Pittsburgh Global Alliance for Leadership

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Creativity and Problem SolvingThomas L. Saaty
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Dr. Saaty, March 3, 2006 I just returned
last evening from being out of town to the most
wonderful surprise!!  I am very touched by the
fact that my song was voted as a creative piece.
 I cannot tell you how much that means to me as I
love to write and create music that makes others
happy.  I have been going through some tough
times with my music lately and this has been one
of the best pick me up's I've ever
received.You, your class, and your mind have
been such a wonderful blessing to me. I
appreciate all of the positive energy and
encouragement you have provided to me.  Sometimes
I was not able to grasp some of the more
analytical techniques you taught as I do not have
a great analytical mind, but the message was not
lost.  You are a great inspiration to me and
indirectly to my friends and family (through my
positive energy).This is the first time I have
been financially rewarded for my music and it
really means a lot to me to know that others are
touched by the talent I have been blessed
with.I hope you enjoy the song in years to come
and realize that without your youthful presence
it would have never been possible.The money is
great, and I appreciate it very much, but the
message is much more valuable. Thanks for the
inspiration and encouragement and keep living
life like there's no tomorrow. God Bless and
have a great day.Aaron Hayes  
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Creativity is Originality Novelty Significance
Elegance
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CREATIVITY IS THE ABILITY TO SEE RELATIONSHIPS
WHERE NONE EXIST
Thomas
Disch
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• Creativity Is the Essence of Life
• To Henri Bergson,(1859-1941) the French
  philosopher and Nobel Laureate, creativity or
  the continuous birth of the new is the essence
  of life. It is taking place in the real world
  every instant through creative evolution.
  Creativity is perfected in nature through birth,
  growth and maturation. In human consciousness it
  takes the form of continuous emergence of new
  images and experiences.
• In place of Cartesian dualism of mind and matter,
  Bergson proposed a dualism of matter as (1) an
  aggregate of images surrounding the body, which
  is the center of action, and (2) pure memory,
  which is a source of images that present
  themselves in the abnormal states of fantasies,
  or in creative moments as insights unavailable to
  perception or conscious recall. This view of
  creativity is in contrast with the
  constructionist, instrumentalist and pragmatic
  idea that creativity is an invention that is a
  combination of concepts that leads to the
  solution of a problem. Another view of
  creativity is that of intellectualism or
  neorealism, in which creativity is regarded as
  intellectual contemplation, as the Platonists
  believed.

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Several Sweeps Across Different Dimensions of
Creativity

• Creativity favors the prepared mind preparation,
  incubation, illumination, verification.
• Examples of creative people Archimedes,
  Alexander, Columbus, Kekule, Edison, Einstein,
  Bill Gates.
• By looking at the universe in general and by
  looking at nature and the different forms of life
  and how they survive and re-create over very long
  time horizons. We have gone from hunter
  gatherers to farming and agriculture, small
  villages, used animal power to build canals, to
  large towns, to industry and now the information
  age. What next?

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• By listening to ones inner voice, introspecting
  and disciplining ones habits and being willing
  to inconvenience oneself and take risks.
• By learning to be passionate in ones response to
  ideas and needs.
• By being loose and open-minded, responding to
  jokes, and appreciating life.
• By developing the ability to look at things in a
  different way. I know a person who says things
  like This is not a model of reality, but
  reality to be modeled.

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The Process of Creativity

• 6. Validate
• Modify
• Criticize
• 9. Evaluate
• 10. Repeat the process to improve

