Idea finding or searching for a new concept seems very similar to word finding.
When an individual has consistent inability to produce words for things that they want to talk about they are suffering a kind of aphasia. They experience difficulties in answering questions as:
- What is the name of the category:
church
building
house
castle
villa
- Which word does not belong to:
to see
to hear
to smell
to hurt
- What more words can you think of:
villa
apartment
school
…..
…..
Most people will be able to answer the questions without thought. If not, there might be some kind of disease or damage to the parts of the brain that control language. However, there migth be some strategies that could help “finding words”.
Strategies
A strategy to use is putting the words into a common box. What is specific and what is more general? Basically is that the use of categories. However, the word “category” is in itself a category. So people with word finding problems could better be helped by phrases as:
- What is more or less the same?
- The words are all about….
An additional strategy is to make it visual:
For instance, what is the name of the category: milk, coffee, drink, juice, beer.
Make it visual and proceed in two steps:
To what belongs it? What is more or less the same? What is common?
For instance, which word does not belong to orange, strawberry, apple, fruit, banana?
Make it visual and proceed in two steps:
To what belongs it? What is more or less the same? What is common?
What more words can you think of football, gymnastics, golf,…..,…… Make it visual and proceed in two steps:
To what belongs it? What is more or less the same? What is common?
Then, can you come up with some new things that are more or less the same?
The strategy is to look for a broader, more general category and from there backwards to looking for more words.
Connoisseurs of creative thinking techniques will recognize here the technique of concept extraction. In the concept extraction (concept triangle or concept fan) you look at one or two ideas, then extract some commonality or characteristic (the concept) , and try to devise from there new ideas that carries out the concept.
Although extremely powerful, concept extraction is a relatively unknown creative thinking technique. In a next blog post in our series of conceptual thinking we will show how thinking in categories (“concepts” ) will multiply the ideas you initially have.
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