Page 24 - Free the Idea Monkey
P. 24
Sister Helen was stunned. She MONKEYS ARE OFTEN ere there isn’t any more room. . .
looked at me, then at Sister Nancy, DIVERGENT THINKERS
then at a thread on her perfectly
pressed habit. “Yes, Sister Nancy.” Idea Monkeys often seem to have the
ability to ideate with little regard for
“Good. Mike, please stop by and the hurdles or consequences associ-
see me anytime, and let me know ated with their ideas. This is because
how you are enjoying school.” they are often highly gifted in the
area of divergent thinking. According
I could not believe it. In an to the Gale Encyclopedia of Childhood
instant, Sister Nancy—the school’s & Adolescence, the concept of diver-
highest authority figure—had made gent thinking was developed in the
it okay to stand up for an idea. 1950s by psychologist J. P. Guilford
in the course of studying creative
I didn’t know it at the time, people. According to Guilford, there
but this moment would become were important characteristics found
pivotal in my life. I realize now that in divergent thinkers:
it helped me continue on a path of
questioning convention and author- Fluency
ity. It helped me understand that if
you believed enough in your ideas, (the ability to rapidly produce a
eventually someone else would too. large number of ideas or solutions
It helped me later on when I started
my own business, to look for lead- to a problem)
ers who knew how to embrace and
motivate thinkers, dreamers and Flexibility
idealists. Most importantly, I was
seeing for the first time a tenet that (the capacity to consider a variety
most Idea Monkeys and (Ring)leaders of approaches to a problem
can never fully embrace: simultaneously)
having rules
without Originality
imagination
is just as (the tendency to produce
dangerous as ideas different from those of
having imagination
without rules. most other people)
Elaboration
(the ability to think through
the details of an idea and
carry it out) . . . to the point wh
(Author’s note: this last trait is the rar-
est of them all.) Guilford would likely
have taken issue with Sister Helen’s
rigidity. Since his research focused on
testing and measurement (psychomet-
rics), he believed that creative thinkers
were at a disadvantage when it came
to intelligence tests, which penalize
divergent thinking and rewarded con-
vergent thinking.
Convergent thinking
(loosely defined as one’s ability to
narrow down to a single solution
from lots of possibilities)
9C H A P T E R 1
