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“It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.”
— Roger von Oech
Why do we need to Innovate?
Being creative and innovative doesn’t always mean that you’re crafty or a great artist. Creativity and innovation includes characteristics such as taking the perspective of others, accepting failure as an opportunity to learn, or being bold. Do you think you could kick you creativity up a notch? According to the article “How To Be More Creative” you can increase your creativity by; developing your questioning ability and elaboration skills along with increasing your ability to shift perspectives easily.
Creativity and Innovation are defined by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (www.p21.org) as students being able to; think creatively , work creatively with others, and implement innovations. To increase creativity and innovation skills in your students, give the concept of conceptual blending a try. Conceptual blending takes two dissimilar scenarios and uses creative thinking skills to make them work together. The blog post Conceptual Blending for Creative Thinking by Thoughtful Learning explains the concept further and gives numerous examples of how to implement conceptual blending in the classroom.
“We all operate in two contrasting modes, which might be called open and closed. The open mode is more relaxed, more receptive, more exploratory, more democratic, more playful and more humorous. The closed mode is the tighter, more rigid, more hierarchical, more tunnel-visioned. Most people, unfortunately spend most of their time in the closed mode. Not that the closed mode cannot be helpful. If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time for considering alternative strategies. When you charge the enemy machine-gun post, don’t waste energy trying to see the funny side of it. Do it in the “closed” mode. But the moment the action is over, try to return to the “open” mode—to open your mind again to all the feedback from our action that enables us to tell whether the action has been successful, or whether further action is need to improve on what we have done. In other words, we must return to the open mode, because in that mode we are the most aware, most receptive, most creative, and therefore at our most intelligent.”
— John Cleese
“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”
— Dr. Linus Pauling
“The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.”
— Anthony Jay
ITRTS ~ Plugged In 