This book is a study of the psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of creativity, originality, and inspiration viewed from the lens of a seasoned game developer. It introduces the concept of creative sobriety—a practice that advocates better understanding our own sources of inspiration so that we can intellectually drive our creative voice closer to originality. The creative process is an improvised dance between the conscious and the subconscious mind, where knowledge, experience, intuition, observation, imagination, and projection meet in ways that are completely unique to each person. Presenting practical and theoretical approaches to originality and game concept generation, this book explores the notion of creative sobriety before moving to chapters that blend theory and practice, covering topics such as innovation, the creative process, auteurship, collaboration, and creative vision. This book will be of great interest to students of game design and creative professionals working within the industry as well as those looking to learn more about the creative process.

Innovation is not easy. Understanding the liability of newness but the potential for greatness is the central theme of this work. Innovation Renaissance explores and debunks the myths that have arisen from the proliferation of misleading and often confusing popular press treatments of creativity and innovation. Examples include the notion that successful entrepreneurs are winners because they are innovative--whereas creativity and business start-up acumen are not the same, and are rarely paired--or the idea of disruptive technology, which has now become the buzzword equivalent to radical new technology products or services, despite the fact that new technologies tend to offer simple, limited-capability products or services to satisfy overlooked customer demand. The popularity of open innovation has spawned assumptions, like the idea that crowdsourcing will increase the number of truly new ideas--but in fact the more novel these ideas, the less likely they are to be adopted by incumbent firms because they are less familiar. Starting by defining innovation and the theories that have arisen surrounding it, Ettlie considers individual creativity and innovativeness, radical innovation, new products, new services, process innovation, and information technology. There is special emphasis on neglected topics such as the dark side of the innovation process--the unintended consequences of new ventures. Finally, the last chapter of the book summarizes a prescriptive model of the innovation process and attempts to answer the question: what causes innovation? Three major constructs are explored: leadership, enhancing capabilities and integration. This informative and unique text is designed as a resource for postgraduate students, academics, and professionals deeply committed to understanding and working through the innovation process. The book includes an introduction to the subject before moving on to an in-depth study of emerging evidence and topics in the field.

Technology is viewed as a powerful force both in and out of school and has long been linked with math and science. Although concepts and activities of this book apply to any grade, the primary focus is on the elementary and middle school levels. This book provides principles and practical strategies for promoting creative and innovative work in math, science, and technology. The authors pay close attention to the social nature of learning and how collaboration can spark student interest in open-ended problem-solving. Shining a light on mathematic, scientific, and technological processes gives everyone more control over what is going on around them and increases understanding of how things work. The following chapters are contained in this book: (1) Creativity, Innovation, and Differentiation: Problem-Solving and Inquiry in Math, Science, and Technology; (2) Creative and Innovative Thinking: Differentiated Inquiry, Open-Ended Problem-Solving, and Innovation; (3) Problem-Solving in Mathematics: Creativity and Innovation in a New Age of Numbers; (4) Science Inquiry: Thinking, Differentiation, and Preparing for the Future; (5) Technology and Education: Creativity, Innovation, and Preparing for the Future.

This volume explores higher level, critical, and creative thinking, as well as reflective decision making and problem solving -- what teachers should emphasize when teaching literacy across the curriculum. Focusing on how to encourage learners to become independent thinking, learning, and communicating participants in home, school, and community environments, this book is concerned with integrated learning in a curriculum of inclusion. It emphasizes how to provide a curriculum for students where they are socially interactive, personally reflective, and academically informed. Contributors are authorities on such topics as cognition and learning, classroom climates, knowledge bases of the curriculum, the use of technology, strategic reading and learning, imagery and analogy as a source of creative thinking, the nature of motivation, the affective domain in learning, cognitive apprenticeships, conceptual development across the disciplines, thinking through the use of literature, the impact of the media on thinking, the nature of the new classroom, developing the ability to read words, the bilingual, multicultural learner, crosscultural literacy, and reaching the special learner. The applications of higher level thought to classroom contexts and materials are provided, so that experienced teacher educators, and psychologists are able to implement some of the abstractions that are frequently dealt with in texts on cognition. Theoretical constructs are grounded in educational experience, giving the volume a practical dimension. Finally, appropriate concerns regarding the new media, hypertext, bilingualism, and multiculturalism as they reflect variation in cognitive experience within the contexts of learning are presented.

Across the world, education is being restructured to include greater focus on developing critical and creative skills. In second language education, research suggests that cognition and language development are closely related. Yet despite increasing interest in the teaching of thinking skills, critical thinking has not been widely intergrated into language teaching. Thinking Skills and Creativity in Second Language Education presents a range of investigations exploring the relationship between thinking skills and creativity, and second language education. Focusing on cognitive, affective, social, and emotional perspectives, this book highlights current research and raises questions that will set the direction for future research. Its aims are as follows: Provide an in-depth understanding of the link between second language development and thinking skills. Consider approaches to developing thinking skills in second language instruction. Examine practices in implementing thinking skills in second language learning. Offer an updated list of sources of information on thinking skills in second language education. A new addition to the Research on Teaching Thinking and Creativity series, this book is relevant to researchers in the field of educational psychology, to Masters degree and PhD students in this field, and to anyone interested in developing thinking skills.

