Mechanized Creativity

Synopsis: Creativity can be achieved in formulaic ways.

Recently, I wondered about how ideas are created. I realized that most of my new ideas are old ideas with one new element. Since I've thought about this, my concept of creativity has changed. I came to the conclusion that some creativity may be attained by following formulas. This seems a little counterintuitive. I think it's both true and useful.

There are probably multiple formulas that produce creativity.¹
For the one I stumbled upon, you need a schema and a list. The schema can be any schema. The list is just a set of objects, ideas, people, places, techniques, etc. that could replace one element inside of the schema.

Think about the schema for surfing. It's a board upon which you stand to ride on top of water. Think of a list of things you could replace with water. Snow, grass, road, air. This is exactly how skateboarding and snowboarding were invented.² Airboards are used in skydiving, and I'm sure someone has invented a grass board, or used a snowboard on grass. Making the list longer, how about ice? Metal? I imagine ice boarding would have a track similar to a bobsled or luge track. Metal boarding could be done on a huge slide. Maybe those already exist, but they illustrate the idea. You start with the schema, replace an element, and then figure out how it would work.

Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres wrote a book called Why Not. It is from a lecture ³ by Nalebuff himself that I took the title of this post, "mechanized creativity." The lecture and the book are expansions of the idea described above, with numerous specific examples. In the lecture, Nalebuff proposes ideas like pay-per-mile car insurance, opt-out organ donation and upside down banana peeling.

I theorize that the ability to use this idea is restricted by the level of flexibility in imagination. You might never be able to think of "metal" as a surface that a board can be ridden upon. A way around this would be to generate a list of surfaces independently of the schema, and then see if any work. Change from a direct, analytical approach to trial and error.

1. In a book called Switch, the authors Chip and Dan Heath explain a concept called "bright spots" which is related to appreciative inquiry. The idea is to approach a problem by asking what someone else does to solve the problem or what someone has done in the past to solve the problem. In the "list-schema" method above, you also look at something someone is doing or has done in the past, the difference being that you change one element and use the new idea. This leads to a formula for generating creative processes, or a formula for formulas. In bright spots you change 0 elements and transfer the idea, in "list-schema" you change 1 element and transfer the idea. You could change 2, 3, 4 elements and so on. You could preserve all the elements and add a new one. Chocolate chip cookies become oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Notice, the formulas can be thought of as recursive.

2. Skateboarding history, snowboarding

3.

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