Creativity and Problem Solving by Gair Kaufmann

There are problems that we know how to tackle and others that are new. There might be novelty, complexity or ambiguity involved here.

Creavitiy is about problems that require some novelty solution. There is high motivation and persistence involved and the biggest part is often formulating the problem itself.

There are three major phases in problem solving. Perparation, production and judgement. Mintzberg named them: identification, development and selection. The Multilated Checkerboard Problem is an example here that all the different parts are important.

Very important in problem solving is satisficing and bounded rationality. We are often trying to short-cut the problem. We try to get closer to the problem step by step, then plan by modelling, analogy and abstraction. In novelty situations we are often moving in a too restricted problem space. There, adding stimuli on different terms, or removing some stimuli that might be misleading and rearranging stimuli is important.

Expertise seems to be dependent on extensive, well-organized domain-specific knowledge, with 10 years of experience often needed.

Problem identification is most important and the problem representation may strongly effect the success at the end. Sadly there is a tendendy to go for a solution too fast. You need to focus on the problem, not the solution. Another problem is called the Einstellung effect, which is about clinging to something that works well in solving a task, blocking out simpler solutions that might come up. We also have a confirmation bias, in that we try to find evidence harder than disconfirmation.

(There is more in this article which I found irrelevant for my own thinking in relation to the course though… bounded rationality anyone ;))