Week Three EOC: Creative Thinking

       Creative thinking is the process of coming up with a solution with an open mind. Taking many different ideas and working them in different ways to figure out the best solution. “Although at first glance, creative thinking techniques may sometimes look a bit ridiculous, there are good principles behind most of them. However skeptical you may be about their potential, it’s a good idea to approach them with an open mind” http://www.skillsyouneed.com/ps/creative-thinking.html. “A way of looking at problems or situations from a fresh perspective that suggests unorthodox solutions (which may look unsettling at first). Creative thinking can be stimulated both by an unstructured process such as brainstorming, and by a structured process such as lateral thinking” http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/creative-thinking.html. Although it may seem easy to have an open mind it does take a lot of work. “Creative people work hard and continually to improve ideas and solutions, by making gradual alterations and refinements to their works. Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity, very, very few works of creative excellence are produced with a single stroke of brilliance or in a frenzy of rapid activity. Much closer to the real truth are the stories of companies who had to take the invention away from the inventor in order to market it because the inventor would have kept on tweaking it and fiddling with it, always trying to make it a little better” http://www.virtualsalt.com/crebook1.htm. Creative thinking takes much time and work, because you are constantly having to re-think your idea and come up with new and different solutions.  “Solutions become more obvious when you fill in the gaps around them with trial-and-error. Studies even show good, novel ideas rest on the willingness to continually rethink a problem” https://www.helpscout.net/blog/creative-thinking/.  “Though past breakthroughs sometimes have come from a single genius, the reality today is that most innovations draw on many contributions” https://hbr.org/2008/10/creativity-and-the-role-of-the-leader.