• Brainstorm
• Connect
• Organize
• Expand
• Implement

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One Theory of the Creative Process
Creativity uncovers, reacts, reshuffles,
combines, synthesizes already existing facts,
ideas, faculties, skills. It does not create
something out of nothing.
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world
the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man. George
Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
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Man Creating Himself
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ODE
We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers
of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And
sitting by desolate streams World-losers and
world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon
gleams Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the
world forever, it seems. (Arthur William Edgar
OShaughnessy)
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No problem is unsolvable, and no barrier is too
great to cross.
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The possible we do immediately, the impossible
takes a little longer.
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There is a popular saying that one cannot square
the circle. That is not true. One cannot square
the circle by the method of quadratures. One
can square the circle by applying a
homeomorphism, because the circle and the square
can be put into a one to one correspondence that
is continuous.
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A STRAIGHT LINE IS NOT ALWAYS THE SHORTEST
DISTANCE BETWEEN TWO POINTS
A straight line is not always the shortest
distance due to space curvature. If one were to
travel around the circle to get from A to B, the
journey would be about 1 ½ times as long, as on
the diameter. However, if we draw this circle on
a rubber sheet, and distort the central region
In our three-dimensional perspective, it is clear
that the journey from A to B taken through the
center of the region will be much longer than
that taken by going around the circle.
Lawrence M. Krauss, The Physics of Star
Trek, Basic Books 1995.
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The Nine-Dot Problem
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Solution to the Nine-Dot Problem
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The Ultimate Nine-Dot Solution
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R ROAD A D
CYCLE CYCLE CYCLE
LE VEL
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T O U C H
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CHAIR
KNEE LIGHT
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GROUND
ECNALG
DEATH LIFE
HES / HIMSELF
MIND MATTER
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Intelligence and Creativity
Psychologists have found nearly no correlation
between intelligence and creativity past IQ 120.
Very intelligent people may or may not be
creative. Beethoven, a musical genius, could
not do fractions to his dying day though he tried
hard.
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Eight Forms of Intelligence

• 1. Linguistic skillful with words, fluent with
  concepts.
• 2. Logical-mathematical thinking, proving,
  using numbers, solving puzzles.
• 3. Spatial think in pictures and images to
  transform the visual-spatial world, physically,
  or in the mind.
• 4. Musical the ability to hear and produce
  rhythms, melodies, and harmonies, sing, play and
  compose.
• 5. Bodily/kinesthetic athletic with skill in
  body control.
• 6. Interpersonal understand and interact with
  other people, with sensitivity to their needs
  leadership.
• 7. Intrapersonal strong self-awarenesspursuit
  of goalsability to learn from experience.
• Naturalistic ability to see patterns in nature,
  such as between stars in sky from one month to
  the next.
• 
  
  
  Howard Gardner

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A Potentially Infinite Number of Forms of
Creativity

• In every aspect of life and living there is
  creativity. The mind has 100 billion neurons with
  a near infinite number of synapses for making
  connections among them to think and to imagines
  and fantasize through the flow of electric
  signals. It is less constrained than the physical
  world around us. It is a world within a world, an
  orderly microcosm within a chaotic macrocosm. If
  something is not out there, we can make it up in
  our minds and think about it and believe in it
  even more passionately than we believe in what we
  see. There is existence in here that is not out
  there. Which is more real. Is the eye more
  important than the brain. Is seeing more
  important and real than perceiving and touching
  more real than feeling? Why?

