Creativity Today—the management book on applied creativity—has inspired tens of thousands of managers, teachers, and students around the world. Now this book is made available again in a revised version, with a new title, subtitle, and cover design, all intended to breathe a well-deserved second life into this creativity classic and to emphasize its attractiveness as a basic guide for businesses and organizations that wish to become more creative.
The management book on applied creativity.
HUMAN THOUGHT
This chapter will provide an insight into our thought processes. We’ll have a look at the hardware and software of our thought system. We know that thinking mainly takes place in the brain. But what exactly is thinking? And why don’t we constantly come up with new ideas? Do the construction and design of the brain provide an explanation for this? And of course, what is creative thinking?
Definitions
During the course of evolution, man developed a remarkable thought system with an incredibly fine and diverse structure. We will come to the physical aspect (hardware) of the brain in a minute. First let’s take a look at the functionality (software). To start with, let’s look at some definitions. This is worthwhile because it indicates perfectly why creative thinking is not as simple as we might wish it to be.
What is thinking? Out of many possible definitions, we chose this one:
Thinking = Processing Information
We are constantly surrounded by all kinds of stimuli and our perception system (the senses) makes it possible to capture these stimuli. Our thought system enables us to process very simple but also very complex information. Simple things might be: making a cup of coffee, lacing up your shoes, listening to the weather forecast and choosing suitable clothing. It becomes more complex when we consider the working environment where tasks might be accountancy, plC˜
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