Interfacing Two Major Developments Whose
Whole
May
Be Much Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts
by
Win Wenger, Ph.D.
president,
Project Renaissance
(Announcing
a new Board in Lifeboat Foundation)
While Lifeboat Foundation is the long-overdue assemblage of experts,
keen minds and investigators whose concerns are the most serious problems facing
humanity, there exists also a body of hundreds of specific methods and
techniques for creatively and ingeniously solving problems. These are
methods and techniques successfully in professional use around the world.
It is time that the twain should meet - Lifeboat Foundation and the
world-wide creativity revolution.
Not to say that science has not already been wonderfully creative.
Scientific Method - pulling the weeds systematically and reflexively from the
gardens of truth - is a wonderfully creative instrument. And beyond
scientific method, human genius sometimes finds ways to bubble up regardless of
method or circumstance. But creative ingenuity wielded by deliberate
intent, method and system, extends beyond the systematic weed-pulling and rare
sparks of unsystematic genius.
It is this writer's conviction that bringing together Lifeboat
Foundation and the worldwide creativity revolution will result in a whole that
is much greater than the sum of its parts. Among other effects, such
conjuncture will very likely result in the early solution of most of the grave
problems of greatest concern to the Foundation.
Both the explanation and the history of the worldwide creativity
revolution, sprawl and would take longer to summarize than the length of this
briefing. A note from this writer's personal history serves to illustrate
a key point, however - - -
Where Some of These Methods Come From:
In 1967 this writer was teaching full time in a small college, and
looking for ways to enrich the development of his students. That search
led him into the creativity literature of the time, which centered in two great
programs, Synectics and the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem-Solving system.
It was at that time that it occurred to this writer to propose: that if you HAVE
a good method for solving problems, one of the best problems to work it on is
on.....the problem of how to create BETTER problem-solving methods. - And
work these, in turn, on the problem of how to create even better such methods,
following an obvious principle of reinvestment which yields an equally obvious
compounding of interest.
Pursuit of this simple principle, since 1967, of re-investing your
best methods into creating even better ones, has been - as you can imagine -
productive.
There are now literally hundreds of specific techniques, methods and
systems of method for innovating, inventing, discovering, and problem-solving
which are now successfully i professional use around the world.
Where have these methods been? - Mostly employed in the
results-oriented private business sector, serving there the mostly
narrowly-defined interests that have been paying for such services.
Where Is Scientific Method In This Model?
Is scientific method, by itself, enough either to advance adequately
the interests and operations of the Foundation and of the projects within it, or
to solve, any time soon, the problems of greatest concern and threat to
humanity? It is time to use the scientific method itself - however
you define it - on that question - and on this problem, of how to create
problem-solving methods which are better and more effective!
IF 'scientific method', however defined, is good enough to create
methods which are even better than that method at solving problems, THEN LET'S
HAVE AT IT NOW! WE NEED THEM NOW! Some of these problems
of greatest concern are URGENT!
- And if 'scientific method' cannot or does not produce methods
better than itself for solving problems, then the gravity and imminence of some
of the situations which the Foundation is attempting to address, require that we
take on board additional methods instead of waiting for funding and occasional
escaping sparks of rare genius to do the job for us.
One Key Aspect of Effective Problem-Solving:
- Why we need to change and try different methods from time to time -
It seems natural when finding oneself facing a question or problem,
to review what we know about the problem situation and seek its answer in terms
of what we know about it. But as you know from the history of your own
field or specialty, problems which don't resolve that way, won't resolve that
way. There, the creativity professionals have learned, what you 'know'
about the problem has BECOME the problem, by standing between you and the fresh
perceptions needed wherein to find good answer.
Indeed, as many reading this have found, mulling the problem
situation over and over seems only to drive any answers further out of
perception - a phenomenon neurophysiologists term 'neuronal habituation' - the
tendency of the brain and of any portions of it or of the nervous system
generally, to fall asleep on a constant signal or to WAKE UP! on a changing
signal.
Without as yet knowing most of you in this Foundation or most of your
work, this writer nonetheless ventures to predict that for many of you, most of
your Foundation-related work is a search for backing for the answer or
half-answer you have already arrived at, rather than a search for wholly new and
possibly better answers. If this is true, what you 'know' has become your
problem, standing between you and the fresh perceptions needed for better
answers and solutions.
