracised for their originality.

Inspiration and Support

Robert was captivated by the allure of space. This came primarily from reading The War of Worlds by HG Wells – he was hooked. Fast forward twenty years and he was making pioneering discoveries in rocket propulsion. His contemporaries did not understand him and he found it almost impossible to gain financial backing to continue his work. In 1915 he even considered abandoning his efforts in the face of such continued challenge and isolation.

The Assistant Secretary of The Smithsonian, Charles Greeley Abbot, did not hold the same opinion. After reviewing an application for support from Goddard he provided a grant of $5,000 in 1917 to accelerate his efforts. This proved pivotal to Robert Goddard, encouraging him to persist when so many around him were full of doubt.

Squashing Ideas

In 1919, the Smithsonian published Goddard’s classic treatise “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections” (Vol. 71, No. 2). This scientific report exacerbated the challenge and doubt from his peers. Goddard had outlined a proposal for a rocket leaving the Earth’s atmosphere. His proposed rocket flight to The Moon drew wider public ridicule from the press. Everyone doubted his theory, and the press made a mockery of his ideas.

This had a profound effect on Goddard’s perspective and disposition. He became more guarded and isolated in his work. The list of those he trusted with his thinking dwindled. At the time a peer at the Californian Institute of Technology highlighted the challenges of not collaborating:

The trouble with secrecy is that one can easily go in the wrong direction and never know it.

Despite this on March 16, 1926, Goddard constructed and successfully tested the first rocket using liquid fuel. A flight as significant to history as that of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk.

He never got to see the fruit of his labours and died in 1945 from throat cancer. He was posthumously awarded over 200 patents for his discoveries and pioneering thinking in the field of rocket propulsion. Nowadays he is a celebrated creative scientist who paved the way for human exploration.

Creative Traits

In my opinion one of the most important traits of creative individuals is vision. It is clear that due to Goddard’s unique insight into the field he brought the horizon closer much more quickly than others. It is perhaps his Tenacity and Courage in the face of such widespread doubt that defines his creative spirit.

A further element that is clear within this story is the impact of the people around him. The negative voices were there from the start and they persisted. But it is the people that championed his ideas and said, “Yes!” that had the crucial impact. His wife continued to share and celebrate his work after his death, raising awareness and appreciation for his foresight. The support he received throughout his career from the Smithsonian in finances and belief is likely to be regarded as having the most impact. When others doubted, Charles Abbot believed. Mirroring the foresight that Goddard showed himself. In Goddard’s own words of appreciation to Abbot:

I am particularly grateful for your interest, encouragement, and far-sightedness. I feel that I cannot overestimate the value of your backing, at times when hardly anyone else in the world could see anything of importance in the undertaking.

Your Next Steps

Ideas do not exist in a vacuum and the story of Robert Goddard is as much about those who encouraged him. The open-mindedness to encourage and nurture nascent ideas is a critical dynamic as new thinking develops. Yes, we may need to show Courage and Tenacity when our ideas are out there, but new ideas rely on the courage of others too.

  • Something we can do, with our colleagues and students, when developing new creative ideas is to say “Yes“. It changes everything and signals openness to what might be next. It signals encouragement.
  • When we know that ideas are at an early phase we need to adjust our critique appropriately. In other words, when we hear new thinking we must be more delicate and encouraging as they take their first steps into the wild.
  • “Hold your ideas lightly“, is a good way to explain the mindset we need to have when sharing early ideas too. As the bearer of those new ideas, we have to be willing and open to others helping to make them better.

Just imagine the conversation fifteen, maybe twenty years ago:

“I think we should try and send a probe into the furthest reaches of our solar system. To Pluto.”

“That’s over 4.6 billion miles away.”

“Yes and the technology has not been invented yet and it will take us over a decade to get there.”

“Yes, great. We’ll call it the Decadal Survey. Let’s start.”

Goddard would have cherished the opportunity to see the images of our solar system and those from the New Horizons mission. I am certain he would have quietly approved of the tenacity and conviction of those who held the early theories and ideas. But also he would have recognised the value of those who showed similar “far-sightedness” in their unwavering support and encouragement.

References

“See New Horizons’ Entire Pluto Flyby in 23 Seconds.” 2015.
“Robert H. Goddard: American Rocket Pioneer | Smithsonian …” 2012.
“Robert H. Goddard – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” 2011.
“NASA – Dr. Robert H. Goddard, American Rocketry Pioneer.” 2004.

Hold Your Ideas Lightly

28 Days of Writing, Creativity, Design ThinkingPublished onUpdated on6 Comments on Hold Your Ideas Lightly

This is a simple metaphor to understand. When you are exploring the validity of an idea, hold your idea lightly – do not clutch it tightly to your chest. We often explore if an idea is valid in the company of others and so we need to present our thinking with this mindset as lots of good things flow from it. It is an important mindset we adjust to in our design thinking workshops we run with teachers.

Instead of having to pry open our fingers to get to the idea to offer advice, when it is held lightly and openly in our open hands others can access it.

Offer an invitation to your ideas not a barrier to hurdle.

When we hold on to our ideas lightly we are being more careful in terms of what we have committed to that idea. There is no tension in our grasp of the idea because we have invested lots of time and energy into developing it. It is probably early on in terms of our thinking and we are open to what others say.

If our grasp is light it might be swept along by a strong breeze from others. Who knows if we are open to other people contributing and building on our idea it might be taken in a direction that we might not have seen.

It is all about communicating your idea as early as you can, but matching that action with a relatively low commitment in energy, time and resources.

In the workshops I have led over the last four years I have asked hundreds of people to communicate an idea they have only just created to someone else. The constraint comes from the time they have to communicate the idea or concept and the resource they have to do it with. A single Post it note. What else!

They are thrust into a situation where they are already non-committal about an idea and are encouraged to “Hold their ideas lightly”, pitching the idea to someone else quickly. All of these things create a scenario that is often alien within education – sharing something so early. I always like to follow this sort of task up by asking “What does it feel like to have to share an idea so early on in the process?”

Invariably there is a mixed reaction. From the “nerve wracking” and “scary”, to “liberating” and “exciting”. The anxious responses normally speak of a habitual culture of getting it “just so”, or working on something heavily before sharing widely. The more positive responses, which is the majority, recognise how this mindset, named up front, and the process that activates it, creates a refreshing sense of openness about our creative work.

Hold your ideas lightly – don’t clutch them tightly to your chest.