How to jump start creativity

 Michael Michalko (Thinkertoys, 1991) thinks he knows how Leonardo da Vinci came up with his ideas. He’s put together a technique he calls the da Vinci IdeaBox. We prefer to call it an Attribution Table.

Whatever you call it, it’s is a clever way of capturing possibilities. And organising an almost infinite combination of elements. It forces your thinking to go beyond the automatic, familiar and limited routes and choices.

By visually recording all the possible permutations in a systematic way, your short-term memory isn’t over–loaded. The total number of combinations far surpasses what you could ever hold in your head.

Here’s an example with step¬–by–step instructions.

1. Choose and identify a project. I chose story writing.
2. Identify the components of the story. I’ve chosen Setting, Character Types and so on.
3. List the variables for each component. I haven’t listed mine but you could see how Desert, Moon, Swamp, Inner City and Home could be different types of Settings.
4. Now try out the different combinations by linking one variable per component. How do you do that? Well, you could run methodically through each component in turn or, perhaps, randomly choose various combinations from across the table. Which ever way you choose, you’ll certainly come up with many more combinations than you ordinarily would do.

References

Michalko, M.(1991) Thinkertoys, Ten Speed Press, Berkley, California