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Software creativity: Why and how?

Winnie Wong
Postgraduate Student, Software Engineering, School of Business and Economics, University of Auckland, New Zealand

John Paynter
Department of Management Science and Information Systems, School of Business and Economics, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract

Should Software Creativity be incorporated into the curriculum? Traditional Information Systems training focuses on structured methodologies. Students are being taught with standardised concepts. These concepts frame students into standardized ways of approaching problems. As a result, students are trained to believe that there are standardized ways of doing things in the software engineering field.

There is nothing wrong with these structured methodologies. In fact, structured methodologies are proved to be effective for novices. As software engineering is a highly volatile field, we need to build products that are flexible. Software creativity skills could be a solution for building flexible software.

This paper discusses different creativity techniques that can be incorporated into Information Systems texts and courses. The Cognitive Network Model of Creativity is being used to analyse the usefulness of different techniques.

Keywords

education curriculum, structured methodology, software creativity, flexible software engineering, information systems innovation, long-term needs, innovation techniques, cognitive network model

Article Text

As suggested by Wulf (2000), 'where you stand depends on where you sit'. Wulf pointed out that our views on an issue are a consequence of our past experiences and position. That means our capability of problem solving largely depends on our past experience; ie what we have done and what we have learnt in the past. There is, however, a fallacy with this statement. If everyone simply acts according to his/her own experience, where do new ideas come from? This leads us to an interesting idea. If our world is constrained by discipline, formality and positivist reasoning, the probability of breaking-through from what we have already found in the past is low.

Computer hardware technology is advancing rapidly. Normally, hardware will be replaced after four or five years, but a piece of software is often used for an extended period of time. As suggested by Schach (1999), successful software survives well beyond the lifetime of the hardware for which it was written. In order to build software that is flexible enough to be modified when the hardware changes, we need innovative software developers.

Software is a model of reality whose only constant is change. Under the dynamic and competitive environment every piece of software has a particular life cycle. The lifespan would be longer when a piece of software is highly adaptive to the fast changing environment under which it operates. A software development company would gain competitive advantage by building adaptive and flexible software. The relative value of a product will increase as the usable period is extended. Software that is innovative has an improved chance of survival under environmental change.

What is software creativity?

It is not easy to define 'creativity'. Psychologists have come up with many different definitions due to the abstract nature of the term. Although not many people could precisely explain how they perceive something as being creative, almost every software user could give a few remarks and comment on whether a piece of software is creative or not. This leads us to ask how should software creativity be judged.

Creativity is an idea-generation technique. For software, the level of creativity can be measured by the degree of originality. Creative ideas usually are novel ideas. Software and other creative products can also be judged by highlighting the differences between them and other similar products.

A piece of software is designed to serve particular purposes. Purposes are real world problems. These can be existing problems or problems that are expected to happen. Sometimes, problems may be vague and be hard to conceptualize. When designing a piece of software, the targeted purposes to be served must be made explicit. A software engineer will need to define concrete requirement statements that can be operationalised. Software will then be designed based on those requirements. Creativity skills add value to the software at this very first stage of the software development life cycle (SDLC) by exploring latent opportunities.

As suggested by Couger (1996), software creativity techniques can be used at all stages of the SDLC. The following table lists how creativity techniques may assist different stages of the SDLC. The table is by no means exhaustive.

The need for software creativity training

To compete in today's rapidly paced environment, many software companies are increasingly relying on their employees to generate creative solutions. Novel ideas and lateral thinking add value to a company's products (de Bono 2000) and are therefore essential to a company's long-term prosperity.

Being able to generate novel ideas is not enough; the long-term prosperity of a software company depends heavily on its ability to consistently generate novel ideas. This enables a company to predict market needs and produce software that is leading the market. There is a strong need for the new generation of software engineers to be even more creative compared to their counterparts when IT was in its infancy. Being creative is not only a competitive advantage for business organizations but also for individuals.

