In today's class, we grouped and discussed something good, bad and ugly from Anthony Weston's book of "Creativity for Critical Thinkers". Generally, it is a concise guide and introduction which instructs people with some practical methods and steps in order to be creative, which talks about the art of expanding possibility by multiplying options, brainstorming, lateral thinking, reframing problems, etc. Personally, I found it effective and inspiring on my upcoming assignments such as WIE and Bioc of this class. It triggers my blocking ideas and help me to think out of the box.
Specifically, we first talk about what is good about this book. Some of us thought that the technique of going public to exaggerate your ideas is quite useful to them. To me, I think that is why keep asking questions is so important based on Gelb's book of "Davin chi". Because by asking other people questions to gather public responses on the issue or topic you are focusing on will help you generate the public knowledge which is so powerful and influential.
Plus, some of us suggested that the book also points out the method of mutiplying the possible options, which indicates another helpful technique for us to figure out the most beneficial solution of specific problems among couples of options. Additionally, one of us also proposed that this book contributes to prompting proactive thinking. More important, he said that from this point he feel we should think preventably when faced with some problems, such as the city constructions and developments. Rather only casting about for the solution, we could make a detour to avoid this problem at first place.
Well, in my group, we thought this book introduces 3 vital things to be creative, which is 1) reframing the problems/lateral thinking; 2)throwing out some decent solutions and exercises that trigger creativity/prompts which are useful in real life 3) calling for breaking the sets/habits that we take for granted to be flexible and comparing or contrasting among things that are both inside and outside the safety zone.
In terms of the bad and ugly aspects of this book, most of us were focusing on the questions which is proposed at the last pages of every chapter. For us, we felt that the questions are overwhelming and the theories it mentions have a few gaps with applications to common people. What if the problems it mentions don't happen in our whole life (so that how can we think about solutions of them)? And one of us came up with a suggestion of this "bad" thing that the book could be edited as a workbook format which has some lines to be filled with possible answers on purpose of facilitating practical exercises and prompts.
Finally, as far as what I am concerned, to the most meaningful point Weston indicates in his book is that we should think how things could be rather than how they are, which I would say will play a critical role to motivate my creative life in the future.
