【英文版 05】Creativity Is a Life Skill

Welcome back to Designing Innovation, apodcourse that helps you increase your odds of innovation success. I'm yourhost, Beth Ames Altringer. Unit B is about the mindset of innovative people. Inthe previous unit, we debunked the myth that all you need to be successful is agreat idea, but now I want us to back up for a moment.

大家好，欢迎来到今天的创意思维课。这门课程将会使你的创意更可能获得成功。我是你们的主讲人贝丝·奥特林格（Beth Ames Altringer）。从这节课开始，我们会进入第二单元的学习，在第二单元中，我会和你们一起学习优秀创新者的思维方式。在之前的学习过程中，我们已经知道了，一次成功的创新需要的不仅仅是一个好点子，今天，我想再深入地聊一聊这个观点。

Researchers and practitioners alike tend toagree that you do actually need good ideas. If you have absolutely no new ideasabout how to solve a problem, you're not likely to get very far. My point inUnit A was that you will need several other things in addition to having goodideas. In my experience, both with teaching students and with teachingexecutives, there's seldom a shortage of good ideas. How often have you been ina brainstorming session in which no good ideas emerge? It's not very often, andyou likely wouldn't be listening to this podcourse if you didn't already havesome good ideas. Nonetheless, you're going to need a constant stream of goodideas because some of your ideas will work out and some of them won't. Thisunit talks about several specific, simple methods that you can use to getbetter at coming up with more good ideas more often.

从研究人员和创意从业者的角度来说，他们可能会倾向于认为，如果你想要成功，你首先还是需要一个好创意。因为如果你要解决一个问题，但是你却没有任何新想法，那么你在创新这条路上很可能走不了多远。我要解释一下，在第一单元 ，我其实并不是否认一个好点子的重要性，而是说，我们除了要有一个好点子之外，还需要其他各种能力。因为从我在学校和公司的教学经验来看，大家并不缺少好点子。你可以回想一下，在你参加头脑风暴时，真的会出现完全想不出好点子的情况吗？其实，这样的情况真的很少见，而且如果你完全没有任何想法或者创意的话，你可能也不会来听我的这门课程了。可是虽然你可能已经有一个点子了，但你还是需要不断地想出新的创意，因为不是每一个创意都能够获得成功。因此，在接下来的这个单元中，我会带大家了解一些容易掌握的思维方法，这些方法会帮助你源源不断地产生新创意。

There are some common misconceptionsabout how good ideas are formed. Many of you have probably heard a version ofIsaac Newton's famous "Aha!" moment. This is said to be when hediscovered the Law of Gravity. The story goes that he came up with the theorywhen he was hit on the head by an apple while sitting under an apple tree. Amore accurate telling of this story by the History Channel tells us that he wasin the orchard, and he witnessed an apple drop from a tree. There's no evidenceto suggest that the fruit actually landed on his head, but Newton's observationcaused him to ponder why apples fall straight to the ground rather than, say,sideways or upward. And this helped to inspire him to eventually develop hisLaw of Universal Gravitation.

其实，我们常常会对一个好点子的诞生过程有些误解。我来给大家讲一个故事，你们可能都听说过牛顿著名的顿悟时刻（"Aha!" moment），据说他就是在那时发现万有引力的。这个故事是这样的，有一天，牛顿坐在一棵苹果树下，然后被一颗掉下来的苹果砸中了头，接着他就发现了万有引力理论。当然，这个故事也有一个更详细的版本，按照历史频道（History Channel）的说法，当时的牛顿是坐在一个果园里，然后他看到了一颗苹果从树上掉了下来。我们并不知道那颗苹果是不是真的砸在了他的头上，但是在牛顿观察到这个现象之后，她开始思考为什么苹果会直直地掉在地上，而不是斜着掉下来或者向上飞。他的观察和思考给他带去了灵感，并且让他最终发现了万有引力定律。

This story and others like it havedominated our common narrative of how discoveries and innovations happen. Thefounders of the ride-sharing app Uber tell their own founding story much in thesame way. On their website, they describe the company's origin story, somethinglike this: It started as a simple idea. What if you could just request a ridefrom your phone? But what began as just a thought grew into a global brandfocused on helping you move toward opportunity out in the world. The story goeslike this: On a cold winter evening in 2008 in Paris, Travis Kalanick andGarrett Camp, Uber's co-founders, couldn't get a ride. That's when the idea forUber was born. The next step of the story is in 2009, when the twoentrepreneurs developed a smartphone app that let people tap a button and get aride.