Traditionally, all IS courses focus on systematic and semi-formal methodologies, such as entity relationship modeling (ERM), SDLC, normalization, etc. These concepts frame students into standardized ways of approaching problems. As a result, students are trained to believe that there are standardized ways of doing things in the software field. There is nothing wrong with such a structured approach. In fact, structured methodologies are probably effective for novices. What this means is 'you have to understand the rules and how to use them before you can learn when and how to break them'. As software engineering is a highly volatile field we need to complement students' traditional skills with creativity skills so that they are better equipped. Conventional IS education, assesses students on memorizing, understanding and comprehension. For example, Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational classifies different levels of educational goals (Bloom 1956). These are knowledge, comprehension, analysis, evaluation and synthesis, with knowledge the lowest and synthesis the highest. Under the conventional education system, students are awarded for being good in memorizing materials. Critics may argue that IS courses also involve case studies. These case studies encourage students to tackle a particular problem using their own approach. Aren't these case studies encouraging creativity? The answer is definitely not. Most computer-related courses are task-oriented. Student assessments are marked according to certain guidelines or model answers. Creativity does not count and may even be penalized. Case studies only test students' knowledge in evaluation, synthesis and interpretation of course materials. These are higher levels in Blooms hierarchy. Creativity does not count.

Most courses determine student grades based on their scores in various tests and exams. These exams and tests are set so that students are required to answer a certain number of questions within a certain period of time. An average student spends on average two to three days in preparing for a final exam. Information will only be stored in a person's short-term memory under such a situation (Simon 1979). It is hard to judge how much knowledge a student retains after an exam.

In contrast, creativity is an idea generation skill. Once obtained, the skill can be applied to many different contexts. By repeated use, a skill will be stored in one's long-term memory. It is worthwhile to introduce creativity techniques into the curriculum. Students who process creativity skills may apply them in different situations and the benefit could be lifelong.

Although creativity techniques are often considered to be more appropriate for broad-area activities, they are also important for daily routine activities. This is because people tend to lose insight on activities that are conducted repeatedly. This paper looks at five different creativity techniques.

Action words

The action words technique generates list of questions by asking who, what, where, when, why and how (Paynter 1997). By asking list of questions, the view to a certain problem could be expanded. Hidden opportunities may even be uncovered while going through cycles of the interrogatories. This technique provides a systematic way in gathering data that is relevant to the problem. It provides a framework for investigating opportunities exhaustively.

For example, when preparing for a seminar on how to increase students' creativity skill, we may start by asking the following questions.

• Who are my audience?
• What creativity techniques are available?
• Where can I get more information?
• When could creativity techniques be applied?
• Why would I suggest it to be incorporated into the curriculum?
• How am I going to present the seminar?

The action words technique has several cycles of interrogatories. After going through the first cycle, a second round of questions could be generated. The new set of questions may or may not be directly related to the first round questions. For instance, the second round questions of the above example may focus on the audience, such as:

• Who would be most interested at the topic?
• What visual aids would best catch audience attention?
• Where can I get some information about my target audience?
• When should I pause or ask questions so as to draw audience attention?
• Why do audience lose attention sometimes?
• How can I make the seminar interactive?

The action words technique can be used at all stages of the SDLC. It is particularly useful during the early stages, such as the requirement and the specification phases. Software engineers can adopt the Action Words technique during interviewing project sponsors. This may assist project sponsors in thinking deeper into their problems that they may not be aware before. As suggested by Couger (1996), only three rounds of questions are enough. The next round should go into finding answers to the questions.

Mind mapping

In the 1970s, Tony Buzan invented 'Mind Maps'. Mind mapping is a technique for organizing thoughts onto a single piece of paper (Buzan 1995). The aim was to get users to write down ideas in tree structures. The user can put down ideas in any order without worrying about the logical flow. It has proved to be an effective tool in fostering creativity.

One constraint imposed by the human mind is the tendency in following trodden paths. Particular sets of trodden paths form certain conceptual patterns. In software design, these pre-existing patterns are barriers to creative designs. Pre-existing conceptual patterns occupy an individual's mental capacity and slow down the problem solving process. These are bottlenecks in an individual's problem solving process that restrict the generation of creative ideas.

