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What Is Creative Problem-Solving & Why Is It Important?

• 01 Feb 2022

One of the biggest hindrances to innovation is complacency—it can be more comfortable to do what you know than venture into the unknown. Business leaders can overcome this barrier by mobilizing creative team members and providing space to innovate.

There are several tools you can use to encourage creativity in the workplace. Creative problem-solving is one of them, which facilitates the development of innovative solutions to difficult problems.

Here’s an overview of creative problem-solving and why it’s important in business.

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What Is Creative Problem-Solving?

Research is necessary when solving a problem. But there are situations where a problem’s specific cause is difficult to pinpoint. This can occur when there’s not enough time to narrow down the problem’s source or there are differing opinions about its root cause.

In such cases, you can use creative problem-solving , which allows you to explore potential solutions regardless of whether a problem has been defined.

Creative problem-solving is less structured than other innovation processes and encourages exploring open-ended solutions. It also focuses on developing new perspectives and fostering creativity in the workplace . Its benefits include:

• Finding creative solutions to complex problems : User research can insufficiently illustrate a situation’s complexity. While other innovation processes rely on this information, creative problem-solving can yield solutions without it.
• Adapting to change : Business is constantly changing, and business leaders need to adapt. Creative problem-solving helps overcome unforeseen challenges and find solutions to unconventional problems.
• Fueling innovation and growth : In addition to solutions, creative problem-solving can spark innovative ideas that drive company growth. These ideas can lead to new product lines, services, or a modified operations structure that improves efficiency.

Creative problem-solving is traditionally based on the following key principles :

1. Balance Divergent and Convergent Thinking

Creative problem-solving uses two primary tools to find solutions: divergence and convergence. Divergence generates ideas in response to a problem, while convergence narrows them down to a shortlist. It balances these two practices and turns ideas into concrete solutions.

2. Reframe Problems as Questions

By framing problems as questions, you shift from focusing on obstacles to solutions. This provides the freedom to brainstorm potential ideas.

3. Defer Judgment of Ideas

When brainstorming, it can be natural to reject or accept ideas right away. Yet, immediate judgments interfere with the idea generation process. Even ideas that seem implausible can turn into outstanding innovations upon further exploration and development.

4. Focus on "Yes, And" Instead of "No, But"

Using negative words like "no" discourages creative thinking. Instead, use positive language to build and maintain an environment that fosters the development of creative and innovative ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving and Design Thinking

Whereas creative problem-solving facilitates developing innovative ideas through a less structured workflow, design thinking takes a far more organized approach.

Design thinking is a human-centered, solutions-based process that fosters the ideation and development of solutions. In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase framework to explain design thinking.

The four stages are:

• Clarify: The clarification stage allows you to empathize with the user and identify problems. Observations and insights are informed by thorough research. Findings are then reframed as problem statements or questions.
• Ideate: Ideation is the process of coming up with innovative ideas. The divergence of ideas involved with creative problem-solving is a major focus.
• Develop: In the development stage, ideas evolve into experiments and tests. Ideas converge and are explored through prototyping and open critique.
• Implement: Implementation involves continuing to test and experiment to refine the solution and encourage its adoption.

Creative problem-solving primarily operates in the ideate phase of design thinking but can be applied to others. This is because design thinking is an iterative process that moves between the stages as ideas are generated and pursued. This is normal and encouraged, as innovation requires exploring multiple ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving Tools

While there are many useful tools in the creative problem-solving process, here are three you should know:

Creating a Problem Story

One way to innovate is by creating a story about a problem to understand how it affects users and what solutions best fit their needs. Here are the steps you need to take to use this tool properly.

1. Identify a UDP

Create a problem story to identify the undesired phenomena (UDP). For example, consider a company that produces printers that overheat. In this case, the UDP is "our printers overheat."

2. Move Forward in Time

To move forward in time, ask: “Why is this a problem?” For example, minor damage could be one result of the machines overheating. In more extreme cases, printers may catch fire. Don't be afraid to create multiple problem stories if you think of more than one UDP.

