Techniques and Tactics

Now that we have covered the hard work necessary and the time needed, a few words about creativity techniques. Creativity techniques are structured instructions on how to be creative, an organized way to be creative. The following techniques might be useful, however, they will not work for all areas and in all situations.

Important preliminary notes

You have to work first

Sometimes creativity techniques are advertised as delivering ideas without any effort. Unfortunately, creativity techniques are like secrets to success: they will not work unless you do (or rather did). You need to know the domain first. You need to have something to work with. Consider brainstorming: you can storm your brain but there must be something to pillage in there first.

They give you an excuse to spend time on thinking

If you have worked (hard) getting to know the domain, creativity techniques might be helpful even if they have no additional effect: You will spend some time on the subject and you have a good excuse sitting around and thinking – you are not wasting time, you are applying a technique.

Break the routine

Creativity techniques can help you to break your routine. To force you to do something different, to guide your attention and your thoughts.

Do not expect miracles

There are no secret buttons you can press to produce great ideas. Personally, I prefer writing down any idea and hitting my idea collection when I want (or need) to be creative. It is well stocked and I have ideas for projects that would keep me occupied for more than one (normal) lifetime. Once I restructure the notes to realize a project new ideas usually come pouring in during the realization phase to fill the remaining gaps. This strategy might not work for you, so you will have to try different techniques, until you find the one that works for you in the given moment.

There is no silver bullet

Like organizing creative in general, when trying to generate ideas with the help of techniques and tactics, there is no guarantee that a given tactic will work, nor that a tactic that worked once will do so all the time. You have to be flexible in the use of tactics, because best tactic for you and the situation you are in will vary. That is the reason that it does not matter that some tactics are mutually exclusive. There is no single best tactic or technique that ensures creative ideas in everyone at any time in any subject area. This is simply impossible. People are different, working styles are different, circumstances are different, areas are different (e.g. in some you work alone, in others you can only advance knowledge as an interdisciplinary team because the subject matter is so large and difficult that it has to be distributed over different individuals). Creativity and the conditions in which a person is creative strongly depends on the person – the situation, conditions, experience and personality of the person determines if the person is creative, there has to be a person-environment fit. So, some techniques work for some people some of the time. To find the perfect technique (for the given time and situation) is like being the fairy princess searching for her prince: you have to kiss a lot of frogs until you find the one that is right for you. Now let us have a look at different techniques …