Creativity and Innovation PDF

## Creativity and Innovation **Dr. Mohamed Hamada** ### Chapter (1) Theoretical Elements **Introduction:** Creativity and innovation are among the most advanced human thinking, because humans live in a technology-driven world. Traditional thinking is no longer sufficient, instead, creative and i...

## Creativity and Innovation **Dr. Mohamed Hamada** ### Chapter (1) Theoretical Elements **Introduction:** Creativity and innovation are among the most advanced human thinking, because humans live in a technology-driven world. Traditional thinking is no longer sufficient, instead, creative and innovative thinking are needed. Any scientific progress is achieved only through human creative and innovation abilities. Creativity and innovation are the most powerful weapon of the mind in facing the changing world, and it is the highest level of human cognitive activity. **Definition of creativity:** Creativity is flexible and organized mental activity that leads to a continuous, valuable and serious ideas for society. **Definition of innovation:** Innovation is defined as the individual's ability to find new ideas, methods, or concepts, and implement them in a new way that is unfamiliar to others. This implementation serves a specific situation. Innovation also expresses the individual's ability to use existing ideas, information, and tools in a new and unique way. **The difference between creativity and innovation:** * Creativity is the ability to produce unusual or unfamiliar ideas. * Innovation is the ability to implement ideas in a new and unusual way. *Creativity is a result of imagination. *Innovation results from productive processes. * The success rate of creativity is difficult to measure. * Innovation is possible to measure the degree of innovation and its success rate. As it relates to production. * Creativity generates new ideas. **Creativity and Innovation** **Dr. Mohamed Hamada** * Innovation is the implementation of something on the ground that is new and unique, such as goods in the market or services. * The creativity process does not require financial costs. * Innovation is the implementation process, as it is natural that it needs financial costs. * Creativity is not afraid of taking risks. * There is a possibility of running into risks, such as failure to implement the creative idea. **Why do we need creativity and innovation?** The current era is characterized by rapid changes and amazing and successive developments in all areas of life, which is a reflection of the technological revolution and the steady increase in scientific knowledge. This indicates the extent of the rapid and successive progress experienced by humans. The basic requirement to be of a high degree of competence to confront this progress, is creative minds capable of finding solutions to many problems that threaten the individual and society. Through creativity and innovation, it is possible to keep pace with the tremendous technological developments, and adapt to various activities of life. The interest in developing creativity and innovation among members of society has become an economic, cultural, social and life necessity. **Thinking versus intelligence:** There are conflicting opinions of scientists when researching the relationship between thinking and intelligence. One group of scientists believes that intelligence is the main mental factor responsible for thinking, while another team believes that the mental abilities associated with thinking are different from those associated with intelligence. Godwin and Moran explain that all innovators intelligent, but not all intelligent people are innovators, and this is confirmed by the emergence of the innovative ability and talent of people with special needs. There are different points of view regarding the relationship of thinking to intelligence. One believes that intelligence is the main mental factor responsible for thinking, and the second believes that intelligence is one of the mental factors responsible for thinking, and the third believes that the relationship between thinking and intelligence is one of complementarity and interaction between them. **Meaning of invention:** Invention refers to the creation of a brand new product or device. Conversely, innovation is an act of making changes to the existing product or the process by introducing new ways or ideas. **Meaning of design thinking:** This means designing solutions to problems through creative and innovative human-centered thinking and a deep understanding of the target audience, their challenges, needs, culture and lifestyle. These solutions may be in the form of changing systems, policies and strategies, or in the form of developing goods and products, or in the form of providing services and developing infrastructure. **Meaning of discovery:** In scientific and academic fields, discovery is the observation of new phenomena, procedures or events. Discovery usually takes place with the different senses, then absorbing them and merging knowledge with what has been discovered and observed, and one of the basic things in discovery is questioning, because most of the discoveries were the result of questions about a specific topic. **Divergent versus Convergent thinking:** * **Divergent thinking**: One of the patterns of thinking in which the learner relies on contemplation and seeing the situation or the problem in multiple ways and dimensions, looking for new ways of solving, and reaching alternatives, ideas and creative solutions without being bound by a specific path. * **Convergent thinking**: It is a mental activity carried out by the learner to solve a situation or problem according to well-known steps that all learners follow. That is, it is traditional thinking that focuses on the usual solutions to solve problems. **Mental operations of creativity** **Definition:** These operations are intellectual ones performed by man to discover the universe, so we can do experiments and explain dates as well as formulating theories and laws objectively. This means the basic operations of creativity are the methods or techniques which one uses to solve his problem and access to information. **Mental operations of creativity** **Definition:** * **Observation**: Individual uses all his senses and tools to check things or incidents or phenomena and record them accurately. So, observing includes a group of partial skills as: * Recognizing the features of phenomenon or thing by using senses. * Formulating notices in a quantitative way. * Differentiating between observing and inference. * Knowing the difference among similar things. * **Experimenting**: Means "testing a certain phenomenon or some phenomena to be observed accurately to test a specific result. * **Analysis**: It is a operation in which we move from complex to simple or from results to reasons. This analysis may be physical or intellectual. The physical analysis is decomposing the complex to it's simple elements. For example; the chemist analyzes water into oxygen and hydrogen. Intellectual analysis is used in math's, so mathematician analyzes quantity (X¹ - 16) into (X² + 4) (X² - 4) and then analyzes the quantity (X² - 4) into (X + 2) (X-2). * **Synthesis**: Synthesis is the opposite of analysis, and it is moving from simple to complex or from reasons to results synthesis may be physical or intellectual. The chemistry scientist may recompose water by exposing oxygen and hydrogen to five, this is the physical synthesis. * **Classification**: It is a operation in which we classify things or incidents into groups according to specific features. * **Measuring**: A operation in which we use measuring tools to estimate a certain characteristic in a quantitative way as measure areas volumes, temperatures or speed. * **Communication**: A operation in which we convey ideas and information by using the written words, uttered words, photos, models, charts, maps, mathematical equations, tables and explanatory figures .... etc. * **Interpreting data**: Where we reach and get some data which explain a certain problem. * **Using numbers**: It's a operation where we use mathematical equation to solve scientific problems. * **Using space/time relations**: It is a operation which develops the skills of description of space relations and how change with time as: define the velocity of something moving- make charts to the tridimensional figures. * **Inference**: Formulating some results from given information and data. * **Prediction**: It's expecting what will happen in the future in the light of the previous information that we perceived and expressed them as scientific theories. * **Scientific guessing**: is a mental operation that relies on the five senses and imagination together to arrive at a knowledge. For the engineer to design a project, he must imagine certain images and shapes of the stages of implementation of this project to reach the final form of this project. **Exercises** This document explains the concepts of creativity and innovation, and how they differ. It also provides a definition of invention and discovery, as well as an overview of different types of thinking, and mental operations associated with creativity. The text also discusses the role of creativity and innovation in contemporary society.