3. Move Backward in Time

To move backward in time, ask: “What caused this UDP?” If you can't identify the root problem, think about what typically causes the UDP to occur. For the overheating printers, overuse could be a cause.

Following the three-step framework above helps illustrate a clear problem story:

• The printer is overused.
• The printer overheats.
• The printer breaks down.

You can extend the problem story in either direction if you think of additional cause-and-effect relationships.

4. Break the Chains

By this point, you’ll have multiple UDP storylines. Take two that are similar and focus on breaking the chains connecting them. This can be accomplished through inversion or neutralization.

• Inversion: Inversion changes the relationship between two UDPs so the cause is the same but the effect is the opposite. For example, if the UDP is "the more X happens, the more likely Y is to happen," inversion changes the equation to "the more X happens, the less likely Y is to happen." Using the printer example, inversion would consider: "What if the more a printer is used, the less likely it’s going to overheat?" Innovation requires an open mind. Just because a solution initially seems unlikely doesn't mean it can't be pursued further or spark additional ideas.
• Neutralization: Neutralization completely eliminates the cause-and-effect relationship between X and Y. This changes the above equation to "the more or less X happens has no effect on Y." In the case of the printers, neutralization would rephrase the relationship to "the more or less a printer is used has no effect on whether it overheats."

Even if creating a problem story doesn't provide a solution, it can offer useful context to users’ problems and additional ideas to be explored. Given that divergence is one of the fundamental practices of creative problem-solving, it’s a good idea to incorporate it into each tool you use.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a tool that can be highly effective when guided by the iterative qualities of the design thinking process. It involves openly discussing and debating ideas and topics in a group setting. This facilitates idea generation and exploration as different team members consider the same concept from multiple perspectives.

Hosting brainstorming sessions can result in problems, such as groupthink or social loafing. To combat this, leverage a three-step brainstorming method involving divergence and convergence :

• Have each group member come up with as many ideas as possible and write them down to ensure the brainstorming session is productive.
• Continue the divergence of ideas by collectively sharing and exploring each idea as a group. The goal is to create a setting where new ideas are inspired by open discussion.
• Begin the convergence of ideas by narrowing them down to a few explorable options. There’s no "right number of ideas." Don't be afraid to consider exploring all of them, as long as you have the resources to do so.

Alternate Worlds

The alternate worlds tool is an empathetic approach to creative problem-solving. It encourages you to consider how someone in another world would approach your situation.

For example, if you’re concerned that the printers you produce overheat and catch fire, consider how a different industry would approach the problem. How would an automotive expert solve it? How would a firefighter?

Be creative as you consider and research alternate worlds. The purpose is not to nail down a solution right away but to continue the ideation process through diverging and exploring ideas.

Continue Developing Your Skills

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or business leader, learning the ropes of design thinking can be an effective way to build your skills and foster creativity and innovation in any setting.

If you're ready to develop your design thinking and creative problem-solving skills, explore Design Thinking and Innovation , one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

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Article • 10 min read

Creative Problem Solving

Finding innovative solutions to challenges.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Imagine that you're vacuuming your house in a hurry because you've got friends coming over. Frustratingly, you're working hard but you're not getting very far. You kneel down, open up the vacuum cleaner, and pull out the bag. In a cloud of dust, you realize that it's full... again. Coughing, you empty it and wonder why vacuum cleaners with bags still exist!

James Dyson, inventor and founder of Dyson® vacuum cleaners, had exactly the same problem, and he used creative problem solving to find the answer. While many companies focused on developing a better vacuum cleaner filter, he realized that he had to think differently and find a more creative solution. So, he devised a revolutionary way to separate the dirt from the air, and invented the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner. [1]

Creative problem solving (CPS) is a way of solving problems or identifying opportunities when conventional thinking has failed. It encourages you to find fresh perspectives and come up with innovative solutions, so that you can formulate a plan to overcome obstacles and reach your goals.

In this article, we'll explore what CPS is, and we'll look at its key principles. We'll also provide a model that you can use to generate creative solutions.

