Transcript A Small Spark - Tennessee Technological University

By Christian Grondin
And Andrew Heineck





J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis both wrote great
stories.
Neither were particularly good writers.
Formed a group with other known writers.
Brought segments of their works and
presented, giving constructive feedback.
The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia
were written during these sessions.





John Reed came up with idea for street level
cash machines and wireless credit cards.
Came up with the idea on a beach holiday
while he was thinking about the company.
This led to blueprint for idea.
“Reed’s spark came when he was alone and
away from the office”
These ideas allowed Citibank to become the
lead customer bank for the next decade.

1.
2.
3.
Psychologists discovered 5 stages to describe the
collaborative process:
Preparation: This involves a period of working
hard, studying the problem, and talking o
everyone else working on it.
Time off: the team members change context and
engages in other activities, often in conversation
with others.
The Spark: During the time off, a solution appears,
but that solution is deeply embedded in the
knowledge and social interactions of the
preparation and time-off phases, and it builds on
sparks that others have had.
4. Selection: An “Aha!” feeling doesn’t always
mean that an idea is good. Creative people are
very good at selecting the best ideas for follow-up,
or they collaborate with others in selecting them.
5. Elaboration: Working out the idea typically
requires a lot of additional ideas. Bringing them all
together always requires social interaction and
collaboration.




Hubble Telescope launched into orbit with
faulty mirrors.
Project required 1000’s of scientists and
engineers, and government would not pay for
a new telescope.
NASA’s experts got together for a last ditch
effort to save the project.
Bottema came up with idea to place 10 coinsized mirrors that corrected the image, but
couldn’t install them.




Jim Crocker (engineer) had been studying the
problem around the clock.
He was in the shower when he noticed the
shower head was mounted on adjustable rods.
He could picture the mirrors on it, which
caused his spark.
After this, a long elaboration stage took place
to apply this concept to ten mirrors in the
telescope (5300 parts)




The “Aha!” moment was explained by Karl
Duncker.
He believed that some problems could only be
solved so quickly that it could not be the result
of incremental reasoning.
He proved it by asking subjects a series of
twenty questions.
First, subjects were drawn to one incorrect
solution, and had to break free of it in order to
see the correct answer.




Janet Metcalfe (psychologist), an expert in
metacognition, wanted to take another look at
how the brain works when it solves a problem.
She pressed a clicker every 15 seconds so the
subjects would right down how close they
thought they were to a solution.
For Algebra problems, they got steadily
warmer.
For insight problems, they kept feeling cold
until they figured out the answer.




Weisberg believed, unlike Duncker, that
experience helped solving insight problems.
“You have to know how to think outside the
box.”
Hints didn’t help, so they trained the subjects
by making them draw lines outside of
triangles.
When presented with hints, subjects process
them better after seeing the problem.



Past experiences does not block creativity. They
help eliminate false assumptions.
Breaking out of the fixation does not result in
immediate insight. That requires prior
expertise.
Priming one’s mind with prior training helps
immensly.





People forget how their insights came about.
Maier put two ropes in a room, each hanging from
the ceiling, such that subjects couldn’t hold the end
of one and reach the end of the other.
Asked to come up with solutions.
For the fourth solution, Meyer would hint by
purposefully walking into rope as he walked
across the room.
This gave the subjects a moment of insight that
they would not have discovered independently.



This is a step-by-step (linear) process,
conscious or unconscious.
People steadily got to a solution, even if they
felt cold up until the moment of insight.
Even though Reed and Crocker were far away
from others when they had their creative
sparks, collaboration played a part in creating
the ideas that they put together.
What are the five stages of the collaborative
process?





You have two ropes
They burn at inconsistent rates (that is, they
burn faster along some segments of the ropes,
slower at others)
They burn for exactly 30 minutes each.
You don’t have a stop watch.
How do you get them to burn for 45 minutes?