Five-Step Creative Process. For a more creative brain, follow these 5 steps. Almost all good ideas follow a similar creative process, and this article explains how that process works. It is important to understand this because creative thinking is one of the most useful skills you can possess. Almost any problem you face at work and in life can benefit from creative solutions, divergent thinking, and creative ideas.
Anyone can learn to be creative using these five steps. That’s not to say creativity is easy. Discovering your creative genius takes courage and a lot of practice. However, this five-step approach will help shed light on the creative process and pave the way for more innovative thinking.
To explain how this process works, let me tell you a little story.
A problem that requires a creative solution
In the 1870s, newspapers and printing presses faced a very specific and very expensive problem. Photography was a new and exciting medium at the time. Readers want to see more images, but no one knows how to print images quickly and cheaply.
For example, if a newspaper wants to print a photograph in the 1870s, it must have a craftsman engrave a copy of the photograph onto a sheet of steel. These plates are used to press images onto the page, but they often break after a few uses. This photo-engraving process, as you can imagine, takes a lot of time and money.
The man who invented the solution to this problem was Frederic Eugene Ives. He became a pioneer in the field of photography and held more than 70 patents by the end of his career. His story of creativity and innovation, which I will share now, is a good case study for understanding the 5 main stages of the creative process.
A glimpse of understanding
Ives started out as an apprentice printer in Ithaca, New York. After two years of learning the details of the printing process, he began managing the photo lab at nearby Cornell University. He spent the rest of the decade experimenting with new photography techniques and learning about cameras, printers, and optics. In 1881, Ives had an insight into a better printing technique.
“When I was using my photostereotype process in Ithaca, I was working on the problem of the halftone process,” says Ives. “One night I went to bed in a state of confusion on this matter, and as soon as I awoke in the morning I saw before my eyes, seemingly projected from the ceiling, a process and equipment. complete complex in operation.”
Ives quickly turned his vision into reality and patented his printing method in 1881. He spent the rest of the decade improving it. By 1885, he had developed a simplified process that yielded even better results. The Ives process, as it is known, reduced the cost of photo printing 15 times and remained the standard printing technique for the next 80 years.
Okay, now let’s discuss the lessons we can learn from Ives about the creative process.
5 stages of the creative process
In 1940, an advertising executive named James Webb Young published a small guide called Idea Generation Techniques. In this guide, he makes a simple yet profound statement about creative ideation.
According to Young, innovative ideas happen when you develop new combinations of old elements. In other words, creative thinking is not about creating something new from an empty medium, but about taking what is already there and combining those elements in ways that have never been done before.
More importantly, your ability to create new combinations depends on your ability to see relationships between concepts. If you can form a new link between two old ideas, you’ve done something creative.
Young thinks that this creative connection process always happens in five stages.
- Collect new documents. In the beginning, you learn. During this phase, you focus on 1) finding out specific material directly related to your mission and 2) learning general material by engaging with many concepts.
- Carefully work with the material in your mind. In this phase, you test what you’ve learned by looking at events from different angles and experimenting with different combinations of ideas.
- Stay away from the problem. Then you get the problem out of your mind completely and start doing something else that makes you excited and energized.
- Let your ideas come back to you. At some point, but only after you stop thinking about it, your idea will come back to you with a new spark and energy.
- Shape and develop your ideas based on feedback. For an idea to succeed, you need to get it out into the world, subject to criticism, and tweak it as needed.
Ideas in practice
The creative process used by Frederic Eugene Ives offers a perfect example of these five action steps.
First, Ives collected new material. He spent two years as an apprentice printer, then four years running the photography lab at Cornell University. These experiences gave him a lot of material to draw from and make connections between photography and print.
Second, Ives started thinking about everything he’d learned. In 1878, Ives spent most of his time experimenting with new techniques. He’s constantly tinkering and experimenting with different ways to put ideas together. Third, Ives stayed away from the problem. In this case, he fell asleep for several hours before gaining insight. Letting creative challenges sit still for longer periods of time can also work. No matter how long you walk away, you have to do something that interests you and distracts you from the problem.
Fourth, his ideas came back to him. Ives wakes up with the solution to his problem laid out before him. (As a personal note, I often find that creative ideas come to me while I’m sleeping. Once I allow my brain to shut down during the day, the solution comes easily.)
Finally, Ives continued to revise his ideas over the years. In fact, he improved so many aspects of the process that he applied for a second patent. This is an important and often overlooked point. It can be easy to fall in love with the initial version of your idea, but great ideas are always evolving.
The creative process in a nutshell
The creative process is the act of making new connections between old ideas. So we can say that creative thinking is the task of recognizing relationships between concepts.
One way to approach creative challenges is to follow a five-step process of 1) gathering the material, 2) working hard on it in your mind, 3) staying out of the problem, 4) to ideas come back to you naturally, and 5) test your idea in the real world and adjust it based on the feedback.
Creativity doesn’t mean being the first (or only) to come up with an idea. More often, creativity is about connecting ideas. The creative process is the act of making new connections between old ideas. So we can say that creative thinking is the task of recognizing relationships between concepts.
One way to approach creative challenges is to follow a five-step process of 1) gathering the material, 2) working hard on it in your mind, 3) staying out of the problem, 4) to ideas come back to you naturally, and 5) test your idea in the real world and adjust it based on the feedback.
Creativity doesn’t mean being the first (or only) to come up with an idea. More often, creativity is about connecting ideas 바카라사이트.