In his book 'The Goal', Goldratt (1993) talked about overcoming bottlenecks. To overcome bottlenecks, Goldratt suggests that the capacity level of inventory handling has to be increased. Goldratt's idea applies equally well to intellectual as well as physical inventories. Miller's Law suggests that there is a limit for human's mental capacity. Mental capacity is analogous to physical capacity. The mind mapping technique increases a problem solver's mental capacity by transferring some mental loads onto paper. This is different from jotting notes in words. Mind mapping has the ability to convey more information than mere note taking. Such a strength is discussed below.

Design practice is not a linear process. The design process is a solution searching process. Since there is no single right answer to a design problem, the searching algorithm is multi-directional. The mind mapping technique enables users to illustrate ideas in a non-linear fashion. With different ideas drawn on a single piece of paper, patterns or relationships between different ideas may emerge.

Mind mapping is a simple technique. It is easy to use. A main idea is to put in the center of a piece of paper. Then related ideas will branch out from the center. Lines are drawn to link connected ideas or concepts. Relative important ideas are put closer to the center while less important ones will be near the edge. The tree structure allows for the easy addition of new information. Besides textual descriptions listed as branches of the main idea, graphics can also be used. The map supports many-to-many relationships. That means one idea may be linked to many ideas. Lines connecting different objects indicate logical linkages. Arrows indicate relationships. The structure of the map indicates layers of importance. Color can be used for highlighting key concepts or for color-coding logically related ideas. A sample Mind Map is shown in figure 1. There are software programs that can be used for creating mind maps (www.inspiration.com, www.mindman.com). Freehand drawing is sufficient at the initial stage of creating a Mind Map.

Mind Mapping is a creativity technique that can be used at all stages of the SDLC and is most useful during the design phase. Mind maps are good in identifying patterns. A study of award-winning designers suggests that they intuitively knew whether an idea would become a feasible design that would solve a problem (www.brainstormingdss.com 2000). Intuition here means the ability to capture a particular pattern. Pattern recognition is a skill that can be trained.

Figure 1: A simple Mind Map created using 'MindManager 3.5'

A Visual aid is a useful means of pattern recognition training. It is easier for a human to see patterns than to visualize them in the head. As suggested by the Miller's Law (Miller 1956), an individual can process no more than seven chunks of information simultaneously. Such a limit restricts humans' ability in processing information in the head. The mind mapping technique allows a large amount of information to be presented on a single sheet of paper. Inter-related ideas can be identified easily. Patterns are more prominent. Distinct ideas may appear to be related. Mind map serves as an excellent tool for jumpstarting one's creativity. The mind mapping technique can be used in the requirement phase as a communication tools. Visual presentation of information is an effective means of communication. It helps to bridge the gap between system sponsors and project managers.

The Mind Map can serve as a tool in identifying system functions and requirements. It can be complemented by the action words technique. The Action Words Technique explores enormous amount of ideas while the Mind Map links and presents those ideas graphically. With these two techniques working in tandem, the project manager can probe into the true needs of the project sponsor and explore latent opportunities.

Analogy/metaphor technique

The Analogy Technique has an historical background. Aristotle made much use of analogies and metaphors during his teaching life almost 2,300 years ago. As suggested by Aristotle, 'Ordinary words convey only what we already know. It is from metaphors that we can best get hold of something fresh'. The idea of 'getting hold of something fresh' is the core of 'being creative'. Analogy and metaphor mean much in creativity. An analogy is a similarity between two things otherwise dissimilar (Couger 1996). Analogies are excellent tools in idea generation. Diverse cultures use analogies and parables in daily life. For example, contrary to most western thinking, Chinese use these figures of speech 'A cat cries after a rat died' means false sympathy and 'as fast as lightening' to mean something that happens suddenly. Polynesian cultures use analogy especially on the marae 'The totara stands strong'.

By using analogies, an individual can find new insights into a problem. The analogy technique is useful both when working in groups and on one's own. Good analogies bring new approaches to questions and sometimes generate innovative solutions.

