The study and application of creativity and innovation
Should creativity and innovation be taught in universities?
Look, first I will tell you that one rarely comes out of universities prepared for future professional functions because almost all university degrees correspond, in theory and according to their name, to certain professional profiles.
However, how is a university career similar to the job you will later do?
Only in medicine, veterinary medicine and few university degrees can it be said that one is properly prepared for professional life.
There is practically little that I practiced at the university of what would later be the skills and knowledge requested on the job. I studied chemical engineering but I had to work in operation, assembly and maintenance of chemical plants, almost all of my professional life. How much did they teach me about this? Almost nothing.
In the 70s, not only did there not exist knowledge management systems or quality systems, but there were no materials that developed the criteria for building or maintaining plants, because the program of my university career was directed towards plant design, which that a tiny percentage of students followed.
The best way to learn what is necessary to work in a given sector is to place students in the roles that these professionals play (head of design, maintenance manager, production supervisor, etc.), and which are what the student you aspire to achieve in your life when you enter the job market.
In a learning program of this nature, students, who can work individually, even if it is better in groups, receive detailed information about the company in which they work, and specific details about the specific projects they must face (for example, introducing a system of Quality control, reorganize the functional organization chart after a merger between two companies, design a search for process failures, seek solutions to technical problems, etc.).
In carrying out this role, the student will be faced with the usual situations that are part of daily work, and will have to make the appropriate decisions to solve the problems posed and, hopefully, make the most common mistakes in those cases.
During this process, the student tries to reach his goal, a goal that matters to him and interests him, because it is very similar to the reality that awaits him outside.
Also according to his personality, he knows if it will be efficient for sale, for design, to have people in charge or whatever.
Then you need to learn the skills / knowledge / attitudes, and develop the essential skills to successfully complete the tasks.
During this learning program, you will receive help from your tutors / teachers, you will have access to content, you will learn from and with your peers, you will use technology, etc.
This is why professional practices or work internships, if appropriate, are the most useful of a university career, as they are in medicine or veterinary medicine.
Compare it with the proposal offered by university programs and even Master's degrees from any business school, however renowned it may be. They will verify that it consists of a random succession of subjects that bear little resemblance to work and that, moreover, appear disconnected from each other.
Life is not subjects and learning is not the same as consuming a lot of content and obtaining a degree.
Two obvious conclusions:
- What is taught in the university has little relation to what the student will later do in his professional career. The way it is taught does not have much to do with the way people learn.
Now going back to your question about whether creativity and innovation should be taught in universities, I think so, but it should be adapted to each profession.
In other words, if you study engineering, for example, you should study TRIZ, which is a systematic methodology that will allow you to apply your knowledge of physics, chemistry, materials, thermodynamics and science in general, and which gives certain degree of continuity to your career.
If you study Advertising you should learn inventive thinking tools derived from advertisements and spots, where you can find the manufacturing models of these messages applied to multimedia.
The old advertising game was bowling, where the agency threw a ball (message) trying to knock down as many bowling pins (consumers) through an established media plan and throwing the ball as many times as the budget allowed. And with that everything ended.
The new advertising game is pinball, in which the creative agency throws a ball (which is no longer a message but valuable content) to its audiences and they make it bounce.
In pinball it is not known where exactly each ball will bounce, but the more it bounces the better. In addition, this ball can return and you must always be prepared to throw it again or even get new surprise balls during the game.
And consider that there are several differences between the two games.
Note the evolution in the name of consumers towards the public or from "message" to "value".
And to give value we must delve into the differences in product attributes and this is achieved with inventive tools.
Are there certain guidelines to follow in education?
There are certain guidelines in education that must be followed:
- Motivation is the energy of learning. To learn you have to want to learn. College and university have never been concerned with designing resumes with their 'clients' goals in mind, but rather with their own interests in mind. The most important thing in a learning process occurs from the day it ends, which is when it must be applied in real life. People learn by doing and not by listening or reading. What we have to learn, we learn by doing: Aristotle. Learning is accumulating reusable experience in the future and depends on three factors: Motivation, time and opportunity to practice. If you learn by doing, then first comes practice and then goes theory, not the other way around. Error is the essential element of learning.All of us have goals that matter to us and that we try to achieve by developing actions and displaying behaviors. At the same time, we are a set of expectations of what we expect to happen. But when these expectations are not met and the error occurs, we unconsciously and inevitably ask ourselves questions to understand what happens, why it occurs and how we can solve it.
