There are many styles of creativity to help formulate ideas and solve problems in business

There are people who consider themselves to be very creative. This may be partly justified. Such people are motivated to be creative. They spend more time than other people trying to be creative. They are willing to accept and foster ideas which others would dismiss. They respond to the challenge of generating new ideas. All this is to do with motivation, attitude and time use. The creative talent may not be very high. Nevertheless, the amount of time and energy put into being creative will produce results. These results may not be outstanding, but creativity can be usable without being outstanding.

There are those who feel they are chosen by heaven to be creative. They foster, tend and cosset the creative talent they believe themselves to have. Such people are usually to be found in advertising. In fact, the creative talent is not very high. That does not matter because such people are often very professional. They are more inclined to take a given concept and then to produce their own variation on that concept than to originate a really new concept. This works very well in advertising, where really new ideas are a high risk. In general the client, who is paying, wants a new variation on a well-tried theme. As Sam Goldwyn is reputed to have said: 'we need some brand new cliches'.

Then there are those who do not regard themselves as especially creative. But they have quick minds and are motivated to look for alternatives. They are good at extracting concepts and using such concepts to generate fresh alternatives. There are those with a lot of experience and very good memories. For any situation they are likely to bring to mind a different approach which someone has tried somewhere. Such people make no pretence regarding creativity but are very good 'connectors'.

Other people regard creativity as part of thinking. When creativity is required, then they use the mental habits of creativity. Creativity is just another mode, as is logic or history. Finally, there are a few people who have learnt the deliberate techniques of lateral thinking and apply these formally and specifically. Sometimes they get good ideas, sometimes there is no useful outcome. A successful new idea should surprise the thinker.

Here are the creative styles in action. The task is to make some creative changes in a 'coffee cup'.

THE SUPERFICIAL APPROACH
Why not connect the coffee cup more directly to what is being drunk? If we are drinking coffee, why not remind ourselves of the coffee? The cup could be shaped like a coffee bean and coloured dark brown. Every time we took a sip of coffee we would be reminded of the bean. The connection is direct. The value is harder to see. The idea is not designed to serve a value. The idea is simply generated directly, and then we hope for this value.

OFF-THE-WALL APPROACH
Wouldn't it be nice if the strong smell of roasting coffee could be used to enhance the drinking of coffee? Each time you lifted the cup to your mouth a strong smell of coffee would be released.

This is the basic idea. The value comes first. It is true that it is not a very powerful value, but it is defined as an added value. The creator then looks around to find a practical way in which the value can be delivered. It may end up with some complicated electronic device designed so that whenever the cup is lifted a small squirt of coffee scent is released. Or a simpler version might suggest an adhesive strip soaked in coffee scent and replaced as necessary on the cup. Here the thinking is 'purpose-driven'. The purpose may not be a very important one, but it does come first.

THE PROBLEM-SOLVING APPROACH
This is by far the most usual approach. If you can discern a problem and can then solve that problem, then your idea has immediate benefit. Value is defined in advance. This is by no means the case with other approaches, where a highly imaginative idea actually has little value. So the problem solver may focus on the handle of the coffee cup. This is small and awkward and the cup can slip round. So a better handle is designed to fit the fingers. The new handle may be larger and easier to hold. It may be at an angle, instead of vertical. There might even be a detachable handle which fits into a slot on the cup. All sorts of ergonomic improvements might be suggested.

PERCEIVED PROBLEM
Not all problems are obvious. Sometimes creativity is required to perceive the problem. Solving the problem is then relatively easy. Someone may perceive that coffee in a normal coffee cup cools rather quickly. So some sort of insulation might be a good idea. This might take the form of a cavity wall in the cup. It could take the form of an insulating jacket that fits around the cup. There might be an inner cup which nestles snugly inside the outer cup, with a small air space between the two.

ADDED VALUE APPROACH
You may not be able to keep the coffee warm for a long time, but perhaps you should be able to tell whether the coffee in the cup is hot or cold. How could the cup indicate the temperature of the contents? The simple answer is 'heat-sensitive paint'. The cup could change from red to blue as it cooled. Or words written in heat-sensitive paint might appear and disappear: too hot; hot; just right; cool; cold, etc. The two stages are easy to see. The first defines the desired value. The second finds a way of doing it.

CONVENIENCE APPROACH
This approach is somewhere between problem-solving and adding value. Convenience is always a value. Simplicity is always a value. Coffee cups have spoons. The spoons are always falling off the small saucer. Could we have spoons that did not fall off the saucer? This might mean having a sort of cleft in the rim of the saucer so that the spoon is gripped. It might also mean putting a kink in the spoon so that it cannot slide off the saucer. Could we have a coffee cup that does not need a spoon at all? We might think of fitting a sort of knuckle which protrudes into the cup. If the cup were now oscillated in a rotary motion, this knuckle would 'stir' the contents.

DIFFERENT VALUES
Naturally most people think of values for the person drinking the coffee. But there could be other values. There could be values for the person who has to wash the cup. There could be values for the manufacturer of the cup. There could be values for others. What about using the interior of the cup for advertising for completely different products - thus making the cup much cheaper to buy (the sponsored cup)? This may lead on to the idea of putting mottos or slogans inside the cup to amuse the drinker.

THE CHALLENGE APPROACH
'Challenge' may be used as a deliberate lateral thinking tool or it may become a habit of mind. We look at the coffee cup and note things that are usual. The important point is that we are in no way looking for problems or defects. The top of the cup is always flat (so that if the cup is turned over it will stand straight upright). We challenge this. What alternative might there be? Perhaps the top could be on a slant?

Once we have made this change, then, in a thought experiment, we imagine the slanted top. Where would this offer a benefit? It might be much easier to drink from for two reasons. The other end of the cup would not hit the nose - as in a small radius cup. The edge might fit more easily into the mouth.

The important point about the challenge process is that the thinker is neither seeking to solve a problem nor to achieve a defined value. The thinker is simply 'challenging' something which is there and then making a change. This change is only then explored for potential benefits. Once the benefit has been defined, it might be possible to deliver it in a completely different way.

RANDOM WORD APPROACH
This is the deliberate and formal use of a lateral thinking technique. For details of the techniques see my book Serious Creativity (published by Harper Business in the USA and Harper Collins in the UK). The random word is 'fork'. How could this random word help in suggesting an improvement? Fork suggests prongs. Perhaps the bottom of the cup could have three stubby prongs so that it would be stable on uneven surfaces. The prongs might also locate in holes in the saucer, thus stopping the cup from sliding about if the saucer is tilted. Forks suggest three or two compartments in a cup. You could drink from two at a time or from each in turn. The contents of each compartment could be different: warm milk, coffee, decaffeinated coffee, etc.

PROVOCATION APPROACH
'Po cups have no bottom.' This is a typical example of the 'escape' type of provocation. We then seek to get 'movement' from the provocation. Instead of a 'bottom' we could have a hollow cylinder. A small coffee cup could be inserted into the top end. From this comes the idea of having a very tall cup, of which the lower part is empty. The cup only extends part way down the tube. This could be both more elegant and easier to drink from. It could also lead to the idea of two cups (bottom to bottom) of different sizes. You choose how much you want to drink and turn over to that size.

More and more people are joining my world-wide creative team organised on the Internet. Members get special discounts, for example, to my annual Advanced Lateral Thinking Course held once a year in Venice. Commercial problems are circulated only to registered members. The address is http://www.edwdebono.com/ If you do not have Net access yourself, you can team up with someone who does and form a sub-team.