Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques

by Michael Michalko

Association. Make connections, links, and relationships between seemingly isolated and unconnected pieces of information. These connections open the door to more possibilities. You can feel free to make any association you wish, without worrying whether or not others will understand you.

Clustering. The map’s organization comes close to the way your mind clusters concepts, making the mapped information more accessible to the brain. Once your ideas are clustered, try to adopt the viewpoint of a critic seeing the ideas for the first time. This allows you to test your associations, spot missing information, and pinpoint areas where you need more and better ideas. Mind mapping is an idea generator. It does not supply raw material, so your map may show areas where you need to collect more information.

Conscious involvement. Making the map requires you to concentrate on your challenge, which helps get information about it transferred from short-term to long-term memory. In addition, continuous conscious involvement allows you to group and regroup concepts, encouraging comparisons. Moving think bubbles around into new juxtapositions often provokes new ideas.

The clusters of bubbles stimulate the following ideas to help me market my consulting services: Marketing through referrals by former clients and nonclients, such as bankers and trade association executives. Personal marketing: Personal cold-call selling, writing personal letters, and joining professional organizations. Nonpersonal marketing: Direct mail, public relations, publishing, and advertising. Targets of influence. This would include other professionals who serve the same clients, decision makers in client organizations, managers and directors of trade and professional associations, and leaders of industry. Targets of opportunity. This includes former clients with new needs, potential new clients, and targeted market niches.

The marketing plan I get from the map is to market my services through referrals and both personal and nonpersonal marketing.

The map became increasingly complex as he worked on it over time, and prompted him to think about his business in various new ways. The bubble that produced the final idea was the one containing “energy management.” The idea: He created an energy management division, which bypassed the distributors and focused on industrial and institutional markets, allowing clients to cut energy costs. As a consequence, the company closed massive orders for light bulbs. He put it this way: “The map led to a cascade of ideas that motivated us to act and create a whole new division.”

Mapping a challenge or an idea allows you access to a certain mental spark: It flares up in the mind, is conducted to the hand, flows to the paper, and bursts into a tiny fire that, when seen, closes the circle by traveling back into the eye and farther into the subconscious. Sometimes these tiny fires become the very ideas that you need to resolve your challenge; sometimes they need to be tended and fueled with more information before they flare into ideas. And, sometimes, these tiny fires smolder for days, weeks, or months before they blaze. However, if you take no action when that spark flares up in your mind, its spark burns out, turns cold, and is forgotten.

Manipulation is the brother of creativity. When your imagination is as blank as a waiter’s stare, take an existing item and manipulate it into a new idea. Remember that everything new is just an addition or modification to something that already existed.

If you have trouble doing this, manipulate the page by turning it a quarter-turn to the left—suddenly, the duck takes form. You can also manipulate existing ideas and products into new things. The new thing can then be changed into still other new things. To limit yourself to your first idea is a disaster for your imagination. The best way to get a good idea is to get as many ideas as you can. Any particular way of looking at things is just one of many other possible ways.

Generating alternative ideas is as solid and positive a procedure as putting more ruby marbles into the bag. You still may not get a ruby marble, but it never hurts to increase your odds. There is nothing to lose when you generate alternatives, and everything to gain.

Alternatives are provocative; they force you to overcome your clichéd patterns of thinking.

SCAMPER is a checklist of idea-spurring questions. Some of the questions were first suggested by Alex Osborn, a pioneer teacher of creativity. They were later arranged by Bob Eberle into this mnemonic.

SUBSTITUTE You can substitute things, places, procedures, people, ideas, and even emotions. Substitution is a trial-and-error method of replacing one thing with another until you find the right idea. Scientist Paul Ehrlich tried well over five hundred colors before he found the right one to dye the veins of laboratory mice, making many new experiments possible.

COMBINE Much creative thinking involves synthesis, the process of combining previously unrelated ideas, goods, or services to create something new. The printing press was created when Gutenberg combined the coin punch with the wine press. Gregor Mendel combined mathematics and biology to create the new science of genetics.

ADAPT One of the paradoxes of creativity is that in order to think originally, we must first familiarize ourselves with the ideas of others. Thomas Edison put it this way: “Make it a habit to keep on the lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea needs to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are working on.” Many cultural historians agree with Edison in that a whole host of new objects and ideas are based on objects and ideas already in existence. Adaptation is a common and inescapable practice in creativity. Even the “Star Bangled Banner,” which was written in defiance of England, was essentially the same as a popular tune sung in English pubs.

MAGNIFY Americans tend to believe that bigger is better. People often perceive objects they value highly as being larger than objects they value less. Bruner and Goldman, in 1947, did a study demonstrating that poor children perceived coins to be much larger than rich children did.

Search for ways to magnify, add to, or multiply your idea, product, or service. What can be magnified, made larger, or extended? What can be exaggerated? Overstated? What can be added? More time? Stronger? Higher? Longer? How about greater frequency? Extra features? What can add extra value? What can be duplicated? How could I carry it to a dramatic extreme?

