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Everyday

#bCreative Portfolio
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© 2015 Cyndi Burnett, Julia Figliotti, Kaylene Waite, John Cabra

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 Module One: Introduction to Everyday Creativity1
Definition of Everyday Creativity: “Human originality at work and leisure across the diverse activities of everyday life,” which
is ‘central to human survival’ and found, to some extent, in everyone.” (Richards, 2007).

Create a list of ways that you are creative in day-to-day life. The list can include problems you’ve solved, opportunities you’ve
seized, and anything else you can think of. Once you’ve done that, highlight one that really stands out to you, one that you think
represents who you are as a creative individual.

“I am creative!”

1 Richards, R. (2007). Everyday creativity and new views of human nature: Psychological, social, and spiritual perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
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 Your Definition of Creativity
What is your definition of creativity?

Defer Judgment
Do you defer your judgment? We would like you to take the test! Spend the next 24 hours monitoring your judgment, and see things
from different points of view. Keep your eyes open for an idea that you don’t like or that you love and consciously defer your judgment
around it for a few minutes. Now it is important to realize that you are not agreeing to the idea, you are simply giving yourself the
space to explore all aspects of the idea. Who knows? You might find something fascinating. And when you are offered something
different or unexpected, practice relaxing, listening, and understanding. Share your experience deferring judgment below.

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 Developmental Trajectory of Creativity2
After watching the Developmental Trajectory of Creativity videos, think about your own creativity, and write about your own examples of
each of them in your life (as defined by Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009).

mini-c creativity: “the novel and personally meaningful interpretation of experiences, actions, and events”

little-c creativity: everyday creativity

Pro-C creativity: professional-level creativity

2 Kaufman, J.C., & Beghetto, R.A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The four C model of creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13(1), 1-12.
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 Module Two: The Creative Person
Characteristics of a Creative Person3

Here are some of the characteristics associated with creative people. Check off all of the words that relate to you:

❏ Thorough
❏ Needs alone time
❏ Ethical
❏ Emotional
❏ High energy
❏ Curious
❏ Open-minded
❏ Sense of humor
❏ Risk-taking
❏ Capacity for fantasy
❏ Artistic
❏ Perceptive
❏ Original
❏ Independent
❏ Attracted to complexity/ambiguity
❏ Aware of own creativity

3 Davis, G.A. (2004). Creativity is forever (5th ed.). Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt.
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 Here are some of the creative people in my life.

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 The Big Three Affective Skills4
Tolerate the Ambiguity: the acceptance of vagueness and even thriving in situations that are unclear.
Tolerate Complexity: staying calm and persevering when large amounts of information, complex issues, and opposing viewpoints are present.
Openness to Novelty: having a willingness to explore novel, strange, or different ideas, actions, or solutions.

Think about a complex problem you solved. What was involved, Play!5 6
and why was it complex? How did you manage the big three
when faced with this problem, and what could you do better
next time? Be spontaneous, be expressive, be creative, be fun, and be silly.
Lose yourself in play, and find a more creative you!
Post a photo below.

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4 Puccio, G.J., Mance, M., & Murdock, M.C. (2011) Creative leadership: Skills that drive change (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications
5 Brown, S., & Vaughan, C. (2010). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. New York, NY: Penguin.
6 Diamond, M.C., Krech, D., & Rosenzweig, M.R. (1964). The effects of an enriched environment on the rat cerebral cortex. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 123(1), 111-119.
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 Creative Behavior7
The tricycle metaphor helps us to remember a set of creative behaviors so we can freely encourage them. With these cues in
mind, please write notes after each TRYCycle part to communicate how you have exhibited that aspect of creative behavior in
your everyday life.

Handlebars (curiosity):

Wheels (experimentation, reflection, and incubation):

Pedals (attitude):

Seat (playfulness):

7 Uribe, D., & Cabra, J.F. (2014). TRYCycle: Creative behavior. Santiago, Chile: IdeMax.

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 The Four Components of Divergent Thinking8 9
What might be all the possible uses for an umbrella? How many ideas did you generate?
Please take 4 minutes and generate as many and original ideas This is your fluency score.
as possible. Remember the divergent thinking guidelines: Defer
judgment; Go for quantity; Strive for wild and crazy ideas; and
Seek combinations.

How many categories can you break your ideas into?

This is your flexibility score.

Take a look at the originality worksheet in the supplemental

materials section. How many ideas did you come up with that
are not on that list? This is your originality score.

8 Guilford, J. P. (1959). Three faces of intellect. American Psychologist, 14(8), 469-479.

9 Runco, M. A. (1991). Divergent thinking. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.
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 Mindfulness
For a half an hour, explore a city through the website http://www.360cities.net/ and take on the perspective of a tourist, truly living in
the world around you. Take journal notes of the things you see. Try to imagine what it would feel like being in the streets of Rome or
London or any other city of your choosing.

Then, as you go through your day to day activities, look at your own city, as if you were a tourist, experiencing it for the first time. What
new things do you notice?

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 Progress10
Make a to-do list for an upcoming project. As you complete each Pay close attention to how you feel as you cross items off of
step, cross it off of your list. your to-do list, and write about it here.

10 Amabile, T.M., & Kramer, S.J. (2011). The progress principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.
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 Module Three:
The Creative Press (Environment)

Take pictures of a space where you feel creative. In particular, Culture11

make sure you photograph the aspects of that space that truly
bring out your creativity.
What customs are there in your national, social, or
organizational cultures that positively influence your creative
environment?

