Spontaneous Creative Combustion?

"Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." – Scott Adams

Cultivating Creativity?

In my previous post “Future Sources of Innovation, Discovery & Design” we looked at the growing number of examples of great innovation and creativity that are to be found in developing regions of the world.  I’m interested in looking at these developing regions, not only for the innovations and ideas emerging from them, but also to study these unique environments to better understand their essential elements.* By understanding them, we might be able to replicate and share, and thus raise the volume of creativity, innovation, and invention to all new highs. We certainly have plenty of problems that are begging for creative solutions!

So I’m pondering this with you because I’m anxious that we pay attention to the characteristics of innovation, invention, and the like, so we can work to find more ways to increase exponentially the volume and diversity of inventions, innovation, and discovery to match the world of exponential change (and its accompanying challenges) that we are now living in.

It seem to me that most things are the result of the environment and conditions we are in at the time, and I think this holds true for something as fleeting as creativity.  So I’m wondering: how can we better understand the environments and conditions that seem to spark the most creativity?  Based on this understanding, we could create more of such environments—ones that are enriched with these characteristics and bring out the creativity, innovation, and inventiveness more often and for many more people than the current and historical norm.

*See my previous posting and podcast “Confusing Flapping with Flying” for more on my thoughts about essential elements of great inventions and innovations.

Spontaneous Combustion

We could use a favorite analogy of mine to help us with this—that of spontaneous combustion.  In my own layman’s terms, spontaneous combustion is when fire unexpectedly and unintentionally breaks out without any apparent cause of ignition, such as sparks or flames. I learned about spontaneous combustion firsthand in some of my former lives when I was a mechanic, a woodworker, and an industrial technology teacher and became critically aware of the fire hazard posed by leaving oily rags, sawdust, paper, etc. lying around or in open waste containers. But as I’m often wont to do, I inverted this negative and dangerous characteristic into a powerfully positive one and abstracted it into a conceptual model, so what I really took away from it was a fascination for indirect causation that still sticks with me today as you’re about to see. 

From what I’ve been able to read and research, we (scientists) still don’t fully understand spontaneous combustion,† but what we do know are the conditions that make it more likely to happen, such as the presence of chemicals (oil, resin, varnish combined with flame supporting materials such as rags, sawdust, paper and oxygen). The simple preventative solution therefore is to make sure things like oily rags are stored or disposed of in sealed containers to cut off the air/oxygen supply.

†Of course we do have this YouTube video on “How to: Do Spontaneous Combustion”.   BTW, for most of you, I recommend it for watching and NOT for experiential learning!

Brains on Fire! Spontaneous Cognitive Combustion?

I’m sure you can see the connection here to creativity, which seems to me to be a form of spontaneous creative or cognitive combustion—when a sudden creative thought that just comes to you, an unexpected "Aha!" moment bursts into flame without any apparent cause. 

So what if we want to purposely cause a chemical spontaneous combustion? What if we want to have a fire break out without directly causing it, such as by lighting a match?  In a lab, we can do so by carefully controlling a set of conditions (types and amounts of flammable liquids, supporting materials, etc.) and creating an environment (temperature, oxygen, humidity) that raises the probability of spontaneous combustion. We may not know just when or where the fire will begin, but we can expect that it will happen somewhere in the experimental container relatively soon. 

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. What are the conditions, materials, and environments that lead to spontaneous cognitive combustion?  What are those essential elements that can reduce the amount of "flapping" we do and increase our innovation, invention, and creativity?

At a very general level, some of this can be addressed by thinking differently, outside the proverbial box so to speak, being contrarian, converting the negative energy of naysayers into positive energy that drives you to succeed all the more.  But let’s try to go further.

To help us do so and to use this opportunity to start a few "fires" on this topic... I’m sure we’ve all suffered from bouts of what might be called “creative constipation” when, try as we might, we just can’t seem to squeeze out a new creative thought, solve a problem, or otherwise "hit the wall"... I thought that Robert Lucky put it well in his IEEE Spectrum article (Jan 2007) called "Great Thoughts" where he posited:

"There is a theory of creativity that holds that creativity is most often the product of the unexpected intersection of two previously unconnected thoughts. If you are thinking very hard  about one such thought perhaps you are suppressing the other thoughts which could connect with it."

This leads to the often observed benefit of taking a break, going for a walk, or otherwise distracting yourself from the problem at hand. But it is the theory on creativity that I most strongly concur with—the notion that there are very few truly new ideas, but rather that we are constantly building from and upon previous and existing thoughts and ideas and the new springs from the intersection or collision of two or more previously existing but unconnected thoughts.  Hence my fascination with the concept of mashups‡ and why I see these as a fundamental characteristic of the future. 

‡ I also like the fact that my spell checker keeps wanting to correct the spelling of mashups to smashups as I’m equally big on the need for disassembly and “creative destruction”, but I’ll wander and ponder that with you in a future posting.

Inspiring Combustion: Why Wait?

One of the most common and rewarding comments that I receive from many of you after my talks and postings is that they help you connect a set of dots/thoughts which you knew about and that were previously “out there” but which had not been connected the way I strung them together.  A “necklace for the mind” as one most complimentary person put it to me. I take these as the highest compliments I can receive—to have helped to cause (in my own direct fashion) some spontaneous cognitive combustion in others. I’d be honored to be regarded as a cognitive pyromaniac and can only hope to continue to cause and stoke more "fires" and "fan the flames" of global creativity.

But what about YOU?  Take a few minutes—you deserve the break—to think back to times when you have been particularly creative, inventive, inspired, or your brain was otherwise "on fire". Look for some patterns. What are their commonalities?  In particular, I encourage you to focus on the overall "environment" you were in at these times, such as colors, sounds, furniture, views, movement, other people, time of day, lighting, what you were doing just beforehand, and so on. Please share (either with comments here at OCOT or on your own site) the essential elements of creativity you come up with. 

Here’s to creating a world of spontaneous cognitive combustion for all of us.

Comments

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Excellent post, it's all about innovations and this'll be the main point to be an important inventor, as you probably know, creativity and creative acts are therefore studied across several disciplines like psychology, cognitive science, education and philosophy so it'd be nice if you can add some investigations about each discipline. 23jj

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