About Creative Problem Solving

Alex Osborn, founder of the Creative Education Foundation, first developed creative problem solving in the 1940s, along with the term "brainstorming." And, together with Sid Parnes, he developed the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process. Despite its age, this model remains a valuable approach to problem solving. [2]

The early Osborn-Parnes model inspired a number of other tools. One of these is the 2011 CPS Learner's Model, also from the Creative Education Foundation, developed by Dr Gerard J. Puccio, Marie Mance, and co-workers. In this article, we'll use this modern four-step model to explore how you can use CPS to generate innovative, effective solutions.

Why Use Creative Problem Solving?

Dealing with obstacles and challenges is a regular part of working life, and overcoming them isn't always easy. To improve your products, services, communications, and interpersonal skills, and for you and your organization to excel, you need to encourage creative thinking and find innovative solutions that work.

CPS asks you to separate your "divergent" and "convergent" thinking as a way to do this. Divergent thinking is the process of generating lots of potential solutions and possibilities, otherwise known as brainstorming. And convergent thinking involves evaluating those options and choosing the most promising one. Often, we use a combination of the two to develop new ideas or solutions. However, using them simultaneously can result in unbalanced or biased decisions, and can stifle idea generation.

For more on divergent and convergent thinking, and for a useful diagram, see the book "Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making." [3]

Core Principles of Creative Problem Solving

CPS has four core principles. Let's explore each one in more detail:

• Divergent and convergent thinking must be balanced. The key to creativity is learning how to identify and balance divergent and convergent thinking (done separately), and knowing when to practice each one.
• Ask problems as questions. When you rephrase problems and challenges as open-ended questions with multiple possibilities, it's easier to come up with solutions. Asking these types of questions generates lots of rich information, while asking closed questions tends to elicit short answers, such as confirmations or disagreements. Problem statements tend to generate limited responses, or none at all.
• Defer or suspend judgment. As Alex Osborn learned from his work on brainstorming, judging solutions early on tends to shut down idea generation. Instead, there's an appropriate and necessary time to judge ideas during the convergence stage.
• Focus on "Yes, and," rather than "No, but." Language matters when you're generating information and ideas. "Yes, and" encourages people to expand their thoughts, which is necessary during certain stages of CPS. Using the word "but" – preceded by "yes" or "no" – ends conversation, and often negates what's come before it.

How to Use the Tool

Let's explore how you can use each of the four steps of the CPS Learner's Model (shown in figure 1, below) to generate innovative ideas and solutions.

Figure 1 – CPS Learner's Model

Explore the Vision

Identify your goal, desire or challenge. This is a crucial first step because it's easy to assume, incorrectly, that you know what the problem is. However, you may have missed something or have failed to understand the issue fully, and defining your objective can provide clarity. Read our article, 5 Whys , for more on getting to the root of a problem quickly.

Gather Data

Once you've identified and understood the problem, you can collect information about it and develop a clear understanding of it. Make a note of details such as who and what is involved, all the relevant facts, and everyone's feelings and opinions.

Formulate Questions

When you've increased your awareness of the challenge or problem you've identified, ask questions that will generate solutions. Think about the obstacles you might face and the opportunities they could present.

Explore Ideas

Generate ideas that answer the challenge questions you identified in step 1. It can be tempting to consider solutions that you've tried before, as our minds tend to return to habitual thinking patterns that stop us from producing new ideas. However, this is a chance to use your creativity .

Brainstorming and Mind Maps are great ways to explore ideas during this divergent stage of CPS. And our articles, Encouraging Team Creativity , Problem Solving , Rolestorming , Hurson's Productive Thinking Model , and The Four-Step Innovation Process , can also help boost your creativity.

See our Brainstorming resources within our Creativity section for more on this.

Formulate Solutions

This is the convergent stage of CPS, where you begin to focus on evaluating all of your possible options and come up with solutions. Analyze whether potential solutions meet your needs and criteria, and decide whether you can implement them successfully. Next, consider how you can strengthen them and determine which ones are the best "fit." Our articles, Critical Thinking and ORAPAPA , are useful here.