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Here is my few-word version of what question
different fields of knowledge concern themselves
with. Philosophy Why are we here? Theology What
is going to become of us? Science What is it,
how and why does it work? Mathematics How do we
prove it? Engineering How do we make
it? INFORMS How do we get it to work efficiently
(optimally)? Psychology How do we feel about
it? Sociology How does it affect us and how do
we affect it? Politics How can we agree on
getting it to work? Business How do we convert
it to an opportunity and make money out of
it? Law How do we create doubt about why it
happened so we can win and make big
money? Psychiatry What is the bright side of
looking at it? Medicine How do we get it going
again? Car Mechanics How do we get it going
again?
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Divergent Thinking Convergent Thinking -
Defer judgment - Be deliberate, specific,
candid, and direct - Accept all
ideas - Make comparative
evaluations - Strive for quantity - Dont
decide too quickly - Build on ideas -
Refine and strengthen ideas - Seek the unusual
- Check against objectives - Stretch
- Move toward closure
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Eureka! Eureka!
There is a person beside a pool with a boat in
it. Would the water in the pool rise higher if
the person sits in the boat or if he dives into
the water? What if the person had a bucket of
water or a huge bag of cork would the water rise
higher if dumped into the pool or in the
boat? One of the most remarkable stories about
creative men concerns Archimedes, an ancient
Greek scientist and mathematician, who was born
at Syracuse, Sicily in 287 B.C. Eureka is the
motto of the state of California and in Greek
means, I have found it. This famous expression
of Archimedes, was uttered as he left his bathtub
and ran down the street having discovered the
riddle of the crown. Archimedes had been
summoned by King Hiero of Syracuse, to examine a
crown made for the king by a goldsmith. The King
was suspicious that the goldsmith had deceived
him in some way. The King felt that the
goldsmith may not have made the crown totally out
of the pure gold originally provided. Archimedes
tried without success to find a solution to the
King's concerns. But, one day, as he sat in his
bathtub, he noticed how the water level rose as
more of his body was submerged. This is when he
realized he had discovered a method of providing
an answer to the King. Was the crown made of
pure gold, or was some other metal substituted?
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Eureka! Eureka! Cont.
Archimedes decided to conduct an experiment
comparing the volume of the crown and a piece of
pure gold of the same weight as the crown. He
knew that silver weighed less than gold. He also
reasoned that an ounce of gold would take up less
volume than an ounce of silver since more silver
would be needed to equal the ounce of gold. A
piece of matter has the same volume for whatever
shape it may have. He lowered bars of gold equal
to the weight of the crown into the water marking
the water level as it rose. He then did the same
with the crown. He observed the water level had
risen higher when the crown had been submerged.
Had the crown been made of pure gold, both water
levels would have been comparable. Since more
water was displaced when the crown was submerged,
this indicated that the goldsmith had indeed been
deceitful. He had substituted some silver for
the gold when making the crown. Archimedes had
discovered the solution. EUREKA! EUREKA! Now,
what is your answer about the level of the pool
after you heard the story of Archimedes?
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Columbus and the Egg
Sometime during 1493, (4 to 6 weeks after his
return from his first voyage) Columbus was at a
party. One member of the group said to him, "If
you had not undertaken the expedition, someone
else from Spain would have". Columbus made no
reply but took a hard boiled egg and said,
"Gentlemen, make the egg stand on its end without
support. The egg was passed around the table,
but none of them could stand it up without
support. When the egg came back to Columbus, he
smashed it down on the table to make it stand up.
They said, Anyone could have done that.
Columbus said, Then why didnt you?
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Inspiration in the Middle of the
Night Responding to the Call
If you have an idea in the middle of the night
that is pressing you, and waking you up, you MUST
get up and do it - right then and there. Do that
if you are walking the street, or are in the
middle of a party, or even if you are even in the
middle of routine work.
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Saturate yourself through and through with your
subject and wait. Lloyd Morgan Chance only
favors invention for minds which are prepared for
discoveries by patient study and persevering
efforts. Louis Pasteur
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How to be Creative
1. It is not having many ideas but pursuing one
