Influencers — individuals throughout history who have had a significant impact on trends, opinions, and beliefs — have been around long before social media.

Think about Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin’s writings, inventions, and civic activities had a broad impact on public opinion and the formation of the new nation.

And in understanding creativity as a process, in 1926, social psychologist Graham Wallas (1858-1932) championed the concept of a four-stage model known as The Four Steps of Creativity to describe the process of researching, developing, and implementing new ideas and solutions. He writes in his book The Art of Thought:

"The first in time I shall call Preparation, the stage during which the problem was 'investigated … in all directions'; the second is the stage during which he was not consciously thinking about the problem, which I shall call Incubation; the third, consisting of the appearance of the 'happy idea' together with the psychological events which immediately preceded and accompanied that appearance, I shall call Illumination. And I shall add a fourth stage, of Verification…"

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Did you catch those steps Wallas' four steps of creativity are:

1. Preparation: Investigating a problem.
2. Incubation: Not consciously thinking about the problem.
3. Illumination: A solution pops into existence to address the problem.
4. Verification: Testing and evaluating the solution against the problem.

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Once a "problem" (question, challenge, project prompts us into action, the creative process engages.

We'll learn more about each of the stages in this fascinating process in forthcoming ADVENTures.

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Next Step: Step 1: Preparation | Next ADVENTure: Shoehorning

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©2021-2024 Chris Dunmire. All rights reserved.

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