TECHNIQUES FOR STIMULATING NOVEL IDEAS

It is important to recognize that most creative artists, writers, and scientists pro­duce many ideas before they find a good, novel, creative one. In the preceding guidelines, we discuss some of the conditions fostering openness of the free flow of thought necessary to produce many ideas.

To encourage novelty as well as quality in ideas, people are encouraged to use metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) and analogies. (For example, what new ideas might be developed about a conflict between ethnic groups by using the metaphor of a family feud?) Other techniques for stimulating novelty include “synectics,” or joining together opposites (Gordon and Poze, 1977); raising ques­tions about ways of changing the situation (Eberle, 1971); substituting, sepa­rating, adding, combining, reducing, magnifying, deleting, or otherwise rearranging elements.

As the chapters on change processes (Chapter Twenty), on intractable con­flict (Chapter Twenty-Four), and on large-group methods (Chapter Thirty-Three) indicate, another way of getting out of a rut and creating new ideas is to try imagining a desirable future. Beckhard and Reuben (1987), Blake and Mouton (1984), Boulding (1986), and others have used various terms—“envisioning the desired future state,” “social imaging,” “future search”—to characterize the process by which individuals, groups, or organizations are encouraged to free themselves from the constraints of current reality to develop an image of a better future. In practice, this procedure has been useful in helping people develop awareness of new possibilities and new directions.

A third party, such as a mediator, can bring new thinking into a stuck conflict. He may help the conflicting parties become aware of new possibilities for agree­ment other than win-lose or lose-lose resolution of their conflict. Thus, as Rubin, Pruitt, and Kim (1994) have pointed out, mutually satisfactory agreements may be reached by (1) expanding the pie, so that there is enough for both sides; (2) non­specific compensation, which involves having one party receive its best alterna­tive and compensating the other in some other way; (3) logrolling, by having the parties make mutually beneficial trade-offs among the issues; (4) cost cutting, by reducing or eliminating the costs to the party not getting its way; or (5) bridging, by finding an option that satisfies the interests of both parties (see also the dis­cussion in Chapters Nine and Nineteen).

Also, by making the parties aware of their potentially “creative” differences in what they value, their expectations, their attitude toward risk, their time pref­erences, and the like (Thompson, 1998), we help them see that their differences can facilitate mutually satisfactory agreement.