This edited volume from a conference held at Northwestern University concerns the latest research on creativity and innovations in groups. It represents research from three different camps: group, cognitive processes, and organizational behavior.

Creativity often leads to the development of original ideas that are useful or influential, and maintaining creativity is crucial for the continued development of organizations in particular and society in general. Most research and writing has focused on individual creativity. Yet, in recent years there has been an increasing acknowledgment of the importance of the social and contextual factors in creativity. Even with the information explosion and the growing necessity for specialization, the development of innovations still requires group interaction at various stages in the creative process. Most organizations increasingly rely on the work of creative teams where each individual is an expert in a particular area. This volume summarizes the exciting new research developments on the processes involved in group creativity and innovation, and explores the relationship between group processes, group context, and creativity. It draws from a broad range of research perspectives, including those investigating cognition, groups, creativity, information systems, and organizational psychology. These different perspectives have been brought together in one volume in order to focus attention on this developing literature and its implications for theory and application. The chapters in this volume are organized into two sections. The first focuses on how group decision making is affected by factors such as cognitive fixation and flexibility, group diversity, minority dissent, group decision-making, brainstorming, and group support systems. Special attention is devoted to the various processes and conditions that can inhibit or facilitate group creativity. The second section explores how various contextual and environmental factors affect the creative processes of groups. The chapters explore issues of group autonomy, group socialization, mentoring, team innovation, knowledge transfer, and creativity at the level of cultures and societies. The research presented in this section makes it clear that a full understanding of group creativity cannot be accomplished without adequate attention to the group environment. It will be a useful source of information for scholars, practitioners, and students wishing to understand and facilitate group creativity.

How cognitive psychology explains human creativity Conventional wisdom holds that creativity is a mysterious quality present in a select few individuals. The rest of us, the common view goes, can only stand in awe of great creative achievements: we could never paint Guernica or devise the structure of the DNA molecule because we lack access to the rarified thoughts and inspirations that bless geniuses like Picasso or Watson and Crick. Presented with this view, today's cognitive psychologists largely differ finding instead that "ordinary" people employ the same creative thought processes as the greats. Though used and developed differently by different people, creativity can and should be studied as a positive psychological feature shared by all humans. Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts presents the major psychological theories of creativity and illustrates important concepts with vibrant and detailed case studies that exemplify how to study creative acts with scientific rigor. Creativity includes: * Two in-depth case studies--Watson and Crick's modeling of the DNA structure and Picasso's painting of Guernica-- serve as examples throughout the text * Methods used by psychologists to study the multiple facets of creativity * The "ordinary thinking" or cognitive view of creativity and its challengers * How problem-solving and experience relate to creative thinking * Genius and madness and the relationship between creativity and psychopathology * The possible role of the unconscious in creativity * Psychometrics--testing for creativity and how personality factors affect creativity * Confluence theories that use cognitive, personality, environmental, and other components to describe creativity Clearly and engagingly written by noted creativity expert Robert Weisberg, Creativity: Understanding Innovation in Problem Solving, Science, Invention, and the Arts takes both students and lay readers on an in-depth journey through contemporary cognitive psychology, showing how the discipline understands one of the most fundamental and fascinating human abilities. "This book will be a hit. It fills a large gap in the literature. It is a well-written, scholarly, balanced, and engaging book that will be enjoyed by students and faculty alike." --David Goldstein, University of Toronto

What is the nature of human creativity? What are the brain processes behind its mystique? What are the evolutionary roots of creativity? How does culture help shape individual creativity? Creativity: The Human Brain in the Age of Innovation by Elkhonon Goldberg is arguably the first ever book to address these and other questions in a way that is both rigorous and engaging, demystifying human creativity for the general public. The synthesis of neuroscience and the humanities is a unique feature of the book, making it of interest to an unusually broad range of readership. Drawing on a number of cutting-edge discoveries from brain research as well as on his own insights as a neuroscientist and neuropsychologist, Goldberg integrates them with a wide-ranging discussion of history, culture, and evolution to arrive at an original, compelling, and at times provocative understanding of the nature of human creativity. To make his argument, Goldberg discusses the origins of language, the nature of several neurological disorders, animal cognition, virtual reality, and even artificial intelligence. In the process, he takes the reader to different times and places, from antiquity to the future, and from Western Europe to South-East Asia. He makes bold predictions about the future directions of creativity and innovation in society, their multiple biological and cultural roots and expressions, about how they will shape society for generations to come, and even how they will change the ways the human brain develops and ages.

A teacher’s guide to empowering students with modern thinking skills that will help them throughout life. Design thinking is a wonderful teaching strategy to inspire your students and boost creativity and problem solving. With tips and techniques for teachers K through 12, this book provides all the resources you need to implement Design Thinking concepts and activities in your classroom right away. These new techniques will empower your students with the modern thinking skills needed to succeed as they progress in school and beyond. These easy-to-use exercises are specifically designed to help students learn lifelong skills like creative problem solving, idea generation, prototype construction, and more. From kindergarten to high school, this book is the perfect resource for successfully implementing Design Thinking into your classroom.