4. Implement

Formulate a plan.

Once you've chosen the best solution, it's time to develop a plan of action. Start by identifying resources and actions that will allow you to implement your chosen solution. Next, communicate your plan and make sure that everyone involved understands and accepts it.

There have been many adaptations of CPS since its inception, because nobody owns the idea.

For example, Scott Isaksen and Donald Treffinger formed The Creative Problem Solving Group Inc . and the Center for Creative Learning , and their model has evolved over many versions. Blair Miller, Jonathan Vehar and Roger L. Firestien also created their own version, and Dr Gerard J. Puccio, Mary C. Murdock, and Marie Mance developed CPS: The Thinking Skills Model. [4] Tim Hurson created The Productive Thinking Model , and Paul Reali developed CPS: Competencies Model. [5]

Sid Parnes continued to adapt the CPS model by adding concepts such as imagery and visualization , and he founded the Creative Studies Project to teach CPS. For more information on the evolution and development of the CPS process, see Creative Problem Solving Version 6.1 by Donald J. Treffinger, Scott G. Isaksen, and K. Brian Dorval. [6]

Creative Problem Solving (CPS) Infographic

See our infographic on Creative Problem Solving .

Creative problem solving (CPS) is a way of using your creativity to develop new ideas and solutions to problems. The process is based on separating divergent and convergent thinking styles, so that you can focus your mind on creating at the first stage, and then evaluating at the second stage.

There have been many adaptations of the original Osborn-Parnes model, but they all involve a clear structure of identifying the problem, generating new ideas, evaluating the options, and then formulating a plan for successful implementation.

[1] Entrepreneur (2012). James Dyson on Using Failure to Drive Success [online]. Available here . [Accessed May 27, 2022.]

[2] Creative Education Foundation (2015). The CPS Process [online]. Available here . [Accessed May 26, 2022.]

[3] Kaner, S. et al. (2014). 'Facilitator′s Guide to Participatory Decision–Making,' San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

[4] Puccio, G., Mance, M., and Murdock, M. (2011). 'Creative Leadership: Skils That Drive Change' (2nd Ed.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

[5] OmniSkills (2013). Creative Problem Solving [online]. Available here . [Accessed May 26, 2022].

[6] Treffinger, G., Isaksen, S., and Dorval, B. (2010). Creative Problem Solving (CPS Version 6.1). Center for Creative Learning, Inc. & Creative Problem Solving Group, Inc. Available here .

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Creative Problem Solving - Characteristics

Efforts to establish a connection between intelligence and creative problem solving has been taken many times, but after years of research, psychologists have concluded that creativity is not the same as intelligence. Someone can be much more creative than intelligent, or vice versa without any influence on the other parameter.

With productive thinking, the objective is to create different approaches and consider even the least obvious or likely approaches. Creative problem solving creates a willingness to keep looking for different approaches, even if a promising solution has been found to a problem.

Rigid thinking tends to produce an inability in solving problems because such problem-solving methods rely on the past experiences to be successful. Such problem-solving methods, are thus, called reproductive thinking.

The main reason for highly productive creative thinkers to create so many rich, varied and divergent ideas is that they look for a new perspective that no one might have considered. The first step of creative problem solving, hence, is to re-visualize a problem in many unique ways. The first few ways of viewing a problem might be too reproductive to come up with unique solutions.

With each different layer of restructuring, the understanding of the problem improves, which brings the thinker to the root of the problem. At this point, a creative thinker abandons all the reproductive thinking steps that stem from their past experiences and re-conceptualizes the problem. Another noted ability of creative thinkers is that they can manage to operate between ambivalent opinions and incompatible subjects.

Edison’s first invention of a light bulb which is the earliest system of lighting involved combining wiring in parallel circuits with high-resistance filaments in his bulbs. The idea of using parallel circuits and resistance wires were two opposite thoughts that did not come to the conventional thinkers of that time, but Edison could see the connection between two incompatible things.