As an example, imagine we are asked to design a program for student grading. Under a conventional approach, one may think of a spreadsheet program immediately. However, this time we wish to use our own desktop as an analogy to add some creative insights. Here are some questions that can be asked during the design process:

• I use a lot of post-it notes during grading. Should I incorporate that in the program?
• I refer to the calendar a lot when doing grading, maybe I need a built-in calendar.
• It is a boring task. Do I need an alarm clock function in case I doze off in the middle of grading?
• This program may be installed in shared machines. Perhaps password access is required.
• I may need to send the result to the administration. May be it is a good idea to have built-in email function.

A user is not restricted to one analogy per problem. Many different analogies may be applied to a single case. As suggested by Couger (1996), the analogy/metaphor creativity technique is powerful. Many successful innovations are triggered by analogies - wings of birds and bats have provided useful analogies for aircraft designers; camera lens are designed using human eyes as analogies. In the above examples, we know that the innovative idea is never an exact copy of the analogy. The novel idea is always being modified by the researcher's knowledge of scientific laws and accumulated wisdom (Couger 1996). It implies that metaphor and analogies can stimulate imagination, which in turn nurtures novel ideas. Creativity is described by using novel ideas in problems solving. Analogies/ metaphors facilitate creativity by accelerating the idea generation process.

The analogy technique is a flexible idea generation technique. It is especially useful during the requirement phase of the SDLC. It is helpful to describe some software concepts using analogy in order to help laymen understand them. For instance, when talking about a 'modal' form, one can analogize it as a set of traffic lights that turn red. It stops the user from doing anything until the user reacts to the message. The only difference between a red traffic light and a modal form is that the traffic light turns green after a certain period of time while a modal form will not. The analogy technique can also be used during a brainstorming session for diversified idea generation. So far, we have looked at creativity techniques that are used by individuals. Hereafter, this paper will look at some creativity techniques that utilize group power.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a widely used technique for generation of creative ideas on a defined subject. Osborne initially developed it for the generation of creative ideas in advertising (www.brainstormingdss.com 2000). The brainstorming technique has since undergone significant improvement. It is currently used for a wide spectrum of applications to assist idea generation in groups. The brainstorming technique is applicable wherever there is need for generation of creative ideas. It has been used successfully in problem solving, process re-engineering, product development and other processes. The main application of such a technique is in group work although it is said that the brainstorming technique may be effectively used by individuals as well (www.brainstormingdss.com 2000).

The idea behind brainstorming is to introduce a diversified set of viewpoints. Participants should have a common understanding of the topic under brainstormed. Ideally, participants should be selected from a variety of backgrounds so as to bring a wider perspective of the subject.

Traditionally, the facilitator or the scribe will write each idea on flip charts. Many brainstorming sessions are supported by Group Support Systems (GSS) applications. Santanen, Briggs and de Vreede proposed a new brainstorming technique (Santanen, Briggs et al 2000). The facilitator throws in relevant words or expressions in order to stimulate generation of ideas. This is called directed brainstorming (Santanen, Briggs et al 2000).

The brainstorming technique is good for facilitating group dynamics and therefore is useful at all stages of the SDLC. For example, it can be used during the maintenance stage for identifying hidden faults or in adaptive or perfective maintenance. Brainstorming may bring inspiration into such maintenance processes and the lifespan of a piece of software could be extended.

The excursion technique

The excursion technique was introduced by Higgins (1994). He suggested that the excursion technique is useful when the group has not arrived at a solution to a problem even after using other creative processes such as brainstorming. It can be used for both narrowly defined and complex problems. Higgins suggested that this technique works best on a more narrowly defined problem for which a conceptual breakthrough is needed.