of the many possible ideas with persistence and
imagination that is a high mark of creativity
not to be complacent and easily satisfied, but to
put forth the effort and stick with it. When you
get a solution, push it hard vertically, and look
for other solutions laterally, until you are
satisfied there are no more.
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How to be Creative
2. Get outside of the box by being willing to be
childlike. It is OK to blunder. Do not be
afraid to make mistakes. Use humor. Learn to
have courage to risk thoughts and pursue a line
of thinking that does not initially make sense.
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How to be Creative
3. Suspend judgment. Be positive, flexible,
open-minded and imaginative. Later you can bring
to bear your analytical talents to judge, but not
in the beginning.
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How to be Creative
4. Create a SAFE environment for creativity.
Reward innovation and perseverance, and not just
good performance.
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How to be Creative
5. Get up and do it. Activate yourself to do it
on the spot. Go look up a reference that might
help you, or a person, or go to see and learn
NOW, not later today, not tomorrow. Learn to
trigger your leg muscles to move on demand, do not
procrastinate, obey the call to explore at all
costs. Einstein said that the legs are the
wheels of creativity. Try to make it exciting,
imaginative, inspiring and rewarding. Let your
attitude and creativity be a light to brighten
the world around you and even farther away.
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How to be Creative
6. Be practical, try to interpret your theme in
many ways, particularly ones about the value of
the idea, whether material or spiritual.
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How to be Creative
7. After thinking, try to explain what you are
after to someone else.
Listen to their suggestions they may be just
what you need. Get your hands and all your
physical self involved as partners in the quest
for creativity.
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How to be Creative
8. Do not alienate your body from cooperating
with your thoughts. Train it, reward, and humor
it.
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How to be Creative
9. If at first you don't succeed, try and try
again. Never give up. Creativity is 99
perspiration and 1 inspiration.
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How to be Creative
10. What is creativity for? You have to live with
yourself for the rest of your life. Try to make
it exciting, imaginative, inspiring and
rewarding.
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Try your Creativity
1. Formulate the foregoing ten suggestions in the
form of the ten commandments. 2. Do the same in
the form of ten exhortations. 3. Do them as ten
funny jokes. 4. Do them in very precise, laconic,
and terse phrases. 5. Recompose them as
poetry. 6. Reshape them as sports
activities. 7. Make drawings to illustrate
them. 8. Write an impassioned speech to inspire
people to follow them. 9. Write each of them in
an opposite contradictory negative
form. 10. Abbreviate them using acronyms that can
still be understood. 11. Make a crossword puzzle
that contains the essential ideas in
them. 12. Rewrite them as a set of deductions
from axioms about creativity. 13. Write a prayer
that is built around them.
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Try your Creativity
14. Make swear words using the ideas and language
contained in them. 15. Write an epitaph for
someone using some or all of them. 16. Suggest
practices and ways to enhance the development and
use of each of them. 17. Rewrite them so children
can understand them. 18. Rewrite them in another
language(s). 19. Use them in a speech to people
in jail to turn their minds to creative
acts. 20. Compose a musical piece with several
short parts to emphasize the ideas in
each. 21. Tell a Martian about them using some
very basic way of communication. 22. Introduce
mathematical symbols to represent and quantify
them and use algebra or set theory to restate
them in more precise terms.
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• 6. Thou shalt be practical but after many
  considerations. In the end a useless solution
  is a useless solution. Thou shall interpret your
  theme in many ways, particularly if valuable,
  whether material or spiritual.
• 7. Thou shalt explore your considerations with
  others and then hear what they say. Thou must
  ultimately commit thy entire self into the
  creative quest.
• 8. Thou shall synchronize your mind and body with
  your mind heeding creativity, and your body
  heeding the mind. Train it, reward it, and humor
  it for in doing so thou shall age gracefully.
• 9. Thou shall continue to persevere indefinitely
  until a solution arrives for there is no season
  for quitting while alive even though there is a
  season for everything.
• 10. Thou must live alone with yourself and are
  thus given creativity to make life LIFE.
• Bernhard Erb
• 2005