很多时候，一提到发现和创新，我们的脑子里就会出现类似“灵光乍现”的故事。我可以给大家分享另一个差不多的例子，那就是著名的移动出行app优步（Uber）的创始故事。他们在自己的网站上写到：我们的公司开始于一个简单的想法，那就是，我们能不能通过自己的手机来打车呢？但是就是这个小小的想法，却在后来一步步发展成了今天的全球品牌。优步的故事是这样的：在2008年的巴黎，一个很冷的冬天傍夜，两位优步（Uber）联合创始人特拉维斯·卡兰尼克（Travis Kalanick）和加勒特·坎普（GarrettCamp）走在巴黎的街头，却发现自己打不到出租车。那一晚的经历让他们产生了发明一个手机打车app的想法。于是在2009年，这两位企业家发明了优步，这个app帮助大家实现了在手机上轻松打车的梦想。

This is how we typically tell this story.A genius idea appears out of nowhere. It's a stroke of good luck or bad luck,such as an apple falling on your head or the inability to get a cab one nightin Paris. But when we tell the story this way, it makes these ideas seem uniqueand unattainable. Many apples had already fallen by the time Isaac Newton sawit happen, and many other people had been unable to catch a cab on a snowynight in Paris before Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick. So, what was different aboutthese specific people and these rather ordinary experiences? Newton, Camp, andKalanick all had the mindset of innovative people.

我们听过很多创新故事，其实这些故事的内容都差不多，总结起来就是，某个人偶然遇到了一件倒霉事，比如突然被苹果砸到头或者有天晚上在巴黎打不到车，在那之后，一个天才想法就凭空出现了。但是，如果我们总是这样理解创意的诞生过程，就会显得那些天才创意都是独一无二并且无法复制的。在被艾萨克·牛顿（Isaac Newton）看到之前，这个世界上已经掉下过无数个苹果了，而在特拉维斯·卡兰尼克和加勒特·坎普之前，也有很多人遇到过在巴黎雪夜没法打到车的窘境。可是他们却都没有成为拥有天才创意的创始人。那么，对于牛顿，坎普和卡兰尼克来说，是什么让他们原本普通的经历变得特殊的呢？这是因为，他们三个人，都拥有一种特殊的创新思维模式。

These innovators and others like themhave a way of thinking that helped them to find opportunity in their everydayexperiences. Creativity is less about magical eureka moments and more aboutthinking in new ways. Creativity is a series of habits, just like any otherlife skill, and it can be learned, developed, and refined. We all have theability to be creative, and by the end of this unit you'll see how you canlearn tricks from creative experts about how to frequently gather ideas, how tohelp your brain relax and combine them in new ways, and how to minimize environmentaldiscomfort to help you make more consistent progress on your projects.

这三个人和其他创新者一样，都会采用一种特别的思维方式，来帮助自己从日常经历之中发现可能的创新机会。大部分时候，创造力并不是说我们凭空想出了一个好主意，而是需要我们学会以全新的方式进行思考。创造力其实是一种习惯，它和生活中的其他技能一样，是一种能够被学习、发展以及提升的技能，因此，我们都有潜力成为一个创新者。在这一单元的课程中，我会带大家一起从创意专家那里学会各种技巧，来帮助我们在生活中积累灵感，放松大脑，并且用全新的思维方式进行思考，从而减小负面环境因素对我们的影响，让你的创意项目不断取得进展。

If you want to understand creativity,there is no better place to start than the work of psychologist Teresa Amabileof Harvard Business School. In the 1970s, Amabile was just starting her careerin Psychology, and she was puzzled by the research on creativity. Most of theliterature at the time seemed to focus on what she calls "the geniusview" of creativity. This view defined creativity as an innate qualitythat only existed in a very tiny percent of the population. And these were thepeople who we called geniuses. In other words, creativity was inflexible.Either you had the traits that made you creative or you didn't.