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Give us a brief description of what really makes that space a

creative hub for you!

11 Johnson, G. (1990). Managing strategic change: The role of symbolic Action. British Journal of Management, 1, 183-200.
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 The Ten Dimensions of a Creative Climate12
Think about an environment of which you are a part. Rate each of Ekvall’s Ten Dimensions on a scale of 1-10 (1 being low, 10 being high)
as they are present in your environment. Feel free to use the handout from your Readings section for reference.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Idea Time:          
Idea Support:          
Risk-Taking:          
Freedom:          
Dynamism:          
Playfulness/Humor:          
Debate:          
Conflict:          
Challenge:          
Trust/Openness:          

12 Ekvall, G., Arvonen, J., & Waldenström-Linbald, I. (1983). Creative organizational climate: Construction and validation of a measuring instrument (Report 2). Stockholm, Sweden: The Swedish
Council for Management and Organizational Behaviour.
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 Overcoming Barriers
Think about all of the ways that you can improve your creative environment from the previous assignment. What do you need to do in
order to take action?

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 Module Four: The Creative Process
Annoyances

Come up with a list of 30 things that annoy you. As you go
through your day, keep a notepad with you and make a list
of the little things that bother you. You’ll be surprised at how
quickly you reach 30 annoyances.
When you’ve come up with at least 30 things that annoy you, try
to come up with a solution for a few of them. It doesn’t have to
be the perfect solution. It can be a far-fetched idea, something
physically impossible or something that would cost millions of
dollars. It doesn’t have to be workable.

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 Divergent Thinking13
Take five minutes to generate as many ideas as you can for the following challenge: What might be all the ways to improve a shower?
Remember the divergent thinking guidelines: Defer judgment; Go for quantity; Strive for wild and crazy ideas; and Seek combinations.

13 Basadur, M., & Thompson, R. (1986). Usefulness of the ideation principle of extended effort in real world professional and managerial Creative Problem Solving. The Journal of Creative
Behavior, 20(1), 23-34.

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 Convergent Thinking
Go back to your divergent exercise from the previous page and copy and paste your ideas onto this page. Look at your divergent ideas
and choose the top ideas that you think have the most potential. Mark those with a star, smiley face, or asterisk to show that they are
“hits.”

For this exercise, we’re going to ask you to choose your top five. Remember to Use affirmative judgment; Be deliberate; Check
objectives; Improve upon ideas; and Consider novelty.

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 Incubation
Take some time and think about your own creative problem solving process, which you drew for our previous discussion. Do you see
areas where Incubation might fit into your own model? If so, draw the stage right in! If not – don’t worry! Incubation might not be obvious
in every problem-solving process, but it’s always there… right in the corner of your mind! Insert your updated process picture here.

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 Clarifying Problems
Copy and paste your list of annoyances from the beginning of this module onto this worksheet. Using divergent thinking, go through
your list of annoyances and phrase them as questions using statement starters How to, How might I, What might be all the ways I
might? Then, using hits, choose your top five annoyances. Which would you be willing to work on for the remainder of this course?

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 Ideation
Go back to the list of your top five annoyances - phrased as questions. Choose one, and generate ideas on possible inventions that
would solve your challenge. Practice using Forced Connections (When you think about __________, what ideas do you get for
solving your challenge?) and SCAMPER (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Eliminate, Reverse)!14

Eberle, B. (1984). SCAMPER: Games for imagination and development. D.O.K. Publishers.
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 What I See Myself Doing Is (WISMDI)… and How/How
Take a large sheet of paper, make a t-chart. On the left side, fill in your goal after the statement starter “WISMDI…” Then ask yourself,
“How will I do this?” Record those answers on the right-hand side of the paper. Now, look at each individual answer that you have
on the right-hand side. One at a time, write those on the left-hand side, and ask yourself “How will I do this?” Once again, write the
answers to your new questions on the right-hand side of the paper. The cycle, as you will see, continues until there are no more ways to
ask “How?”

Once you’ve completed the divergent phase using how/how, take some time to converge and organize your WISMDI statements into
short-term, mid-term, and long-term categories.

Let’s move forward with this plan of action, developed using the how/how tool. Try to apply WISMDI to your action plan – what do you
see yourself doing next? Take a picture of your How/How chart and WISMDI statement.

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 Module Five: The Creative Product
Definitions of a Creative Product

Generate a list of products that you think are creative.

What makes them creative?

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 Your Pitch and Prototype 15
Write up a pitch for your product proposal. Any type of pitch You may also want to prepare a prototype of your invention.
should grab the attention of the audience – and a great way Post a picture of your prototype here.
to do this is by combining relatively unrelated elements and
making new connections that others most likely have not
considered.

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Warfel, T.Z. (2009). Prototyping: a practitioner’s guide. Rosenfeld media.

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 Novelty, Utility, and Surprise16
Grab some friends, colleagues, or family members and describe your invention to them. When you’ve finished explaining it, walk them
through the PPCo and invite them to go through the process with you. With their help, evaluate your invention – and don’t be afraid to
improve upon it!

Pluses:

Potentials (use statement starter, I might, It might, We might…):

Concerns (phrase concerns, How to, How might I, What might be all the ways…):

Overcoming Key Concerns (select one or two how to statements, and generate ways to overcome it):

Simonton, D.K. (2012). Taking the US Patent Office criteria seriously: A quantitative three-criterion creativity definition and its implications. Creativity Research Journal, 24(2-3), 97-106.
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#bCreative
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