• 1. Thou shalt have no other ideas but one, and
  thou shall not leave this idea until all
  solutions of this idea are considered then thou
  shall explore another idea with vigor.
• 2. Thou shall obey your id including making
  magnificent mistakes, reducing to the absurd,
  laughing and trying silly walks. Thou shall be in
  or out of boxes and lines to risk all thus shall
  you find creativity when you have given up fear.
• 3. Thou shall smile, bend, and consider all
  things thus preventing judging before the time of
  analyzing and judging.
• 4. Thou shall create a SAFE environment for
  creativity. Reward innovation and perseverance,
  and not just good performance.
• 5. Thou shall commit to action NOW with a view
  toward learning expanding, helping. Laziness in
  all forms shall be abhorred as abhorrable. Thou
  must explore at all costs without delay. Thy
  example must ignite lumination brighter than a
  black hole.

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Ideas are cheap those who implement their ideas
are precious.
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If you hear a voice within you saying You are
not a painter, then by all means paintand that
voice will be silenced.
Vincent Van Gogh
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Preparation for Creativity
To be truly ready for your creative moods and
inspiration, you must learn to have your pilot
light on all the time to combust your
creativity with surges of energy, passion,
burning curiosity and commitment.
How? Confidence through physical, mental,
psychological and sexual prowess, abandonment of
egotistical brooding and openness to the flow of
ideas and juices. Openness to inspiration
through prayer and a harkening attitude
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Robert A. Heinleins Idea of Creativity
A Human Being Should Be Able To
Change a Diaper Plan an Invasion Butcher a
Hog Conn a Ship Design a Building Write a
Sonnet Balance an Account Build a Wall Set a
Bone Comfort the Dying Take Orders
Give Orders Cooperate Act Alone Solve
Equations Analyze a New Problem Pitch
Manure Program a Computer Cook a Tasty Meal
Teach Children Fight Efficiently Die Gallantly
SPECIALIZATION IS FOR INSECTS (Time Enough For
Love, Berkeley Publishing, 1973, p.248)
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The Pope Pronounces Evolution Fit
Roman Catholics never really had as much trouble
with Darwinism as did more fundamentalist brands
of Christianity. Still, in his 1950 encyclical,
"Humani Generis," Pope Pius XII cautioned that
while the faithful might regard evolutionary
theory as just that - a "serious hypothesis" -
they should not proclaim it as "certain
doctrine." Pius made it clear that he thought
Darwin's theory played into the hands of
materialists and atheists, who would try to
downplay religion using the writings of the
19th-century British naturalist. He was less
concerned about any major conflict between
Darwinian theory and church teaching about the
origins of humanity, and indeed, the
universe. But if any doubt lingered of the
uneasy truce between Darwin and the world's 900
million Roman Catholics, Pope John Paul II sought
to lay them to rest Wednesday October 27, 1996.
In a formal statement delivered to the Pontifical
Academy of Sciences, a body of scholars that
advises the Vatican on scientific matters, he
declared that "fresh knowledge" produced by
scientific research now led to the "recognition
of the theory of evolution as more than just a
hypothesis." Yet, as if
to defend the truth of the church's belief that,
ultimately, all creation stems from the hand of
God, the Pope added that, even if the human body
proved to have its origins in "living material
that pre-exists it," Roman Catholics must believe
that "the spiritual soul is immediately created
by God." Some Italian newspapers reacted
playfully to the announcement. A headline in the
conservative daily Il Giornale read, "The Pope
Says We May Descend From Monkeys." The Pope's
affirmation appeared unlikely to have much real
effect on teaching in Catholic schools and
universities in most countries, including the
United States, where evolution is generally
accepted as a standard part of the curriculum.
John Tagliabue, New York Times, 10/27/96
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Methods of Creativity

• Brainstorming
• Synectics
• Morphological Analysis
• Lateral Thinking

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BRAINSTORMING

• MENTION AS MANY USES OF A CANTELOUPE, BOTH
• PRACTICAL AND IMPRACTICAL AS YOU CAN THINK OF.
• DO THE SAME FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A DOG, AND
  ALSO FROM THAT OF A BACTERIUM.

SYNECTICS

• WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN A PARTICULAR
• STAR IN THE SKY AND YOUR PERSONAL HAPPINESS?
• HOW WOULD YOU RELATE THE LEADER OF CHINA
• TO A MEMBER OF YOUR FAMILY IN A SMOOTH WAY?