Creative Problem Solving: From Evolutionary and Everyday Perspectives

• First Online: 08 June 2022

Cite this chapter

• Gerard J. Puccio 10 &
• Monika Modrzejewska-Świgulska 11  

Part of the book series: Creativity in the Twenty First Century ((CTFC))

560 Accesses

Humans by nature are creative problem solvers. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the connections between biological evolution and creativity. Here, the authors make three principal arguments. First, through the arc of human history creative problem solving has been a competitive advantage for the human species. Thus, it is argued that creative thinking is an innate human trait and fundamental to the human experience. Second, everyday acts of creativity serve to underscore the fact that humans are bestowed with a capacity to creatively solve problems. Third, while humans are naturally gifted with the prowess to engage in creative thinking, deliberate creativity methods, such as Creative Problem Solving, can be leveraged to purposefully breed creative solutions. The chapter concludes by examining at a macro-level the polarity between creativity and conformity and describes how this dialectic serves to facilitate cultural evolution.

• Creative problem solving
• Everyday creativity
• Conformity bias

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Puccio, G.J., Modrzejewska-Świgulska, M. (2022). Creative Problem Solving: From Evolutionary and Everyday Perspectives. In: Lubart, T., et al. Homo Creativus. Creativity in the Twenty First Century. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99674-1_15

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10 Characteristics of Good Problem Solvers

Professional psychologist, motivational writer

Good problem solvers are good thinkers. They have less drama and problems to begin with and don't get overly emotional when faced with a problem. They usually see problems as challenges and life experiences and try to stand above them, objectively.

Good problem solvers use a combination of intuition and logic to come up with their solutions. Intuition has more to do with the emotional and instinctive side of us and logic is more related to our cognition and thinking. Good problem solvers use both of these forces to get as much information as they can to come up with the best possible solution. In addition, they are reasonably open minded but logically skeptical.

Some of the general characteristics of good problem solvers are:

1. They don't need to be right all the time: They focus on finding the right solution rather than wanting to prove they are right at all costs.

2. They go beyond their own conditioning: They go beyond a fixated mind set and open up to new ways of thinking and can explore options.

3. They look for opportunity within the problem: They see problems as challenges and try to learn from them.

4. They know the difference between complex and simple thinking: They know when to do a systematic and complex thinking and when to go through short cuts and find an easy solution.

5. They have clear definition of what the problem is: They can specifically identity the problem.

6. They use the power of words to connect with people: They are socially well developed and find ways to connect with people and try to find happy-middle solutions.

7. They don't create problems for others: They understand that to have their problem solved they can't create problems for others. Good problems solvers who create fair solutions make a conscious effort not to harm others for a self-interest intention. They know such acts will have long term consequences even if the problem is temporarily solved.

8. They do prevention more than intervention: Good problem solvers have a number of skills to prevent problems from happening in the first place. They usually face less drama, conflict, and stressful situations since they have clear boundaries, don't let their rights violated and do not violate other people's rights. They are more of a positive thinker so naturally they are surrounded with more positivity and have more energy to be productive.

9. They explore their options: They see more than one solution to a problem and find new and productive ways to deal with new problems as they arise. They also have a backup plan if the first solution does not work and can ask for support and advise when needed.

10. They have reasonable expectations: Good problem solvers have reasonable expectations as to what the solution would be. They understand that there are many elements effecting a situation and that idealistic ways of thinking and going about solving a problem will be counterproductive.

At the end, good problem solvers do not have too many irrational fears when dealing with problems. They can visualize the worst case scenario, work their way out of it and let go of the fear attached to it. Fear can make your logic and intuition shady and your decisions unproductive.

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The Top 10 Characteristics of Problem Solvers

September 24th, 2017

Have you ever noticed that some people seem to be natural born problem solvers? Look closer, and you’ll discover that problem solving is more a skill than a gift. Effective problem solvers share ten common characteristics.

1. They have an “attitude”!

Simply expressed, effective problem solvers invariably see problems as opportunities, a chance to learn something new, to grow, to succeed where others have failed, or to prove that “it can be done”.  Underlying these attitudes is a deeply held conviction that, with adequate preparation, the right answer will come.