How can we get these creative problem-solving resources into YOUR
service?
(1) I will welcome your suggestions on how to engineer transfer of
these creativity skills into your own service and, more broadly, into service of
the Foundation.
(A) What are all the possible ways to do
so?
(B) What may be the best way?
(C) What way will work best for YOUR project, concern or topic of
investigation?
(2) Point of information: After making me a member of your Board of
Scientific Advisors, Eric Klien asked me to create a new Board for the
Foundation, the Board of Methods for Innovating, Inventing, Discovering and
Problem-Solving. This briefing is part of my effort to serve in this capacity,
and to advise others in the Foundation of the existence of this resource.
(3) Any member of the Foundation who is already well versed in some
of the major methods of creative problem-solving - such as Synectics,
Osborn-Parnes, deBono, Buzan, Triz, etc., is hereby most warmly invited and
requested to contact this writer and to relate to this new Board. (This
writer is here representing mostly the body of methods developed by his Project
Renaissance non-profit firm.) The task before is larger than all of our
different methods and resources summed together, and really needs the attention
of all of us. The new Board becomes what you and we together create.
(4) Even before any transfer mechanisms are in place, each of you can
readily inform yourselves and, in many instances, even train yourselves into
effective practice of, some of the different principles and techniques and
methods of systematic, deliberate high creativity:
Several good introductory texts:
De Bono, Edward. Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step By Step.
Perennial Library, 1973 (now part of HarperCollins Publishers).
Osborn, Alex F. Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of
Creative Problem-Solving. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953.
Parnes, S.J. The Magic of Your Mind, 2nd edition.
Buffalo, NY: Bearly Press, 1997.
Wenger, Win, Discovering The Obvious. Gaithersburg, Maryland: Project
Renaissance, 1998.
Texts for serious students of creativity:
Parnes, S.J. Visionizing: State-of-the-Art Techniques for Encouraging
Innovative Excellence. Buffalo, NY: Creative Education Foundation, 1988.
Parnes, S.J. Source Book for Creative Problem-Solving - a Fifty-Year
Digest of Proven Innovative Processes. Buffalo, NY: Creative Education
Foundation, 1992.
Free on the web: step-by-specific-step instructions in particular
creativity methods:
Competitive small-team brainstorming of observations of the most
basic phenomena in a field or specialty or topic, then developing the most
interesting of those observations into major hypotheses for proposed
investigation and grant support. An example of this is set up for high
energy physicists, cosmologists, quantum theorists and string theorists, at
http://www.winwenger.com/ideagen4.htm
The most basic of modern visual thinking techniques, developed in
part from Albert Einstein's 'Deep Thought' discovery technique, ImageStreaming,
now featured in a number of different programs and disciplines. See the
curriculum on ImageStreaming which begins at
http://www.winwenger.com/imstream.htm,
and the recent paper on the topic which begins at
http://www.winwenger.com/imstream.htm
Conclusion:
Through and in the context of Lifeboat Foundation, the most serious
problems facing humanity may find early solution through being interfaced with
elements of the worldwide creativity revolution. For this purpose has been
formed the new Board of Methods for Innovating, Inventing, Discovering and
Problem-Solving. Members are invited to participate in the new Board in
several capacities, and to draw upon the resources represented. Some of
the resources available are freely published, some are freely available
altogether and, while awaiting whatever mechanisms may emerge for formally
interfacing creative problem-solving methods and systems with the work of the
Foundation, members may freely instruct themselves in various among the hundreds
of creative procedures found to be productive. It would be a pity to take
so long at solving one of the great problems that we go extinct from it before
discovering its solution. The infusion of deliberately creative, ingenious
problem-solving methods can definitely improve our odds.
Appended Comment by James Blodgett
Dr. Win Wenger develops exercises and methods to foster creativity. I have
tried his methods. They are worth trying, and sometimes help quite a bit.
Lifeboat could use some of this. Everyone here is quite creative, but aspects of
our creativity could use improvement. Collectively our creativity too often
lacks traction. I would like to see him and others light a fire under Lifeboat,
to get us doing good things that are worthy of our potential, things that make a
difference in the real world. I recommend trying some of whatever he recommends.
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Please
test one or more of the above-cited methods and resources to your own
satisfaction, and/or reply to the author at
wwenger101@aol.com or via
http://www.winwenger.com