Boost Team Creativity Using Neuroscience
Wednesday, May 4th, 2011
McKinsey Quarterly recently published a summary of what neuroscience has to tell us about Sparking Creativity on Teams. While the findings won’t be news to readers of the Cognitive Design blog, having them summarized with references is useful. Key points include:
* Drop verbal persuasion and argument as a way to change thinking and use immersion by designing events where team members directly observe or experience new ideas. For example, send the team on best practice visits (including plenty of flexible interaction time) to successful organizations in other industries.
* Use analogies and metaphors to force a comparison between seeming unrelated ideas or domains. For example, draw analogies between Amazon and your favorite lawn care service.
* Create artificial constraints to encourage reframing to generate insights. For example, what if we could only interact with our customers online?
Immersion, analogies and constraints when skillfully added into a problem solving process really do boost creativity because they take advantage of how our minds actually work.
Image Source: Success Rockets
