GUEST BLOG POST: What Are The 3 Keys To The Creative Thinking Process? — Dr. Kyung Hee Kim

Synopsis: Creative thinking requires out-box, in-box, and new-box thinking skills to lead to innovation.

Dr. Kyung Hee Kim

My children and I went out to our garden with scissors. We were in a hurry because we were hungry. We cut sweet potato vines, chives, mung beans, purple eggplants, and shiny red bell peppers larger than my fist. While my son peeled garlic in the kitchen, I went back outside to cut tentacles of thyme, lacy plumes of dill, and robust lengths of basil that filled the kitchen with heady, green fragrance. We didn’t know exactly what we were making yet, but we were going to use everything we brought in. There would be soup and side dishes. There would be rice, of course. And we would make pickles, which none of us had ever done before. We got the instructions off the Internet. It was a lot like making kimchi, but with vinegar instead of fish sauce.

While we were learning about canning, my son was inspired by what we read. He went back outside and collected more fruit—some figs, pears, and apples that were not ripe yet—he cleaned them all and boiled them in a pot to make jam, something I had never thought to do. We were making something original and useful, using many different ingredients. More ingredients do not necessary make a better dish, but quantity does enhance quality when it comes to thinking creatively.

Many people believe that creative thinking is just coming up with new or a lot of ideas. They think that divergent thinking, what I call out-of-box thinking (generating many flexible and original ideas), is the same as creative thinking.  But this is not correct, and there is much more to creative thinking than just out-of-box thinking. Creative thinking requires out-box, in-box, and new-box thinking skills to lead to innovation.

Innovators use in-box thinking first, which is essentially expertise. In-box thinking includes knowledge accumulation and critical thinking skills. The in-box thinking lens narrows down and focuses a person on specifics, which is used to acquire and apply expertise over a long period of time. Expertise includes the skills of knowledge acquisition, comprehension, and application. Based on their expertise, innovators can generate many relevant ideas and make connections later.

Out-box thinking includes the skills required to generate many original and flexible (different categories of) ideas. This wide-angle out-box thinking lens is unfocused and allows innovators to imagine an entire universe of possibilities. It proposes as many ideas as it can. These are flights of imaginative fancy that will later be evaluated and synthesized. Yet the successful use of out-box thinking skills depends on the prior acquisition of a sufficient body of expertise to generate and consider viable alternatives.

The ideas or solutions from out-box thinking must be streamlined with realistic evaluation using critical in-box thinking, zooming in again, to choose the best idea or solution. Critical thinking includes the skills of analysis and evaluation. This critical thinking and its results depend on the out-box thinking stage, so it has lots of ideas to choose from.

New-box thinking includes the skills of synthesis, refinement, and implementation that aim at innovation. Once ideas are evaluated, they need to be synthesized by rearranging and reconstructing through dot-connecting, then refined and put into place in a new context. This creates the new-box where various effects are achieved so the final result is as useful and original as it can be. New-box thinking includes small steps or connections between old ideas that, when synthesized, refined, and implemented, make something new or better.

Innovators use all three thinking skills for their innovation. For example, when Thomas Edison invented the first commercially viable electric light bulb, he used in-box, out-box, and new-box thinking skills. He learned through extensive readings, applications, and experiences, and accumulated as much expertise as he could in his field, then he used in box thinking. He thought about many different materials and methods to find long-lasting lights, during which he used out-box thinking. He tested each idea to see whether it worked and how effective it was, during which he used critical-thinking skills of in-box thinking. Finally, he connected material science with chemistry to determine which materials would not burn out in vacuum and last long, which is a synthesis, and then he refined and completed his final product, during which he used new-box thinking.

The good news is that each of the three kinds of creative thinking skills can be developed, exercised, and grown. In my upcoming book Creativity Crisis: 3 Practical Conditions To Make Your Child An Innovator, I present the results of my research into creativity, along with an extensive set of exercises for each of the requirements of the three creative thinking skills to cultivate creativity. It is my hope that we will be able to use the results of my research to unleash the creativity—both within us, as well as within our children.

Originally published in The Creativity Post

Dr. KH Kim is the Chair of the Creativity Network of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) and an Associate Professor of Innovation & Creativity at the College of William & Mary. She previously taught at Eastern Michigan University and the University of Georgia, after teaching English in high school in Korea for 10 years. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Georgia, after completing a Korean doctoral program at Korea University where she focused on creativity and intelligence. 
Her research has been recognized as a major contribution to the fields of education and psychology. Her awards include the Early Scholar Award (2011) and the Hollingworth Award (2008)—both from NAGC—and the Berlyne Award from the American Psychological Association (APA, 2009). She has served on the editorial board of the major journals in creativity including The Creativity Research Journal and The Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, among others. She co-edited the book “Creatively Gifted Students Are Not Like Other Gifted Students.” She is dedicated to changing the world by revolutionizing education and parenting. Her book, “The Creativity Crisis: 3 Practical Conditions To Make Your Child An Innovator, will be published in Fall 2015.”