There are four major steps in the excursion process:

1. The excursion
2. The drawing of analogies between the problem and the events in the excursion
3. The analysis of these analogies to see what creative solutions occur
4. The sharing of experiences with the group

1. The excursion
The group leader instructs each member of the group to take an imagined excursion that has nothing to do with the problem on hand. Normally the leader asks participants to close their eyes and use their imagination for a journey. A group member may travel through a museum, a jungle, a city, or any other kind of place, using their imagination. For example, one may be asked to imagine a journey through space to unknown planets. During the excursion process, it is important for group members to possess the ability to let go and create visual images. The ability to visualize imagination is critical to the success of this part of the exercise. The leader might offer some brief instruction and encourage other members to give an individual member assistance if he or she is not confident with visualization. Participants are asked to write down what they see during their excursion. The excursion last approximately five to ten minutes. Participants will record and describe what they see in the first column of a piece of paper that is divided into three columns. Group members can record as they go or after the excursion is finished.

2. Drawing analogies
After the excursion period is over, the leader will ask participants to draw analogies between what they saw during the excursion and the problem. This process takes approximately ten to fifteen minutes. Participants can express the relationships between their visual images and the problem in any way they wish. Participants will be asked to write their analogies or other relationships in the second column of the same piece of paper next to the items they saw during the excursion.

3. Evaluating and understanding
At this stage, the leader will ask the participants to refer their analogies to the actual problem. They will examine how those relationships can be used to solve the problem in hand. Participants will need to write their solutions in the third column of the paper. This step is the most challenging part of the process.

4. Sharing experiences
Participants are then asked to share their excursions, analogies, understandings, and solutions with the rest of the group. This step is similar to the brainstorming technique where group member's individual views become each other's stimuli. To maximize the benefits of an excursion session, there should be no criticism at individual participants' ideas. The leader should encourage members in idea sharing. Logics and relevance are not major considerations.

An example of the excursion technique is listed as follows (Higgins 2000):

A member of a group of bank personnel officers who were experiencing conflicts with other departments described her excursion through a natural history museum. She saw Indians making war on another village analogous to a war with another department. Another member of the group found herself touring of the museum where rock formations were shown. The various layers of hard and soft rock meant the same thing to her, that the Indian war had meant to the other woman. When asked how to solve the problem, she said, 'We have to take some dynamite (ie strong measures) to blow up the hard rock layers separating the departments.'

Higgins asserts that the excursion technique is especially useful in difficult problems calling for unique solutions, such as for creating product differentiation features in a mature market. Such a technique could be useful during the design phase of the SDLC. It is particularly useful when deadlocks arise, such as when little progress has been made after several brainstorming sessions. The role of the leader is important. A good leader should encourage participants to let go and to share their experiences. The leader must take care that the discussion does not lose focus. The process must be well explained with purposes explicitly specified. Only when the process is well understood and participants properly motivated can good ideas emerge.

Table 2

The Cognitive Network Model of Creativity

Five creativity techniques have been discussed and some may query the efficacy of them. Creativity is usually thought of as a naturally born talent. When talking about creativity, people usually refer to something that we attribute to Mozart, Einstein or Picasso. If creativity is an attribute acquired at birth, then little can be done to increase one's creativity level. People often think of creativity in the arts while less often referring to creativity in science or business. This section examines the usefulness of creativity techniques using the Cognitive Network Model of Creativity as a framework. The purpose is to argue that creativity exists within all individuals and can be improved with appropriate methods.

Some theories refer creativity to a wide variety of personal characteristics such as personality, eminence, biographical inventories and intelligence. As suggested by Santanen, Briggs and de Vreede (2000), theories of this type are generally referred to as Divergent-Thinking Theories. Another view is to define creativity as a property of the problem solving technique rather than the attribute of people at birth. This is referred to as the judgment-of-products approach (Bull and Davis 1982). Santanen, Briggs and de Vreede formalized such an insight into the Cognitive Network Model of Creativity. The Model is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Causal Relationships posited by the Cognitive Network Model of Creativity (Santanen, Briggs and de Vreede)

The Cognitive Network Model of Creativity recognizes that human memory is organized into bundles of related items. These bundles of items are determined by past experiences, therefore differ between individuals. Individual experiences are grouped together according to different principles. These principles include time sequence of events, semantic meaning of the stimuli, and similarity between items.