如果你想要了解更多有关创造力的知识，最好的方法就是去学习哈佛商学院心理学家特蕾莎·阿马比尔（Teresa Amabile）的研究。在上个世纪七十年代，阿马比尔刚刚开始涉足心理学领域的研究，她对当时关于创造力的心理研究产生了疑问，因为那时的大多数研究似乎都关注的是所谓的“天才创意观”。这种观点认为，创造力是一种与生俱来的能力，它只存在于极少数所谓的“天才”身上。也就是说，创造力是一种固化的特质，你要么是一个拥有创造力的天才，要么你就是一个普通人。

Amabile took issue with this definitionbecause it left out everyone else. What about ordinary people? What aboutchildren? Couldn't children be creative? Might there be something more thanjust innate talent that could contribute to a person's ability to be creative?As Amabile began to search for answers, she read biographies of people who arewell-known for their creativity. It was then that she discovered a key insight.Even people who were famous for their creativity experienced fluctuations inhow creative they were. This meant that creativity was not an all or nothingtrait. Natural ability was not the only factor. Amabile argued that it was atleast theoretically possible for anyone with normal cognitive abilities to becreative to some degree in some domain.

但是阿马比尔并不认同这种观点，因为她认为这种定义忽略了大多数的群体。她开始思考，普通人难道不能拥有创造力吗？那孩子呢？他们能拥有创造力吗？除了天生的才能之外，还有别的因素会影响一个人的创造力吗？接着，阿马比尔开始尝试寻找这些问题的答案。于是，她阅读了许多富有创造力的名人传记，也正是在这个过程中，她发现了一个重要的事实，那就是，即使在那些著名的创意天才身上，他们的创造力水平也是会产生波动的。这就意味着，创造力不是一个固化的特质，也并不是有的人有创造力，而有的人一定没有创造力。阿马比尔表示，至少从理论上来说，每一个拥有正常认知水平的人都有机会在某些领域拥有一定的创造力。

This insight would end up leading to hermajor contribution to the field of psychology, the componential theory ofcreativity. This theory suggested that creativity was a combination of fourdifferent components. The first is creativity-relevant skills. Creative peoplehave ways of thinking and looking at the world that enable them to use theirskills and talent in new ways to come up with new ideas. Creativity-relevantskills become even more powerful when they're combined with domain-relevantskills. Domain-relevant skills are the second component of Amabile's model.Domain-relevant skills just refers to a special ability that a person mightpossess in a particular domain.

阿马比尔的这一发现，最终推动她提出了创造力成分理论（componentialtheory of creativity），这一理论为心理学领域做出了巨大的贡献。这个理论认为，创造力是由四种不同的成分组成的。第一种是“创造力相关技能”（creativity-relevant skills），对于那些有创造力的人而言，他们会用特定的方式观察和思考世界，这能够让他们用全新的方式发挥自己的能力和天赋，从而想出新创意。这种创造力相关技能在某些时候能够发挥出更大的潜力，比如说将它和阿马比尔创造力模型中第二个成分结合起来，这个成分叫做“领域内相关技能”（domain-relevant skills），它指的是一个人在某个特定领域可能拥有的特殊技能。

So, a farmer, for example, would havedomain-relevant skills about farming. This could be a natural ability, but itcan also be skills and abilities that you develop through education, throughformal or informal experience, through technical skills, and know-how. Thethird component of the componential theory of creativity is intrinsicmotivation. Amabile found that people are most creative when they areintrinsically motivated. That is to say, when they are passionate, when theyfind something interesting, personally challenging, or satisfying in some way.And the last part of the componential theory of creativity is environmentalcontext. These are things that exist outside of the individual, but that have amajor impact on their ability to be creative.

