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FRIDAY JUNE 22 2001

Interview

Don't think straight

BY ANJANA AHUJA

Everyone has what it takes to be a brilliant inventor by simply recognising society's rules ・and then breaking them. Our correspondent talks to a psychologist who can free your creative urges

Take a good, long look at the newspaper you're reading. What could it be used for? If you think this is an unimaginably daft question with blindingly obvious answers ・such as reading or lining the cat-litter tray ・then you are sadly lacking in creativity and inventiveness. For you are mired in 吐unctional fixedness・・a slavish adherence to the belief that paperclips, pens and newspapers have but one use. This is why you are not a brilliant inventor. This is why you have pointedly failed to make a million by dreaming up clockwork radios, airbags, waterproof mascara, bagless vacuum cleaners or gel-filled bras.

Happily, your prospects need not remain so dismal. According to Gary Fitzgibbon, a chartered psychologist and an expert on creativity, anyone can break out of their mental shackles and become a free-thinking individual, able to come up with dazzling ideas and novel ways to solve problems.

The key is recognising society's rules ・and breaking them. In some ways, he says, it is about reverting to childhood, when you played games by making up the rules as you went along.

The Mini was a revolution in car design because someone thought of putting the engine in sideways. Without that breakthrough, it would never have been possible,・says Fitzgibbon, who runs Fitzgibbon Associates in London and has been involved in the Tomorrow's World Live exhibition, which starts next Wednesday (www.twle.co.uk). Another of his favourite Eureka moments is said to have happened at the Swan Vesta match factory. In a stroke of genius, a worker questioned why sandpaper was needed on both sides of a box of matches. Putting it on only one side saved the company a fortune.

One popular puzzle, Fitzgibbon says, is to give someone six matchsticks and ask them to make four equilateral triangles out of them: People struggle for hours trying to do it, by laying the matchsticks flat on the table. But nobody has told them to do that ・they're assumed it. You can only solve the puzzle by building a pyramid.・

If inventors need a penchant for questioning convention, doesn't it suggest that non-conformists, anarchists and rebels might be more creative than more strait-laced individuals? Fitzgibbon doesn't think so: 的 don't subscribe to the belief that inventors can only belong to one personality type.・

Conventional IQ tests and puzzles, such as the Times crossword, are no markers of inventive ability ・the problem-solving techniques used in them can be picked up with practice. A Mastermind champion is not necessarily going to be better at being ingenious ・quiz supremos are simply good at storing and recalling facts. However, Fitzgibbon does admit that having inventors in the family ・and sharing their creative genes ・might give some people a head start. After all, inventiveness is about seeing objects and connections between them in a particular way. It's a way of perceiving the world, which depends on how your brain is wired, which in turn depends on genes. For example, among professional architects, there is a high proportion of dyslexics. It is thought that, in the same way that blind people sometimes develop sharp hearing, people who have trouble handling language may develop superior visual skills.

Also, having a greater sense of imagination can help. If you loved Dungeons and Dragons, or if you believe in Father Christmas, you are likely to find it easier to conjure up fantastical new ways of approaching problems (one hint to parents: don't tell your children that Santa Claus doesn't exist. Instead, ask them to work out how he delivers all those presents in one night. It's never too early to nurture a junior Edison).

If role-playing games aren't your thing, all you have to do is plant yourself in the right environment. The ideal creative hothouse congratulates, rather than berates, people for having off-the-wall ideas. It should be an environment where failures are embraced as part of progress ・the same daring that brings spectacular mistakes may also bring spectacular success. Creativity, Fitzgibbon says, is also about refusing to feel the fear:

Some people will sit on brilliant ideas because they are scared of ridicule, or are frightened of being carpeted by their boss.・ Some companies are trying to provide a safe haven for their workers to experiment, in the hope that it will foster creativity. Employees of Hewlett-Packard and 3M are allowed to spend 10 per cent of their time doing whatever they like. The fruits of HP痴 employees will be on view at the hp Inventor Centre at the exhibition.

Anyway, back to what you can do with a newspaper. Don't fall into the trap of one poor man, who hit on the idea that newspapers could be used for cleaning things. He then recited to Fitzgibbon an exhaustive list of things that could be cleaned ・shoes, cars, windows etc. These are not different ideas, but the same idea applied to different things. A rather more innovative candidate came up with about 70 different uses, a record screaming to be broken. So here goes ・litter-tray lining, wrapping paper, insulation, propping the window open, soaking up spilt liquid, lighting fires, making paper aeroplanes . . .

Fitzgibbon's five tips for creativity

1 Keep a journal or diary of what you do, and any problems you're faced. We tend to forget things that have happened, even though we could learn from them. For example, if you're had to deal with a difficult customer, don't try to put it out of your mind but think about how you would deal with the situation differently.・

2 Each day focus on one object, such as a teabag or a pen, and think what it could be used for, apart from its original purpose.

3 Record your dreams as and when you remember them. There is evidence to suggest that one of the functions of dreams is to help us to solve problems or work through them.・

4 Imagine how you would see the events happening around you through someone else's eyes. Each person applies their own rules to the world, so stepping into someone else's shoes means abandoning your rules temporarily and taking on someone else's.・

5 Finally, set aside a period of each day to relax. Paint, write poetry, listen to music, or do nothing. This gives you an incubation period,・says Fitzgibbon. Often we find we are hopeless in the face of a problem, and it helps to stop and come back to it. This is called insight learning ・where you can tackle something after a period of inactivity.

・/P> Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard terms and conditions. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website.