The Light Sleeper is a pillow and duvet that uses light to awaken sleepers gently. You set the time you want to be awakened, and the bedding slowly brightens with light that simulates the dawn. By adding electronics to textiles, the designer created electroluminescent textiles and a product that could replace noisy, jarring alarm clocks. The technique could benefit people with seasonal affective disorder, simulating natural light to release hormones that help relieve depression.

Sam Adams created an “extreme” beer named Utopia, which is 25 percent alcohol. It’s therefore the strongest beer in the world. It comes in a kettle-shaped bottle reminiscent of the copper brewing kettles used by brew masters for hundreds of years. It’s a sipping beer that has been aged in single-use bourbon casks, giving it a rich flavor.

MODIFY At one time, the Ford Motor Company controlled 60 percent of the automobile market. Then General Motors asked some questions about modification and came out with a philosophy that stated, “A car with every shape and color for every purse and purpose.” Henry Ford responded with “Any customer can have a car painted any color so long as it is black.” Ford’s sales slumped, and by the 1940s he had just 20 percent of the new car market. GM, by modifying its products to the market, had taken the lead. What can be modified? Just about any aspect of anything. Even a perfect square can be modified by a circular background to appear bent when it is not.

The circus business was in a downward spiral before Cirque du Soleil opened its doors in 1984. It was becoming increasingly difficult to get adults to pay to go to the circus, and it was getting harder every year. But by modernizing the form of the circus and shifting the focus to performance, Cirque du Soleil changed the meaning of what a circus is and created a multibillion-dollar business in the process.

Designers at Moen have revolutionized the shower by changing the shape of the water flow. Most traditional showerheads provide a fixed ring of water. The Moen showerhead provides a moving, swirling stream that completely surrounds you. This technology delivers larger water droplets containing more heat, giving you a warmer shower with less water.

HOW CAN ATTITUDES BE CHANGED? Can you persuade people to try new things by changing your approach? A marketing group that was attempting to create a demand for grasshoppers as a gourmet food conducted some test marketing in which they tried to get Americans to eat the insects. They first tried using a relaxed and friendly spokesperson who presented his arguments in a pleasant manner. Few people tried the grasshoppers, and those who did disliked them. Next, they tried a spokesperson who was cold, distant, and hostile. Remarkably, more people tried and liked the grasshoppers.

This is funny considering that lots of tribes in Africa eat crickets, among other insects, as a delicacy.

PUT TO OTHER USES These questions will first help you find an idea, product, or service and then they will help you imagine what else can be done with it.

Creative people can take just about anything and make something useful out of it.

History is full of inventions, innovations, and products that developed from something else. Post-it pads, Silly Putty, and vulcanized rubber were all developed by people attempting to make something else. Bright entrepreneurs would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passersby to drop their unused ideas into it.

ELIMINATE The original doughnut did not have a hole. According to one legend, a small boy who was watching his mother fry doughnuts noticed that the centers weren’t thoroughly cooked. He took a fork and poked out the center, creating the pastry we know today. Ideas sometimes come from minifying a subject. Through repeated trimming of ideas, objects, and processes, you can gradually narrow your challenge down to that part or function that is really necessary—or, perhaps, is appropriate for another use.

REARRANGE Consider the alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. These twenty-six marks have been arranged in countless ways to make you laugh, cry, worry, wonder, question, love, hate, and ponder. They’ve been rearranged to form the words in Hamlet, Tom Sawyer, the Bible, and the general theory of relativity.

Creativity, it could be said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know.

All subjects heard the same message, but half heard it at the slow rate of 102 words per minute, half at the fast rate of 195. The fasttalking communicator was viewed as being more knowledgeable and objective, and was more effective at changing the subjects’ attitudes. Within limits, the faster you talk, the more likely people are to assume you know what you’re talking about.

REVERSE? Reversing your perspective opens up your thinking. Look at opposites and you’ll see things you normally miss.

Dr. Albert Rothenberg, a noted researcher on the creative process, has identified a process he terms “Janusian thinking,” named for the Roman god Janus, who had two faces that looked in opposite directions. In Janusian thinking, two or more opposites or antitheses are conceived simultaneously, either as existing side by side or as equally operative, valid, or true. Dr. Rothenberg has identified traces of Janusian thinking in the works of Einstein, Mozart, Picasso, and Conrad. The way to use Janusian thinking is to ask, “What is the opposite of this?” and then try to imagine both opposites existing at the same time.

Like the yin/yang creating balance.

Legos has developed a digital design suite where you design your project online, and then Legos makes the parts (plus a few extras) and sends them to you to build it. Thus, you start with your finished design and then build it with the parts.

All ideas are in a state of constant flux. There can be no such thing as an ultimate idea any more than there can be an ultimate poem that would make all further poems unnecessary or an ultimate symphony that would render all further musical composition redundant.

