On Creativity Part 2
In part one I put forward the view that creativity could be learned. In this post I'll discuss how. Or, more accurately, how we've tried to get ourselves out of the box. Be warned, the timing of this post is not ideal. The fruits of this process, for us, won't appear in their full glory until next spring. I'm even reluctant to talk about them until they get out the door. So that leaves us with just another post about creativity from just another guy with an opinion. (You never know, perhaps in several months you'll catch us on MSNBC waving to the crowds through a blizzard of biodegradable ticker tape. Okay, maybe not.)
In any event, there are essentially two major tracks and I believe both must be followed. The first is learning the techniques of lateral thinking. We'll talk a bit about that in this post. The second is broadening your conceptual bag of tricks. That we'll save for part three.
There are no lack of books on the subject of creative technique. One of my favorites is by Edward DeBono. 
Edward is a little outspoken about his own contributions to the subject of thinking skills, but if you can look past that, he really does have a lot to offer.
Another one I enjoyed was by Michael Michalko. 
I enjoyed this because it included some interesting tidbits about several creative geniuses. I'm not sure how much you can expect to gain from trying to emulate geniuses, but it's interesting nonetheless.
I do feel compelled to add that there are lots and lots of these sorts of books, that I personally have about a dozen of them on my shelves, and they all say much the same thing. Pick one that sounds good and be satisfied. Developing the discipline to put what it says to use is by far the biggest challenge. Don't make the mistake I made substituting reading the books about creativity instead of actually working on it.
The focus, for the most part, is on techniques to get you out of your habitual patterns of thought. DeBono offers many. Which one you choose is a matter of which you can tolerate. For instance, one technique involves associating a random word with a given problem and then free associating with the random word as the starting point. I've found this to be very effective -- though it took me a long time to give myself permission to do it. I know that may sound strange, but free association is just not something traditional educations prepare you for. To my dismay, I tried it with my 15-year-old son and he was no better -- in fact, he was worse. He simply refused to participate.
On the other hand, another common tactic is to state the opposite of an assumption underlying the problem space. Then you force yourself to come up with as many working answers based upon the new, and opposite, assumption. For combative personality types, this often presents a lower barrier to entry. The point here is to force yourself to find alternatives. If you give up after one or two (or zero) half-hearted attempts, essentially acknowledging that the assumption is valid and must not be contradicted, you're not playing the game right. In other words, this is much beyond the simple admonishment to question assumptions. That's a good thing to do anyway, but rarely does it get you onto something entirely new.
We ran with the latter exercise on the subject of customer behavior information and I'm in the process of getting legal approval for something we wouldn't have considered -- would not have been thinkable -- before the exercise. I'm meeting some folks at the Web2.0 conference in SF in a couple of weeks to explore it. Stay tuned.