Since we are interested in creativity manifested in technical field, aiming invention’s elaboration, we will have to mainly act on the training course for it since school. Some practical methods of stimulating creativity are indicated below.
a. Problems: Problems solving both in gymnasium and in high school, as well as in the lower years of college, has a special role. Each problem requires a creative effort to find a new solution. It is not the problems in which numerical data replacements are made in relationships, but those that require thinking. We will notice that the stages of the creative processes are found in small, compressed, when solving a problem. As well as those who meet the characteristics for the creative researcher are good problems solvers. This type of activity has also another great advantage: after a number of successes, the student feeling the joy of enlightenment, begins to get the taste for such an intellectual satidfaction. His way will be opened; even if he will not be a perfect researcher, he will be a good engineer or economist. Solving only homeworks problems from the book is not enough to awake this “talent”. Concerning doesn’t have to be permanent. It should last an year or two, until the student got the taste. Then the number of problems and activity in this direction can be reduced.
b. Interrupted course: The system is better suited to universities, but it can also be applied for other educational forms. At one point the teacher stops the demonstration and says “continue on your own”. Passing amoung the students, he will find an almost total stagnation. Pupils as well as students are used to make a minimal mental effort, of written and sometimes mental recording, through memorization. The judgement, the logic, the reasoning are rarer events. After a while, the teacher resumes the problem and leads the audience to final solution, even if it was found by some of the students.
c. Find another solutions: The teacher presents the current ways of solving a problem. Then he asks to “find other solutions” and let the class think for a while. Of course, the students must know that their effort will be positively appreciated. Likewise, the formula “who finds another demonstartion automatically receives a certain rating on the examination” can be used, etc. The system requires a well trained teacher with creative openings. A conservative teacher will be even disturbed by the intellectual initiatives of the students.
d. Practicing of non-evaluation periods: If the subject of interest is announced by a school teacher or by a workplace manager in a commercial company, mentioning that the opinions are not scored, the original ideas appear easier, the respondents being more relaxed.
e. Changing the point of view: We will try to place ourselves at a time in designer’s position, in executor’s position, in the position of those who will use the solution from execution, in competition’s position. Also, we will replace ourselves with the investigated car, with a port of it, etc. The inventor case of the explosion nut breaking machine is known. He mentally entered inside the nut and asked himself the question: how should I break the shell and get out of here. Envisioned solution: making a hole in the shell, passing the nut through an area with flammable gas, which enters the nut, passing through an area with a flame front, and causing the explosion. The completed car worked very well. This is an example of empathy, of substitution.
f. Scientific curiosity: to be encouraged, cultivated, depending on the specific cases with arise.
g. Initiative: Let’s learn to go beyond the tasks we have received. We are thinking about next phases and we ask for approval.
h. Group synergism: Some researches show that discussing a subject in a group leads to superior results to the gathered of individual efforts of group members. There are techniques developed in this purpose. Thus “brainstorming” provides the discussion without the right of criticize, being able to issue the most fanciful ideas related to the given subject; the result of the brainstorming session are a lot of ideas that are later rationally analyzed. In the group technique called “synectics” an idea on which everyone pronounce is issued, processing it successively until the final stage of use.
i. The influence of creative personalities: The student feels what teacher appreciates and adapts. If we carry out the activity around some creative personalities, they will influence us favorably for creative activity. Most of the great scholars were apprenticed to other great scholars.
