According to Anatoly and Mark during the School for CreativeThinker Level 1 Workshop, there are three core criteria for judging the quality
of answers given for any open question, i.e. applicability, originality and
speed. These criteria echo the answers given by Tony Buzan to me when I asked
him “how to evaluate creativity”. Tony mentioned four criteria, i.e. novelty,
quantity, practicality and aesthetics. Here, I attempt to combine these two
sets of criteria for judging the answers given by learners for open question.
Originality
Originality means the answer is novel or new. If the idea or
answer is something that I never heard of, i.e. the learner generates the idea
out of nothing, that is considered as creative. If the answer is something
similar to what I knew but the learner alters or changes some of the features
or attributes of the one that I knew, that is innovative. However, the concept
of originality is rather relative and temporal dependent. In R&D for
example, a proven original result or outcome might lost its originality if
someone in this world was discovered to have created the same or similar
outcome earlier. Therefore, originality is time or temporal dependent.
Applicability
Applicability, practicality and usefulness are synonymous
concepts that define the quality of an answer. The degree of applicability is
resource-dependent. The result of applying an answer can be calculated using a formula
given by Anatoly (see fig 1). According to Anatoly, some people become smarter
because they know the methods and they have the necessary tools. Personal
capability and knowledge alone are not sufficient to solve complex problems,
but these are the fundamental resources needed to make an answer useful.
Speed
How to make good decisions fast is the key concern when
judging the quality of answers for open question. Learners are encouraged or
even forced to generate as many ideas as time permits. This idea of speed is
similar to Tony Buzan’s idea of quantity, i.e. how many ideas one can generate
in a predefined time.
Aesthetics
When the answers fulfil the above mentioned three criteria,
aethetics or the beauty of the idea could be taken into consideration when
judging the quality of answers to open questions. Four principle of aesthetic
design proposed by Prof Paul Hekkert (2006) can be used as the guide in making
the aesthetic judgment, i.e.:
- Maximum effects for minimum means
- Unity in variety
- Most advanced, yet acceptable
- Optimal match
Originality should mean the novelty of the solution to that particular field of problem.
ReplyDeleteIf a fish can copy and fly like a bird, then it's idea of flying would be consider as new and novel eventhough flying is not new as the birds had been them it for a long long time...