The reason for taking advantage of error is related to trying to make people make mistakes in an environment that does not have serious consequences for them, unlike when errors occur in real life where they have consequences that can be costly for health or financially burdensome. There is no more important skill than learning. Tell me what you know how to do and I will tell you who you are. What we are depends on the knowledge we have, that is, on what we have learned because we all come into this world without knowing absolutely nothing. If you don't learn, you die. College and university convince you that learning is an external process, for which you are not responsible. One of the main functions of all educational institutions and teachers should be to transmit to their students the passion for learning.The educational system that we suffer, with its paradigm of school, teacher, classrooms, schedules, subjects, exams, grades, responds to a model designed for a society that has not existed for years. We cannot continue educating young people of the 21st century, with teachers of the 20th century, using 19th century methodologies and with an 18th century curriculum. Adding technology to a model that does not work not only does not improve it, it worsens it. As long as education continues to be an information delivery process led by a teacher who knows and speaks to students who don't know, listen, and memorize, adding technology to that process will only make the situation worse. Technology is not the computer or the Internet, it is what you do and make with these instruments. A teacher with 30 students seemed condemned to explain master classes.A teacher with 30 students with computers the first thing to do is change the paradigm and give students problems and situations to practice and not things to know.
Do we have problems with education?
The crisis of education is nothing more than a mirror of the crisis in the model of society.
I am convinced that human beings have not been very fortunate when designing massive educational processes. People know how to learn but we do not know how we learn.
If we consider education as the process of disposing of human beings preparing them for the future and since there is clearly nothing more important, we should be talking about the most perfect process that exists.
However, this is far from being the case: on average more than 50% of young people in Argentina stop studying during secondary education and only 7% of those who enter finish university.
To what extent is there interest in creativity?
Creativity and talent are of interest only insofar as they are capable of making money.
The subject has already been treated in The Miser of Molière, who by hiding the chest, keeps its content separate from life. When finances are finally flooded with liquidity, more will continue to be gathered.
Creativity serves as a way of life but in the industry and the market you must prove that you are efficient in time and form.
In other words, Innovation is strongly dependent on improving and optimizing the attributes of the current product.
What are the attributes of a product?
They are the characteristics that have endured for a long period of time. I'll graph it for you with an example.
Suppose for a moment that a Martian comes to Earth and knows nothing about the market and of course does not know our attitudes and preferences.
But this Martian has intelligence to communicate and discovers that Earthlings use something called a CHAIR.
Then observe that different chairs have the same height, that is, it is not an arbitrary parameter but because humans want to be at a certain height in relation to the environment.
Also investigate and discover, in most chairs, the armrests, some chairs have wheels, other chairs have adjustable backrest in position, all chairs have a seat…
These are the tangible attributes of our product.
People and the market through time by natural selection and adaptation have reached the CURRENT CHAIR with its attributes.
Good ideas were incorporated and left traces on the current product.
Negotiations between the market and the product CHAIR are mapped into the CURRENT CHAIR and the chair in turn has adapted its attributes and encoded this information.
Then it will be considered that any innovation must improve or optimize the attributes of the CURRENT CHAIR and must be approved by the market.
Does the practice develop creativity?
Creativity, sports and mathematics develop exponentially if you practice them.
The Munduruku Indians, an Amazonian group whose language lacks words for numbers beyond five, have been known to perform non-symbolic mathematical operations, such as simple sums, estimating the bulk, not counting, in a manner quite similar to that used by many uneducated adults.
This finding is surprising and is based on what was published by the magazine Science, from August 2009, where some open questions are solved: one of them is whether formal instruction improves this type of innate non-symbolic skills.
Now, Argentine researchers have found the affirmative answer in an investigation of the Institute of Applied Sciences of the Italian hospital, which is directed by Dr. Argibay.
If one studies a system of representation of numbers by "approximation" with some computer system and investigates it in an important group of more than 200 people, one discovers the possibility of estimating without counting, and this is an innate capacity that we all possess to solve simple Math operations and the more these skills are practiced the faster and with less effort they occur.
What are the biggest barriers to creativity?