Those bundles of items in human memory are called frames. These frames do not exist in isolation. Frames are interconnected and a vast network is formed in one's memory. Over time, the size of the network in one's memory gets larger. When information is required, a person will extract information from long-term memory and manipulate it using one's short-term memory (Simon 1979). When frames are being processed in one's short-term memory, they are called salient frames. Miller's Law implies that only a limited number of frames can be activated at a certain point in time (Miller 1956). Such a limitation creates barriers to our creativity. Whenever a stimulus arises, it consistently activates the same sequence of frames. This explains why problem solvers always think within bounded and familiar areas of their knowledge network.

The action words technique can increase creativity by systematically exploring one's cognitive network. By interrogatorily asking who-what-where-when-why-how questions, each question serves as a stimulus that provides the problem solver with a fresh entry point. An individual can traverse one's pre-existing sequence of frames. Distant frames can be explored as the salient frames network spans beyond the frequently activated patterns. With multiple questions as multiple entry points, multiple solution-framing patterns will emerge. The salient frames network becomes a network of networks. Distant ideas can be related thus increasing the chance of creative outputs.

Many researchers assert that the process of making new and unexpected associations between previously unrelated frames often leads to the formation of highly creative solutions. Such an assertion becomes the foundation of the Cognitive Network Model of Creativity. Humans have a fixed capacity in processing simultaneous tasks. When the total amount of information load in a human's short-term memory increases, the resources remaining for processing information decreases. Creative solutions are results of linking distant ideas. Linking distant ideas requires a large amount of salient frames. Having a large amount of salient frames puts a heavy burden on one's cognitive load and greatly decreases one's ability to be creative.

The mind mapping technique helps release a problem solver's cognitive load by allowing the user to draw the current cognitive structure on a piece of paper. Drawing a mind map is different from jotting down thoughts on a piece of paper. A mind map has a structure that is similar to one's cognitive mechanism. A mind map has a network structure. The main idea is put in the center while related ideas are branching out toward the edge. This is very similar to the 'knowledge network' as proposed by the Cognitive Network Model (Figure 3). The Cognitive Network Model suggested that, when searching for a solution, the activation of one frame causes activation to spread to other frames that are linked to that concept. The mind mapping technique not only lessens a problem solver's cognitive load but also allows one to visualize one's pattern of frame activation. Lessening one's cognitive load frees up resources for information processing. Drawing one's knowledge network structure on a piece of paper enables large amounts of information to be processed simultaneously. The mind mapping technique is believed to be an effective technique in improving creativity.

Figure 3: A stimulus always activates the same sequence of frames

We may use short-term memory more efficiently by creating larger and more complex chunks (Santanen, Briggs et al 2000). A chunk is a bundle of inter-related frames that are being processed as a single unit (Figure 3). One can only process a certain number of information chunks at a time. By combining multiple simple chunks into a single more complex one, short-term memory resources are freed up for other tasks. The process whereby several frames that are simultaneously and repeatedly salient become coded into a new chunk that contains a richer set of information is called 'chunking' (Santanen, Briggs et al 2000). The analogy/ metaphor technique is a technique that assists in chunking. Analogies are real life examples that are similar to the problem domain. One single analogy can be composed of a rich set of information. One chunk of information may contain a larger set of frames. Information being conveyed in a chunk using an analogy will be far richer than an ordinary chunk. Since information in each chunk is richer, fewer chunks are required. This helps lessen one's cognitive load and leads to more available resources for processing in short-term memory and more chance for creative solutions.

When talking about framing of information, both frames of possible solutions and the problem itself are represented in a problem solver's mind. Therefore, not only the potential solution is occupying mental resources but also the complexity of the problem itself. The problem will be represented as a single or multiple frames. The more complex the problem is, the less mental resources can be allocated to creative thinking. Using analogy enables a problem solver to group his/her problems into a single, more sophisticated frame thus freeing up more resources for creative thinking.

Working with sophisticated frames has another advantage. Sophisticated frames provide links to many task-relevant parts of the knowledge (Santanen, Briggs et al 2000) that may not be reachable with less sophisticated frames because an over-simplified understanding of the problem may never activate related parts of the knowledge network.