2. They re-define the problem.

Problem solving is a primary consulting skill. Seasoned consultants know that, very often, the initial definition of the problem (by the client) is incorrect or incomplete. They learn to discount statements such as, “Obviously, the problem is that …” and follow their own leadings, but…

3. They have a system.

Perhaps the most common model is the old consulting acronym: DACR/S in which the letters stand for Describe, Analyze, Conclude, and Recommend/Solve. As with many formulas, its usefulness stems from the step-by-step approach it represents. Effective problem solvers take the steps in order and apply them literally. For example, in describing the problem (the first step), they strenuously avoid making premature judgments or ruling out possibilities. In analyzing the information, they are careful that their own prejudices do not interfere. In developing conclusions, they are aware of the need to test them thoroughly. Finally, most astute problem solvers recognize that there is almost always more than one solution, so they develop several alternatives from which to choose.

4. They avoid the experience trap.

The world is becoming increasingly non-linear. Things happen in pairs, triads, and groups and often don’t follow traditional lines from past to present and cause to effect. In such an environment, where synchronicity and simultaneity rather than linearity prevails, past experience must be taken with a grain of salt. Seasoned problem solvers know the pitfalls of relying on what worked in the past as a guide to what will work in the future. They learn to expect the unexpected, illogical, and non-linear.

5. They consider every position as though it were their own.

For effective problem solvers, standing in the other person’s shoes is more than a cute saying. It’s a fundamental way of looking at the problem from every perspective. This ability to shift perspectives quickly and easily is a key characteristic of effective problem solvers. As one especially capable consultant put it, “I take the other fellow’s position, and then I expand upon it until I understand it better than he does”.

6. They recognize conflict as often a prerequisite to solution.

When the stakes are high in a problem situation, the parties are often reluctant to show their hands and cautious about giving away too much. In such instances, managed conflict can be an effective tool for flushing out the real facts of a situation.

7. They listen to their intuition.

Somewhere during the latter stages of the fact-finding (description) process, effective problem solvers experience what can best be called, “inklings”-gut-level feelings about the situation. When this happens, they listen, hypothesize, test and re-test. They realize that, while intuition may be partially innate, effective intuition is overwhelmingly a developed faculty-and they work to develop it!

8. They invariably go beyond “solving the problem”.

On a time scale, just solving the problem at hand brings you to the present, to a point you might call, ground-zero. Truly effective problem solvers push further. They go beyond simply solving the problem to discover the underlying opportunities that often lie concealed within the intricacies of the situation. Implicit in this approach is the premise that every problem is an opportunity in disguise.

9. They seek permanent solutions.

Permanent, as opposed to band-aid solutions, has two characteristics: (1) they address all aspects of the problem, and (2) they are win/win in that they offer acceptable benefits to all parties involved.  Symptomatic problem solving, like bad surgery or dentistry, leaves part of the decay untouched, with the result that, over time, it festers and erupts.  Just for the record, a permanent solution is one that STAYS solved and doesn’t come back to bite you.

10. They gain agreement and commitment from the parties involved.

It’s easy, in the heady rush of finding “the answer” to a problem, to fail to gain agreement and commitment on the part of everyone involved. For effective problem solvers, just “going along” via tacit agreement isn’t enough. There must be explicit statements from all parties that they concur and are willing to commit to the solution. Agreement and concurrence really constitute a third characteristic of the “permanent” solution discussed above, but they are so often ignored that it is important that they be viewed separately.

Written by Shale Paul, Copyright Coach University. All Rights Reserved.

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Principles of Creative Problem Solving in AI Systems

Zhihui chen.