Without a doubt they are the mental barriers. I tell him what happens with the history of a product:
When family fridges were introduced to the market in the 1920s in the U.S., they were designed using the criteria of ice coolers, and perishable foods and meat were located close to the ice on top, and vegetables, fruits, and beverages were on the top. lower part where it was less cold and more relative humidity.
Currently, the freezer is continued in the upper part of the refrigerators and the vegetables and drinks, which are consumed much more frequently in the lower part, which is usually much more uncomfortable and irrational.
Why do engineers and users and even refrigerator manufacturers still continue with this location today?
This is called "mental fixation," and oddly enough, people continue to think of vegetables, drinks, and fruits in the bottom of the refrigerator. For tens of years mental fixation continues despite advances in refrigeration technology and new designs.
The same thing happened when the conquerors instructed the original peoples in the Catholic faith, but at night when they were left alone, the aborigines worshiped their ancient gods. Why? When we have a mental fixation we do not choose or approve with changes in the structure of the product, but we remain anchored in our mental patterns.
We fail to envision new products that are more user-friendly and we fail to give ourselves permission and jump over mental fixation.
The same thing happened with black cars or with metal bumpers instead of using cars of different colors to suit the user or using elastic bumpers that cushion the crash and its effects on the driver.
And a very useful tool to avoid this mental fixation is the Symmetry Break. The breaking of symmetry involves modifying something symmetrical to the asymmetric or changes over time, modifications in space or changes in the structure and everything that modifies inherited patterns, such as:
- The bifocal glasses or those of organic glass that darken with the light. The different width of the shoes in certain footwear. The left mouse for unskilled people. In basketball, where if you scored outside the arch, the point is triple and inside from the arc at a shorter distance, it is only double score. Figures that have a double interpretation depending on how the background is seen, for example you see a figure and two cups. When someone develops a YOUTUBE for Islamists where there is no music or provocative women in their When instead of having doors open back in cars, they do it forwards, even better towards the sides of the car. There are light lamps for children that open their petals when the lamp is turned on.
All are strategies to avoid falling into our mental patterns or also called mental barriers.
When you ask not to judge in the Brainstorming tool, you are asking to get out of the usual paths and patterns and express new strange and irrational ideas.
What is the difference between creativity and innovation?
Fleming was the inventor of penicillin, that is, he devised and created an antibiotic that was able to eliminate infective bacteria in organisms and especially tuberculosis.
But Florey and Chain were the innovators who tried to manufacture it in England in large quantities when the Second World War began in 1939. There it was seen that the war required large amounts of penicillin, due to the wounds of soldiers who were continuously infected and then they applied for financial aid in the US. In the US, a method was innovated and patented in 1940 using the penicillin fungus and as a substrate for brewer's yeast, and several American laboratories produced enormous amounts of this antibiotic, which turned out to be efficient thanks to using a creative tool called TRIZ.
It is estimated that thanks to this, more than a million and a half war wounded out of the seven million who suffered physical damage, were saved from certain death by infection of their wounds.
What few know is that Florey and Chain verified its effects in an almost terminal patient with a large part of the body burned in 1939 in a London hospital, but lacking the necessary amount to continue treatment, the patient improved with He used it for a few days, but then it passed away painfully. That is, a treatment must be carried out for more than six days. There were patients who, upon seeing that their condition improved, stopped taking the dose of penicillin and then relapsed into a more resistant and larger infection.
Fleming used his creativity, but Florey and Chain were the innovators who got the money, planned the manufacturing with cost-effective processes, and approved the drug at the FDA.
Then in 1997 it was found that there were special patients in India and Africa with multi-resistant tuberculosis, and so it was necessary to develop a new type of antibiotic for these multi-resistant diseases to traditional penicillin.
What is TRIZ?
TRIZ is the Russian acronym for Teorija Rezbenija Izobretatelskib Zadach, which stands for Innovative Problem Solving Theory. The TRIZ methodology was born in Russia in the 1940s at the end of World War II at the hands of Genrich Altshuller. The name is preserved because since 1990 it began to be recognized quite extensively with these acronyms.
In the United States and Europe, we start talking about Systematic Innovation, terminology that is more attractive from Marketing, but only after 2000. Let's clarify that the words: Problem, Creativity, Invention and Innovation, are related but have very meanings different.
There is a problem for TRIZ only when the various contradictions of the process or product are raised.