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MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
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8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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.
.
.
.
No Yes
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.
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.
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.
.
.
Benefits/CostsRisks
.
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.
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.
.
.
.
.
.
.
0 6 18 30 42 54 66 78 90
102 114 126 138 150 162 174 186 198
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Experiments
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Humor and Creativity
Humor is the only domain of creative activity
where a stimulus on a high level of complexity
produces a massive and sharply defined response
on the level of physiological reflexes. Laughter
releases endorphins in the brain which provide a
burst of energy and an impetus to creativity.
Children laugh 150 times a day. Adults laugh 15
times a day. They need to laugh much more.
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The Funniest Joke in the World Two hunters are
out in the woods when one of them collapses. He
doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are
glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and
calls the emergency services. He gasps "My
friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator
says "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make
sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a
gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy
says "OK, now what?"
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LATERAL THINKING Starvation The teacher asked
his Third Grade class to draw the simplest
picture they could think of that depicts
starvation. One student drew a circle and put a
crescent-shaped figure inside it. The teacher
asked, "What is this?" Suzi said, "It is a plate
with a Small steak in it." The teacher said,
"That is good but there is a lot of food value
in a pork chop." So he turned to Johnny, who
had drawn a circle with a thin elongated
rectangle in it and asked what it was. Johnny
said, "it is a plate with a dry crust of bread."
The teacher said, "That is very good but
there is nourishment in a small piece of bread."
A third student, Bobby, had drawn a circle with
a dot in the middle and a lot of lines
crisscrossing over the dot. The teacher asked
Bobby, "What is this?" "The big circle is a
persons bottom." "I see that," said the
teacher, "but what is the dot?" "That is the
hole," said Bobby. "And what are the
crisscrossing lines," said the teacher.
"Cobwebs," said Bobby.
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Starvation
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The Secret Facts of Creativity
Aloneness To listen to inner self Inactivity
Taking time off ? long stretches of time for
thinking and feeling about things Daydreaming A
source of fantasy Free thinking Allows mind to
wander free from inhibition Ready to catch
similarities Symbolic analogy as visual image
and fantasy image that does not comply with
physical laws Gullibility Ruling out criticism
and willingness to explore everything. Accepting
that there is underlying order beyond and within
us Remembering and inner replaying of Past
traumatic conflicts Neurotic conflicts limit
functions of the psyche or transform them into
abnormal processes. Conflict Resolution
Conflicts should be resolved but not forgotten.
What is important is the ability to transform
conflict into creative form. Alertness
Recognizing that a similarity is grounded in a
phenomenon that people did not know
previously Discipline Necessary for
productivity 90 perspiration 10 inspiration
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• Conditions for Creativity
• Receptivity
• Imagination
• Ability to see the right questions or an error
  and to have detached devotion
• Generalized sensitivity to problems
• Fluency of Thinking
• Flexibility
• Spontaneity
• Adaptiveness
• Originality
• Redefinition
• Evaluation
• Mary Henle

• Personality Traits
• Bashful
• Oversensitive
• Sincere
• Melancholy
• Requires Solitude
• Values Friendships considered sacred relations
• Nathaniel Hirsch 1931

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The Six Hats White Hat - facts and
information Red Hat - emotions and
intuition Black Hat - caution and negative
judgment Yellow Hat - whats right,
positive, benefits Green Hat
- new perceptions, creative ideas Blue Hat - is
the process effective? - Edward de Bono
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Find a word which contains all the following
letters AAEIIOY DLNRRRTX
extraordinarily
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SUMMARY
To become more creative 1) Be open-minded,
positive, receptive, forward looking, curious and
childlike. 2) Adopt an attitude of creativity by
practicing brainstorming, synectics,
morphological analysis, and lateral thinking. 3)
Refer to examples of other peoples creativity
Archimedes, Kekule, Alexander the Great, Galileo
(pulse) Columbus, Rossini, Buddha, Einstein
(thought experiments), Gandhi, Pasteur, Edison,
the Neapolitan, King John and the Abbot, the two
stones, starvation, jokes and humor. 4) Activate
yourself. 5) Practice, practice, practice, even
if it kills you.
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Bear Hugs Kettle The story is told about hunters
out west who left a kettle with boiling water
unattended. A bear came by and saw the dancing
lid. Attracted to it, he grabbed the kettle and
hugged it close to his chest, and was scalded
badly by it. Instead of dropping it, he hugged
it even tighter, getting more pain. The more
burned he was, the tighter he hugged, a vicious
circle. Instead of hugging our difficulties to
our bosoms tightly and rehearsing them to
ourselves and to others, we should drop them
before they scald us like the kettle did to the
bear.
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Great dancers are not great because of their
technique they are great because of their
passion.
Martha Graham
To solve a serious scientific problem, will
power is needed that can outlast years of toil
and bitter disappointments. G. Polya, How to
Solve it, p. 93
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IF YOUR LIFE BORES YOU RISK IT.
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The greatest risk is not taking one.