The Charlie Problem
Dan comes home from work and finds Charlie lying dead on the floor.

On the floor is some broken glass and some water.

Tom is also in the room.

Dan takes one look around and immediately knows how Charlie died.

How did Charlie die?

Creativity begins with "ordinary thinking"

Early 1900's
Gestalt psychologists as well as contemporary psychologists studied problem solving as a way to learn about creativity.

Gestalt theories and research focused on two main areas:
1. reproductive thought involves recall of past experiences and

2. productive thought involves the creation of something truly novel by going beyond one's past experience and looking at each problem in a new and independent way.

Main difference between ordinary problem solving and the creative thinking that charaterizes great accomplishment is
the high degree of motivation and expertise done in the creative thinking process.

Domain specific expertise in creative problem solving:
Is creative thinking independant of past experiences?

Problem solving is based on knowledge.

Solutions to novel problems require creative thinking in other domains, therefore, extensive knowledge in those domains may be required.

Role of memory in creative thinking:
- retrieval of information

Problem solving
- begins with continuity
- a match between the problem and individual knowledge which can result in the retrieval of possible solutions

Two conflicting positions developed:
- Knowledge / Expertise- applying bits of knowledge until a solution is found.

- Insightful Thinking - unexpected realization of a solution.

Final position - BOTH are needed to come to a successful solution.
Not necessarily the most creative solution.

Adrian DeGroot - cognitive psychologist
-studied areas of expertise as it relates to problem solving

Studied master chess players and found...

Experts:
- could focus more quickly on the correct move and did not have to search.
- previous knowledge is easy to retrieve
- expert can relate to something already known and use that knowledge as a basis for performance

Novice:
- needs to examine many elements / options in solving the problem
- does not have a storage of previous experiences
- needs to search much further to find correct solution

Creative Problem Solving:

Hubble Telescope had a flaw in it's primary mirror and was discovered after it was sent into space.

Jim Crocker - and his engineering team were hired by NASA to correct the problem.

They couldn't solve the problem...couldn't adjust the optics.
Solutions they found were either too dangerous for the astronauts,
or just too complicated.

Team disbanded and met several months later in Germany.

Before the meeting, Crocker was taking a shower.
He's a tall man and had to adjust the shower head.

While adjusting the shower head mechanism he saw the solution to the Hubble mirror problem.

Solution:
Small eliptical adjustments could be fitted to correct each beam of information reflected by the flawed mirror using a simple mechanism conceptually related to the shower head device.

It worked!

referenced from: "Creativity: Beyond the Myth of Genious" by Robert Weisberg