To create is to think of something new, to innovate is to manufacture what is thought and to invent is to surpass everything known to what is thought. TRIZ is a heuristic tool.
Why do you say it is heuristic?
The ability to immediately make positive innovations for specified purposes is called 'heuristics'.
Heuristic ability is a characteristic feature of humans and can be described as the art and science of discovery and invention or of solving problems through creativity and thought.
The etymology of heuristics is the same as that of the word eureka, whose exclamation is attributed to Archimedes. The word heuristic when used as a noun identifies the science of discovery, a discipline that can be formally investigated. When it appears as an adjective, it refers to strategies or rules that guide discovery.
The popularization of the concept is due to the mathematician George Pólva, with his 1934 book “How to solve it”.
TRIZ is heuristic in the sense that it is a guide to alternative solutions, such as if you should buy a melon and ask yourself which one will be ripe: then when you choose, you touch it and smell it on its ends, and so you will try to make sure if it is mature enough.
TRIZ operates with contradictions and you should know that if you do not overcome the basic contradiction the problem persists. For example, suppose you install a more powerful engine in your airplane to have more speed, but this makes the airplane heavier, you must then increase the size of the wings, in order to take off and stay in the air. But now it turns out that there is more weight and inertia to overcome, and the objective was not fully resolved, because we must find a win-win formula, without having variables that worsen.
In the previous example, more speed and power are achieved with an additive or a better fuel, without affecting other variables.
Are there easy-to-apply TRIZ principles?
Of course.
When TRIZ tries to eliminate the contradictions, it can make it effective by separating the contradictory requirements and for this there are four alternatives:
- Separation in space Separation in time Separation between the parts and the whole Separation according to some condition.
How a Separation occurs in Space
- A characteristic becomes large in one place and small in another A characteristic is present in one place and absent another
How a Separation in Time occurs
- A characteristic becomes large in one place and small in another A characteristic is present in one place and absent another
Example 1: Submarines that have a sonar detector have the detector installed several hundred meters from the submarine with a cable, to separate the detector from the submarine's own noise
Example 2: Bifocal lenses for near and far vision
Example 3: In the nickel plating of parts, the increase in temperature is necessary only at the surface and then the solution is that the parts themselves can be heated, instead of heating the solution
How a Separation in Time occurs
- A characteristic becomes large at a certain moment and small to another A characteristic appears at a certain moment and is absent at another
Example 1: Concrete pillars should be pointed for easy burial but should not be pointed to better support a load
Solution: They are made with pointed tips, which, after being inserted, are destroyed by an explosive placed on the tip
Example 2: Considering the problem of sand buildup during abrasion
Solution: Use dry ice as an abrasive After the abrasion effect is done, the granites simply disappear by sublimation
How a separation occurs between the parts and the whole
- A characteristic has a value at the system level and the opposite value at the component level A characteristic exists at the system level but does not exist at the component level (or vice versa)
Example 1: A bicycle chain is rigid at the micro level to have resistance, and it is flexible at the macro level
Example 2: Epoxy resin and hardener are liquid until mixed and solidified after mixing
How a separation occurs according to some condition
If something is contradictory, must it be just under the same circumstances?
Example: The lenses have to be clear to be able to see through, however when there is a lot of sun I have to put on others with dark lenses. Then the crystals must be light and dark. But …… must the glasses be light and dark under the same circumstances?
NO, they must be dark only when there is a lot of light and the solution is photosensitive lenses
It could also be given that:
- A characteristic is high within one condition and low within another condition A characteristic is present within one condition and absent in the other
Example 1: A kitchen strainer is porous with water but not porous with noodles Example 2: In ornamental jumps the water is required to be soft when jumping from a high altitude in case gymnastics fails and falls improperly.
The water is "soft" when you enter it at low speed but it is hard and dangerous if you jump from high altitude.
What is done? Air is blown in and a half-meter surface layer is created with a much lower density that makes the water feel soft.
Are there examples where various principles apply?