我给大家举个例子，比如说，如果一个人是农民，那么他就会拥有关于农业的领域内相关技能。这些技能有可能是天生的，但是，我们也可以通过别的方法来获取它，比如说通过教育，通过正式或非正式的实践经历，以及通过学习技术以及实践。接下来，是创造力成分理论中的第三个成分，“内部动机”（intrinsic motivation）。阿马比尔发现，当人们拥有内部动机的时候，例如当他们对某件事充满热情，或者当某件事十分有趣、有挑战性，能够让他们心生满足的时候，他们往往会更有创造力。这个模型的最后一个成分是“外部环境”（environmental context），它指的是那些处于个体外部，但是又会对个人的创造力产生重要影响的因素。

These last two components of thecomponential theory of creativity were made famous through Amabile's diarystudy, where she examined creativity in the real world context of theworkplace. In the 1990s and the early 2000s, Amabile and her team talked toover 200 people who did creative work for a living. These people werepredominantly research and development professionals who were building newproducts across seven different companies and three different industries. Theyfilled out short daily surveys about their work lives and events that hadhappened throughout the day.

阿马比尔通过日记研究（diary study），检验了在现实工作场景中的创造力情况，这使得创造力成分理论中最后两个因素引起了人们重视。从1990年代和2000年代初期，阿马比尔和她的团队采访了超过两百名创意从业者，他们都是研究和发展领域著名的专家，这两百名人员分别来自七家不同公司以及三个不同产业，他们都从事着研发新产品的工作。在这期间，这些人需要每天完成一张简短的日常调查，这个调查会记录他们工作生活中每天发生的事情。

From over 12,000 entries that theyreceived, Amabile's team was able to obtain qualitative data on demographics,personality, motivational orientation, cognitive style, perceptions of the workenvironment, and emotions. They found that there were two major influences oncreative work. The first one was that people were most creative when they hadpositive experiences. When their emotions about their work and their perceptionsof their environment were positive, their motivation remained high and theywere more creative and more productive. The second thing that she found wasthat meaningful work is what leads to these positive feelings. When you'redoing something that you care about and you have small regular wins as you'redoing that thing, this leads to higher levels of creativity.

从他们收到的超过12000条反馈中，阿马比尔的团队获得了许多定性数据，包括人口统计、个性、个人动机、认知类型、工作环境体验以及情绪等多种信息，通过分析这些数据，他们发现了两个影响创意工作的主要因素。第一个因素是，人们通常会在拥有正面经历的时候更有创造力，比如，当他们对自己的工作、环境更满意时，他们往往会更有动力、更有创造力并且更加高效。阿马比尔发现的第二个因素是，有意义的工作通常能给人们带来正面的感受，当你在进行自己关心的工作，并且在工作过程中定期获得一些成就感时，你往往会拥有更高水平的创造力。

Amabile's work tells us that creativityis a life skill and that we're all capable of developing it. Without Amabile'scontribution, we might still be thinking of creativity as something that only afew genius individuals are lucky enough to possess. But thanks to Amabile, Iget to teach you what you can do to enhance your own creative mindset. I'llcome back to Amabile's work throughout this course.

从阿马比尔的研究中我们可以发现，创造力是一种生活技能，我们每一个人都可以去发展它。如果没有阿马比尔，我们或许还会将创造力当作少数幸运天才才拥有的能力，而我可能也没有机会开这门课，带大家一起学习增强创新思维的技巧了。在接下来的课程中，我还会不断谈到阿马比尔和她的理论。

In this unit, we're going to cover threethings that you'll need to enhance your creative skills. The first is theability to think in new ways. The second is the habit of cultivating diverse,regular experiences. And the third is intrinsic motivation that will help keepyou going through the toughest moments.

在这个单元中，我们总共将会学习三种方法来帮助你提升自己的创意技巧。第一种方法，是我们需要学会从新角度进行思考；第二种方法，是我们需要有意识地培养自己进行多样的、丰富的体验，最后一种方法，是关于内部动机的培养，它能够帮助我们度过创意实践过程中最艰难的时刻。我今天的课就讲到这里，谢谢你们的收听，我们下期再见。