A particular stimulus always activates a certain set of frames in one's cognitive mechanism. Even when creativity techniques are deployed, an individual's creativity ability may be limited by his/ her past experience. Creativity is being defined as linking distant ideas with current problems while generating solutions that are relevant to the current problem. Everyone has different backgrounds and different frames of reference. As a result, group collaboration is an effective means of breaking out our conventional thought patterns by bringing people with different backgrounds together.

Brainstorming is a group idea generation technique that is widely accepted to be effective. The Cognitive Network Model of Creativity proves the efficacy of brainstorming. The new brainstorming technique proposed by Santanen, Briggs and de Vreede is implemented with the help of group support system (GSS). The GSS allows group members to read the contributions made by others as soon as they are submitted. Group members interact with each other and are able to see the solutions of others. As a result, the amount of stimuli is far greater in a group, than working independently. One special thing about the directed brainstorming technique is the use of prompts. Prompts are confined to the context(s) of the problem. Each prompt addresses a certain aspect of the problem. It is said that problems solvers are lead to limit the number of salient frames at any given time and thus reduce the overall cognitive load. With a lighter cognitive load, each problem solver is left with more mental resources for idea generation.

The excursion technique is a technique that utilizes several techniques. It incorporates the analogy technique and the brainstorming technique. How the analogy and the brainstorming techniques have enabled the improvement of creativity has been discussed. The purpose of including of the excursion technique in this paper is to demonstrate that several techniques can be mixed and matched and used together.

Discussion

Traditionally, all IS courses focus on systematic and semi-structured methodologies, such as ERM, SDLC and normalization. These concepts focus on discipline and formality. Students leave universities and become young IS professionals. They come to the dynamic world with pre-conceived ideas that formality is the goal where most problems in the world can be solved by quantitative reasoning.

Yet the only constant is change. Creativity is the heart of organizational survival as competitive advantage can only be sustained with high creativity. There is a strong need to start training students at early stages so that they are better equipped before they face the competitive world.

In a university, when someone talks about a discipline, one will immediately think of a particular paradigm of knowledge. 'Discipline' in this setting refers to a body of knowledge. The word discipline also implies the opposite of chaotic. It means obedience and compliance. In a dynamic commercial world, being obedient and compliant have very little value. They imply inflexibility and are counter-productive. Perhaps universities should consider 'flexibility' instead of 'disciplines'.

In Toshiba's Expanding Horizons 2000 educators' conference in Auckland, Professor Ron Johnston made the following comment. 'Just about everyone is becoming a knowledge worker, we have to inject more knowledge to do it smarter and better in every activity' (Gifford 2000). Professor Johnston suggests that human beings were the only reliable working models of intelligent systems because people could interpret the data in creative ways while computers cannot. Since changes in organizations and occupations happen quickly, people must develop flexibility so as to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty. Conventional IS education assesses students on memorizing, understanding and comprehension. Student grades are judged according to the similarities between students' answers and the model answers. Creativity does not count and may even be penalized. However, how much is a model answer worth in the real world? It is time for our educators to re-think the system. We do not need software developers that always assume there is a 'right answer'. Besides standard routine logic and positive reasoning, we need software developers who are able to use judgment and process strong creativity skills. It is time to look at what our society really needs and compare that to what our education system is providing.

Conclusion

Does creativity exist within all individuals regardless of their education level, personal attributes and intelligence level? This paper suggested that creativity exists within everybody and can be improved by employing appropriate techniques.

We have looked at a few creativity techniques and examined why these techniques work. Although these techniques have been prescribed in the literature, they appear to lack theoretical and causal foundations. The writer has attempted to prove their efficacy by adopting the Cognitive Network Model of Creativity as a framework.

The list of techniques discussed in this paper is by no means exhaustive. The main purpose of selecting these techniques is to demonstrate that efficacy of various existing creativity techniques can be proved using theoretical frameworks. The new generation of IS professionals faces fast changing environment. It is important for everyone in the field to process high creativity skills. Creativity is an attribute that exists within all individuals and can be improved with practice. Creativity techniques for human thinking is like engine oil, it makes the engine run smoother, quieter and last longer.

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