Yes. Sometimes several separation principles apply, for example:
- Velcro. It is a strong closure in a set of hundreds but weak in individual units, which is a separation in space and the system itself. In addition, the Velcro is weak when it is opened from a special closing angle, but strong if it is pulled from other angles, which is a separation in the state condition. Here the four principles of separation of contradictory properties apply. They use a gap in space because they have glue against the skin on their ends or sides but they do not have it on the wound itself. Furthermore, these bands allow air to pass over the wound so that it breathes, which is a separation in the state condition because they allow air to pass through but not dirt.In addition there is a separation in the system varying the size of the pores according to the type of wound. And even a special glue with strong adhesion characteristics is used when applied and then over time it will be weak, using a separation in time.
Are there other principles that are easy to apply?
Yes, we can see from investigating in the Supersystem, in the system itself, and in the Subsystem.
For example if you have a projector and you have seen that when we use a projector we must have the room in almost total darkness but if we want to take notes of the presentation, we need some light. What to do?
At the system level (redesign the system itself):
- Replace the projector with an LCD screen
At the subsystem level (redesign the projector subsystem):
- Make the lamp brighter Install a more powerful optic
At the supersystem level (change the nearby external super system):
- Darken the room and install a spot at the points that take notes Use illuminated notepads Use several projectors and give light in the room
Another example is at the crossroads. When driving through a crossroads, we must go fast to speed up traffic, but we must also drive slowly to avoid collisions. What to do?
At the system level:
- Having flying cars when the collision itself already occurs
At the subsystem level (redesign the existing subsystem):
- Air bags Best brakes Ultrasonic distance detectors
At the supersystem level (change the nearby external system):
- Traffic signs Speed reducers Cross at different heights Automatic lights with feedback to each car
The last two solutions have been found to be ideal but difficult to implement in high-density city buildings. This is about reaching the Ideality of the system.
What does it mean to go towards ideality?
It means that with less amount of means the objective you are looking for is achieved. The principles we just saw tend towards ideality, but you will choose the one with the lowest current cost and highest benefits, if the technology to use does not yet exist.
There are several ways to increase the ideality of the system, for example:
- Increase the number of system functions, this occurs in a music center with radio, CD player and directional amplifiers. Transfer all possible functions to the element that produces the final action, for example in the cable clip, which also removes the insulation and insert a connectorTransfer some function of the system to the super system or to the nearby environment, for example in houses called green, with the operation of a thermostat windows open in hot weather and close at night or in winter.Use an internal resource or External that already exists and is available, for example the new Spectrum antennas that use the house wiring system as a signal receiving antenna.
Is there always a place for innovation?
Look, yesterday at the supermarket and waiting in line, I noticed the gestures of the cashiers. All denoted a certain apathy… weariness. It was eight in the afternoon, and the desire to go home was evident. But then I thought….what would your mood be if you were for 40 hours a week doing mechanical work, highly unproductive and of little value to your brain and professional development?
Today, there are supermarkets where the payment process is carried out automatically. Places like Simply market or Quick time offer the client the possibility of making payment through machines that act as cashiers. Automatic multimedia charging is agile, fast and easy to use. This type of technology increases the service value of the establishment, since the staff is freed from mechanical functions and can assist the client in advising on the purchase or helping the elderly.
Innovation is not only palpable in the machine that tells us how much the total amount is.
The real innovation is in a new conceptualization of the jobs, not in changing the furniture from one place to another.
Changing the regular functions and tasks of the establishment staff is a great step in introducing innovation in our day to day. Increasing the professional development of people, whatever their role in the company, is also
a way to innovate production and service delivery systems.
Technologies such as that applied by Simply Market or Leroy Merlyn in Europe or large stores such as Sears, Macy's, Saks Fifth Ave in New York that have this payment process, achieve an innovative double objective: on the one hand, the customer perceives an increase of the added value of a speed and security service, and the staff ceases to be an automaton and begins to develop commercial professionalization skills that can make that cashier, at eight in the afternoon, have a smile on her face for feeling that His life goes beyond passing products through a scanner.
It is worth looking at the small details of the day to day, to see how much we still have to do in terms of innovation.
But to create you can train, although to innovate you have to get fully into a problem or situation and solve it in some effective way.
You learn to innovate by doing and failing and looking at the market economy in which we are immersed, whether we like it or not.
While creating is something thoughtful and more passive, it may even be applicable to personal life, but in this matter I have no formed opinion.
It should be remembered that creativity and innovation must be installed in the DNA.
Those who have never stopped their creative spirit, even in bonanza, will have the best weapons for these days of crisis. They are trained, they have exercise, the neurons are agile and the ideas flow.