School of Education, South China Normal University, 55 E Zhongshan Ave, Guangzhou, 510631 China

The utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is springing up through all spheres of human activities due to the current global pandemic (COVID-19), which has limited human interactions in our societies and the corporate world. Undoubtedly, AI has innovatively transformed our ways of living and understanding how mechanical systems work on problem solving as or even beyond human beings. The core issues of this book include the following issues: (1) understanding the working mechanism of the human mind on problem solving, and (2) exploring what it means to be computationally creative and how it can be evaluated. By having an overview of the development of AI and Cognitive Science and rebranding the strands of creativity and problem solving, Dr. Ana-Maria Oltețeanu attempts to build cognitive systems, which propose a type of knowledge organization and a small set of processes aimed at solving a diverse number of creative problems. Furthermore, with the help of the defined framework, the relevant computational system is implemented and evaluated by investigating the classical and insight problem solving performance.

Part I of this book includes the previous four chapters, which introduces a series of theories such as creativity (p.11), insight (p.16), and visuospatial intelligence (p.20) to illustrate the necessary process and structure of creative problem solving. The author concludes from the relevant literature that the interplay between knowledge representations and organization processes would play an important role in searching for solutions. For better illustration and understanding, a selection of computational creativity systems is presented, such as AM, HR, Aaron, the Painting fool, Poetry systems, and BACON (p.34–37). Subsequently, from a methodological perspective, Dr. Oltețeanu introduces two different creativity evaluations for human beings and computational machines respectively. On the one hand, when measuring creativity of human, the thinking characteristics of the participants such as divergent thinking (the ability to diverge from subjectively familiar uses and think of other uses) and creative thinking are the primary objective for measurement in some of the most important empirical models. On the other hand, when assessing the creativity in the computational systems, various models of evaluating the behaviors or programs of creative systems are proposed mainly in terms of typicality, quality, and novelty.

In the second part, which comprises chapter 5 th to 8 th , the author develops a cognitive framework to explore how a diverse set of creative problem solving tasks can be solved computationally using a unified set of principles. To facilitate the understanding of insight and creative problem solving, Dr. Oltețeanu puts forward a metaphor, in which representations are seen as cogs in a creative machine and problem solving processes are regarded as clockwork, to view the relationship between creative processes and knowledge (p.69). Building on this idea, a theoretical framework (named as CreaCogs) is proposed based on encoding knowledge, which permits processes of fast and informed search and construction, for creative problem solving. These processes take place conceptually at three levels involving Feature Spaces, Concepts, and Problem Templates (p.91–94). Firstly, whenever an object encoded symbolically is observed, its sensors will be enrolled in the sub-symbolical level of feature maps and spaces. Then, in the following level, various known concepts are grounded in a distributed manner in organized feature spaces, and their names are encoded in a different name tag mapped for functionally constituting another feature. Lastly in the highest level, problem templates are structured representations, which are encoded over multiple concepts, their relations, and the affordance they provide. On the basis of the steps above, an integration of a wide set of principles in the framework would be accessible.

Part III, which forms chapter 9 th to 12 th , mainly focuses on applying the CreaCogs in a set of practical cognitive system cases, and developing a set of tools through which the performance of such systems could be evaluated. It is worth noticing that several evaluation tests of creativity are introduced to illustrate about how to apply implementation of the framework built above. In the preamble of this part, the CreaCogs mechanism of Remote Associates creativity Test (RAT) and Alternative Uses Test (AUT) are explored to develop the corresponding computational systems to solve these test tasks. Based on the practice of implementation and investigation, Dr. Oltețeanu analyzes how to evaluate the performance of the artificial cognitive prototype systems by solving different creativity tasks via inference mechanism or matching algorithm from CreaCogs. The book ends with an overview of the journey of exploring the creative problem solving and an outlook of the relevant experimental work.

