Originally published by Don Peppers on LinkedIn: Ten Simple Exercises to Improve Your Own Creativity
A little girl is using a toy shovel to fill a hole in her back yard when a neighbor looks over the fence and asks “Hi! What you doing?”
“My goldfish died,” she replies tearfully, “and I’ve just buried him.”
The neighbor says, “But that’s a pretty big hole for a goldfish, isn’t it?”
“That’s because he’s inside your stupid cat.”
Jokes like this one are funny because the punch line is so out of context with the setup. Such a darling little girl, and then – BAM! Something we would never expect of a little girl. Which causes the chuckle.
As human beings, we are all constantly observing the environment around us and making mental predictions for what will happen next, given the context of our observations. The ability to interpret observations and fit them into a context of some kind may in fact be one of the hallmarks of consciousness itself.
But context is also a key to innovation. Creativity drives innovation, and creativity is context-dependent. Only in this case, rather than using context to make predictions about our environment, creative ideas come when we violate context. Context violations produce things you don’t expect – not just funny punch lines, but innovative ideas, as well.
Your most creative insights are almost always the result of taking some idea that works in one domain and applying it in another context. As Matt Ridley has observed,
Innovation occurs when ideas get together and “have sex” with each other.
In evolutionary terms, this is called “exaptation.” Bird feathers, for instance, are thought to have evolved originally during the Cretaceous period to help land-based reptiles protect themselves from the cold, but when one species of reptile later began experimenting with gliding, feathers were exapted as excellent tools for controlling air flow.
And innovation thrives on exaptation. The anti-lock braking system in your car was exapted from the field of aviation, originally developed because icy runways can’t be sprayed with salt and gravel to assist in slowing a speeding plane. Computer punch cards were exapted from the cards originally used to drive mechanized looms. Viagra was originally developed as a drug to reduce hypertension.
You often become more creative when you violate the context of your own expectations. So if you want to generate more innovative ideas, then you should purposely expose your mind to unexpected things and conflicting concepts.
This, by the way, is also why so much creativity is fueled through social connections. Did you ever notice that people who are connected to diverse groups of others often seem to be teeming with creative new ideas? In commenting on the social implications of this, Clay Shirky said, “This is not creativity born of deep intellectual ability. It is creativity as an import-export business.”