The function of any object is not inherent in the object itself but develops from our observation of and association with it.

You know, like the saying that the function of an object is not in the object itself but what it is useful for because of the hollow it creates.

The workshop participants look at the box of tacks and do not see the details. And the details sometimes contain the germ of an idea that will lead to a creative breakthrough. Listing the parts or attributes of a subject will enable you to break your stereotypical notion of the subject as a continuous whole and to discover relationships that you likely would otherwise miss.

Possible attributes are: It has individual compartments. Pushing it manually creates the energy to move it. It’s made of glass to see through. It needs one or more people pushing it around at a time. The attribute pushing it manually creates the energy inspires one to think of ways to harness all the energy voluntarily created by thousands of people pushing through the door each day. This triggers the idea of modifying the revolving door to make electricity from the force of people pushing it around—that is, putting the energy to some other use.

A good football coach does not say, “There is one way all great football teams win games, and we must do it the same way.” Rather, he tries to determine which positions on his team are strong and which are weak by testing and observing each individual football player. Then, he replaces the weaker players or teaches them to overcome or disguise their weaknesses.

Only in this way can the coach bring his team’s unique talents into play.

A football team has one goal: To win. To win, the coach will develop a strategy to maximize the team’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses. For instance, if a team has a weak defense, his strategy might be to control the ball and keep his defense off the field; if the offense is weak, he might teach his team to keep the other team deep in their own territory. By being aware of the positive and negative aspects of his team, the coach most efficiently uses football knowledge to win games.

It is the same with challenges. You must be aware of the positive and negative forces operating in a challenge before you develop a strategy for solving it. Your strategy should allow you to take advantage of the positive...

There are three ways to move a condition toward the best-case scenario. Maximize your strengths. Minimize your weaknesses. Add more positive forces. You might choose to further strengthen the positive forces: track record, working with peers, energy level, leadership ability, and job dedication. To minimize weaknesses, reframe them as challenges: “In what ways might I improve my customer relations?” “In what ways might I improve my creativity?” Finally, you could create new positive forces to further outweigh the negative ones; for instance, you might work on a new positive condition of report writing and add that force to your analysis.

In Tug-of-War, maximizing strengths is the punch; minimizing weaknesses is the clever footwork.

Once there was a man who died and found himself in Hell, with the road to Heaven blocked by a huge mountain. Although indignant that he was in Hell, the man assumed he could do nothing to change his situation and settled down to an eternity of suffering. He never discovered that the mountain was on wheels—to reach Heaven he needed only to push the mountain aside. Once you identify the forces operating in your challenge, they become as negotiable as a mountain on wheels. You can either learn to live with the negatives by limiting your options and compromising your goals, or you can change their position and neutralize their impact.

If you are allowed to keep the cards you wanted, discard others, and continue to draw cards as long as you wished, you would eventually draw a straight flush. Within a set number of cards there is a vast number of combinations, some good, others useless. The more combinations you create, the greater your likelihood of getting a winning hand. This is, in essence, the principle behind the Idea Box.

New ideas and inventions are merely new combinations of existing bits and pieces. The Idea Box snaps existing information together into provocative new patterns, and the ideas appear, almost by accident, out of nowhere. When the ideas appear, you’ll grin like a kid who has caught his first fish.

Events that seem to be continuous are likely to be seen as a single entity rather than as discrete events. In much the same way, we tend to see the elements of a challenge as one continuous whole, ignoring even obvious relationships between its elements. The way we perceive things makes these relationships almost invisible, yet they often direct us to new ideas. The Idea Box allows us to see these relationships by separating a whole into parts and scrambling the parts.

A publisher who is looking for new products decides to work with four parameters: kinds of books, properties of books, processes of publishing, and forms of information. Under each parameter, he lists ten variations, allowing 10 × 10 × 10 × 10 or 10,000 possible combinations. Assuming a 10 percent yield of truly useful ideas, this gives him a possible 1,000 good ideas jumping over and around him like fleas.

Sometimes the best ideas are the result of fortuitous flux. Ideas large and small often occur as a result of a chance combination. An automobile salesman designed an Idea Box and played with it every day. One day he randomly connected odor, air-conditioning, operator-controlled, and new car smell. This chance combination led to the idea of a fragrance-control system for cars. With a touch of a button, drivers can choose from jasmine, mint, a fresh leather smell, or perfume scents, all blowing through the air-conditioning system. The soft aromas will, according to the salesman, improve ride comfort. He intends to sell his patent to an automobile manufacturer.

When you write a poem, you discover that the very necessity of fitting your meaning into a specific form requires you to search your imagination for new meanings. You reject certain ways of writing and select others, always trying to arrange the words in a new and imaginative way. Form is an aid to finding new meaning, a stimulus to discovering the essence you wish to express. Think how much more meaning Shakespeare infused in his plays because they were written in blank verse rather than prose, or into his sonnets because they were limited to fourteen lines.