Overall, the author provides a revolutionary academic framework to understand the theoretical and empirical cognitive processes involved in creative problem solving by computational systems. Various evaluation of creativity tests and tasks are drawn to illustrate how the cognitive framework works to find solutions of classical or even insight problems, which are stressed in the 2012 paper by Batchelder and Alexander (Insight problem solving: A critical examination of the possibility of formal theory, in The Journal of Problem Solving ), as the alternative productive representations are necessary to overcome the failures of discovering solutions. Besides, it is deep insight when the author describes the cognitive models of creativity through using a variety of schematic diagrams and pictures in this book. That is rather helpful to illustrate how insight and creative problem solving can be viewed as processes of memory management, with both associationist and gestaltic (template pattern-filling) underpinnings, and with processes of recasting and restructuring using from the memory and the environment. From the theoretical matters to the variate practical domains, Dr. Oltețeanu constructs the cognitive systems on the basis of the CreaCogs and develops a set of tools through which the performance of such systems can be evaluated similarly to that of human participants. In short, the theoretical framework and empirical computational exploration contribute to creating the imagination of the efficacy of AI in the area of creative problem solving.

However, the critical issue of the possibility of developing self-adaptive learning by the creative systems has not been further discussed yet. To quote the annotation in the fields of behavioral psychology and cognitive psychology, self-adaptive learning in AI refers to human’s self-adapted learning methods and the habitual condition information processing systems, which forms a method that AI can solve theories and problems independently through discovering and summarizing in operations. Due to emphasizing to develop a framework for analyzing the creative problem solving, the author focuses on introducing the value, mechanism, application, and evaluation of the computational system based on the CreaCogs that is why the issue of self-adaptive learning has rarely been taken into account for now. In summary, this book enhances our understanding of the principles of problem solving in the epoch of AI and deserves to be widely read in this age of intelligent machines. The CreaCogs cognitive framework proposed here could be served as an applicable guide for graduate students and researchers in the sphere of Cognitive Science, AI, and Education.

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Education | Thompson School District students solve…

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Education | thompson school district students solve problems with a head full of steam, destination imagination clubs across the district excelled at creative problem solving tasks, advance to state tournament.

Students in several of the Thompson School District’s Destination Imagination clubs performed well enough in a regional competition earlier this month to qualify for the state tournament in early April.

Destination Imagination focuses on solving problems related to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math). The acronym might be more recognizable in its previous form, STEM, which omitted the arts.

But the arts are a big part of Destination Imagination, or DI as it’s sometimes called by its participants.

For instance, one of TSD’s winning teams, a group of third graders at Cottonwood Plains Elementary School, won first place in their category earlier this month for a play they wrote and performed entirely in Spanish.

Cottonwood Plains is a bilingual school, which enables it to accommodate native Spanish speakers and English speakers with an interest in learning a second language at a young age.

The Cottonwood Plains team includes both: Some speak Spanish at home and others English. Some have parents that don’t speak English. Others have parents that don’t speak Spanish, and some have bilingual households.

But the seven third graders on the team are all capable of performing in Spanish and subsequently answering judges’ questions in English, or vice versa, regardless of their first language.

Crucial to the program is the agency of the students.

Teachers and parents serve as coaches, but they are largely absent from the actual creative process, other than asking questions of the students.

At Cottonwood Plains, coaches Yesenia Perez and Belen Lopez provided direction to their students, but the third graders made all of the decisions, from the plot of their play, which followed the story of two wolf statues deciding whether to turn into real wolves, to the sets and costumes.

“They do the whole thing,” Lopez said.

More remarkable still was the time frame with which students across TSD pulled together their projects. The district was delayed in getting the club off the ground until after winter break, while other school districts managed to start in the fall.

“We came back from school, we had to meet with the parents, the parents had to say yes, we had to arrange everything,” Perez said. “So we had five weeks.”

Another group at Truscott Elementary chose an engineering project as their challenge, and constructed a giant pinball machine out of a piece of plywood the size of a twin-sized bed and a soccer ball, with obstacles made of Solo Cups and PVC pipe.

Even choosing the projects is the domain of students. At Truscott, what challenge to pursue was decided by each student writing their preference down on a piece of paper that was placed into a hat, and then drawing out one of the entries.

A performance element is required of all projects, even the engineering and math heavy ones, so Truscott students elected for a narrative involving the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles defending their pinball machine from a villain who wanted to use it.

The villain was the brainchild of fourth grader Frankie Dickson: a salad. Her reasoning was simple.

“Because the turtles love pizza,” Dickson said. “The enemy of pizza is salad.”

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