A Change as the overall challenge for the communications industry

1   Every idea has its time

In this chapter you will learn,

• what creativity is all about;

• a few things about the developmentally interesting basics;

• facts about the current status quo;

• why lateral solutions should be favoured instead of binary thinking.

This manual focuses on the development of creative and effective ideas that additionally have a definite strategic aspect. But what does creativity mean? Does every person have it, and if so, how can you find it and use it?

Creativity is the innovative interpretation of pre-existing facts. By combining two existent factors in an interesting way, you create something new. Many people are not capable of combining two common things in order to create something new, to give their train of thought a new direction – that is why this kind of combination ability is commonly regarded as creativity. Statements like “How can anyone think that up? “ or “The world has never seen anything like this before“ often accompany this viewpoint on creativity.

How come that some people have such creative power and some do not? Let us have a look at the developments here in the Western world: Our thinking pattern has been influenced by the church for centuries. Access to knowledge and educational platforms were limited to ecclesiastical institutions and they were only gradually opened to the citizens. Naturally, the heads of the churches were pursuing a very specific goal with those steps: Education and the conveying of knowledge was not done out of selfless reasons, and in no way with the intention of granting the people maturity and authority; the point was to offer education that reflects the respective religion. With the bible as the philosophical basis for the Christian doctrine, the system used a book based on an either-or-viewpoint: There is only black and white, good and evil, God and Satan, the path of righteousness and the path of the unjust. The teachings and viewpoints that were conveyed to students in monasteries have still been retained in our current educational system.

So, in a way, the church has guided and shaped us as a society and as people, over the course of several centuries. The biggest religious institutions have taught us how to think. What is good, what is just? What, on the other hand, is bad, what is unjust? The bible as a foundation of values and understanding was the central tool and the rule of faith and practice. The idea behind it, namely, shaping a compliant people – ideally without any individual opinions, thinking patterns and approaches - is still visible in some areas even to this day. The church has not failed in their pursuit – even though their power and authority after the secularisation and enlightenment seems far less monumental. However, in the context of thinking models, the clerical system undoubtedly still retains its effects.

Then again, we are surrounded by a thinking culture shaped by our educational system. In this context, the statements made by Sir Ken Robinson2 are quite interesting. This consultant with international reputation in the areas of innovations, human resources and social development states that next to the churches, schools played an essential role in education in the previous centuries. During the 18th and 19th century – in short, during the industrial revolution – there was a high demand for a workforce whose education had to be based on technical and mathematical knowledge. The qualification process was all about creating proper engineers and proper legal experts. Therefore, stereotypes were created according to which these people had to achieve a certain level of knowledge through a specific learning method. And that is how specialists were educated according to the tasks at hand in the context of the industrialisation.

To this day, our schools work like industrial companies, and they are structured and scheduled accordingly. There is the school bell to signal the time – like in a factory in the late 19th century. We put people – that is, kids – into class groups with their only commonality being their age. There are no

Our world is classified in categories of right and wrong, and that is how we see it – almost mathematically. This linear thinking pattern results in the fact that we become wonderfully uncreative. Naturally, it is not in the interest of the bible to combine things in a new way or to approach something from a different perspective. Our thinking nowadays is binary. We are moving in a pattern of 1s and 0s. We do things the way we have always done them. We approach situations in ways that are already familiar. There is A and there is B, but there is nothing between them and there certainly is not anything beyond them. But this gap is exactly the interesting part. One-dimensional thinking is not creative – lateral thinking on the other hand grants us access to creative solutions. Only that helps us finding new ideas.

Even though we live in completely different times now, our educational system has not evolved much; but it still shapes the way we think. During my workshops and seminars, I keep noticing that the participants – often people from marketing departments, or from various management levels – keep trying to identify what is right and what is wrong. They are using reference values, but that is exactly what complicates our process of walking new paths together. If I want to get into a creative process with these people and ask them to think out of the box, they quickly reach their limits. Why is that? Because lateral thinking has never been encouraged in their education and has never been developed. But this capability is actually essential nowadays.

The term of lateral thinking was coined by Dr. Edward de Bono3 in the late 1960s, and since then, it has been established in the context of creativity techniques and unconventional thinking methods.

Originating from the Latin term (latus = Side), lateral thinking describes the ability to systematically utilise various thought and perception perspectives for any given topic. De Bono's approaches were used in big companies all over the world in the areas of creativity, communications or team development.

Conclusion: We have to promote thinking, and especially free and critical thinking. Our educational system has its origins in an era in which the demand for workers was high – people educated with a focus on their working performance, and their concentration on the process. And also people who think little and ideally understand only what makes them efficient in their respective area of work. Workers and technicians who are skilled in their respective jobs and who understand construction plans and can derive the necessary steps to take from them. That was, among other things, the goal of school education.

Today, however, we need people who think differently, who participate in a constructive manner, and people who can convey their ideas and critically question others in order to solve existent problems and find the necessary steps forward. Therefore, the educational system as the cradle of new specialists and the potential of economic development must be reformed. The objective has to be to educate people in lateral and free thinking. The focus should be creative thinking and the search for new solutions – especially within the educational system.

Dr. Edward de Bono reported that in many schools in China such a system has already been designed and is now being tested.4 If we imagine that so many brains are used as one, and no limits are dictated, an entirely new dynamic can be created. If we stop to copy and adapt, and instead think up real and new solutions, there is an unbelievable potential to be created in such a system. And sooner or later, we will notice this potential as an economical topic. Especially in Europe, we will start to lag behind unless we change something. Our tried and tested thinking along the lines of “We have always done it this way, and that is why we will keep doing it this way“ will one day be overtaken by the lateral thinkers. There is a very fitting statement to that note: “Everyone said: This does not work. Then someone came along who did not know that and simply did it.“ The thinking pattern of right vs. wrong gets us into very rigid situations.