Creative Thinking in the Decision and Management Sciences

Decision and management sciences are usually considered to be the realm of the quantitative. Formulas and algorithms. Mathematical and logic models. So it's a bit of a rarity to find the topic of creative thinking covered in a book from experts in this discipline. James Evans is such an expert. And his book, Creative Thinking in the Decision and Management Sciences is that rarity.

He starts by defining creativity as "the ability to discover new relationships, to look at subjects from new perspectives, and to form new combinations of ideas, products, colors, textures, words, and so on. By this definition, existing quantitative models will be of little assistance. They are great for optimizing solutions to problems, but not so great for finding creative solutions.

Besides the many excellent examples and practice exercises, Evans includes a review of some of the more academically popular decision making and problem solving techniques. In the midst of this review, I came across the concept of "mess-finding" which has revolutionized my own personal problem solving.

In this model of problem solving, the first step is NOT to identify the problem, but to identify the mess. A mess, according to Russell Ackoff, can be defined "as a system of external conditions that produces dissatisfaction." Alternatively, a mess can be conceptualized as a system of problems. Or to put it simply, a mess is a group of intertwined problems. Imagine a plate of spaghetti where each individual noodle represents a problem. They are mixed together and it's difficult to identify the individual "problems" easily.

In Creative Thinking in the Decision and Management Sciences, Evans offers suggestions for improving, not only your problem solving skills, but also your problem solving characteristics. He suggests four creative problem solving characteristics:

1. Problem sensitivity -- the ability to test assumptions. We all have preconceived assumptions which are in need of constant removal and re-formulation. Your problem sensitivity is a measure of your ability to set aside your assumption while identifying the actual problem and while working to find a solution.

2. Fluency -- the ability to produce large quantities of ideas. They don't have to all be good ideas. This requires the ability to temporarily suspend judgment on the quality of ideas in order to increase the quantity.

3. Flexibility -- the ability to apply a variety of problem solving techniques to a particular problem. The old saying is "if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Well if you have a preferred technique for solving problems, you tend to see every problem through that technique. If you love using analogies, then you are always trying to "fit" the current situation into whatever analogy you can think of.

4. Originality -- the ability to generate more novel ideas. Generating a large number of ideas usually means some original ideas will pop up. Tell yourself that you are creative. Then generate as many possible ideas as you can.