Forget Brainstorming (Newsweek)

Newsweek article reorting on work and research by professor Michael Mumford (University of Oklahama).

Valuable insights into the creative process:

...half of the commonly used techniques intended to spur creativity don’t work, or even have a negative impact. As for most commercially available creativity training, Mumford doesn’t mince words: it’s “garbage.”

Paraphrasing, high creativity is achieved when we ask people to be unique, to show off their originality and resourcefulness.

However, there are some techniques that do boost the creative process: Don’t tell someone to ‘be creative’ ... there is a suggestion that works: “Do something only you would come up with—that none of your friends or family would think of.” When Runco gives this advice in experiments, he sees the number of creative responses double.

Interestingly:

Follow a passion.

Rena Subotnik, a researcher with the American Psychological Association, has studied children’s progression into adult creative careers. Kids do best when they are allowed to develop deep passions and pursue them wholeheartedly—at the expense of well-roundedness. “Kids who have deep identification with a field have better discipline and handle setbacks better,” she noted. By contrast, kids given superficial exposure to many activities don’t have the same centeredness to overcome periods of difficulty.