GEP0314

innovation and Creativity

Çağlar Sivri, Ph.D.

 Six Thinking Hats:
• Six Thinking Hats (6TH) was developed by Edward de Bono.
• It’s a useful technique for helping groups:
• engage in developing and sharing ideas
• make better decisions about which ideas to progress
• align their thinking – so using parallel thinking rather than confused or conflicted
• The technique is based on the idea that there are six imaginary hats. Each hat is a
different colour, and represents a different type of thinking. When you ‘put on’ a hat,
you operate exclusively in that mode of thinking. When you change from one hat to
another, you change thinking modes. And importantly everyone thinks the same way
at the same time – so avoiding futile positive versus negative conflict.
• De Bono uses a hats metaphor because:
• there’s a link between ‘thinking’ and ‘hats’ – for example, people say ‘put on your thinking cap.’ So the idea
makes sense to people when you explain it to them
• hats can be put on or taken off very easily. This encourages people to switch and think in different ways
rather than to stay stuck in one mode.
What’s the problem?
• DeBono developed the technique having noticed that when critical or
contentious decisions need to be made,
• teams can find themselves in deadlock, unable to make a decision and
move forward,
• there are times when teams get stuck in a rut, simply recycling the
same ideas or variations on the same theme. This is especially
challenging when what’s actually needed is some focused creative
thinking to drive meaningful and innovative changes to what the team
does or how they do it.
Six thinking Hats
• The six hats represent six modes of thinking and are directions to think
rather than labels for thinking.
• There are six different hats in different colors. Each hat symbolises a
certain way of thinking.
• If you “put” one of these hats on you chose to think exclusively in that
direction.
• The other participants also put on a hat. When changing the hat, you
and your colleagues, will change the direction of thinking.
• Each participant has to be able to wear each of the six hats and start
reflecting.
White Hat thinking –
Data, information, facts — known and needed.
• The White Hat calls for information known or needed. This
covers facts, figures, information needs and gaps.
• "I think we need some white hat thinking at this point..."
means “Let's drop the arguments and proposals, and look
at the data base’’
• What are the facts?
• What is the information we have?
• What is the information we need?
• Where do we get missing information?
Red Hat thinking -
Hunches. Gut instinct. Intuition. Feelings.
• This covers intuition, feelings and emotions. The red hat allows the
thinker to put forward an intuition without any need to justify it.
• "Putting on the red hat, I think is a terrible proposal."
• Usually feelings and intuition can only be introduced into a
discussion if they are supported by logic.
• The red hat gives full permission to a thinker to put forward his or
her feelings on the subject at that moment
• Do I feel comfortable with the idea?
• Am I afraid to risk adopting this solution?
• Do I enjoy the session?
• Do I feel satisfied with expressing my opinion loudly?
• Do I feel angry when I disagree?
Black Hat thinking –
Risk assessment. Potential problems. Danger. Difficulties.
• The Black Hat is judgment -- the devil's advocate or why
something may not work.
• This is the hat of judgment and caution. It is a most valuable hat.
It is not in any sense an inferior or negative hat.
• The black hat is used to point out why a suggestion does not fit
the facts, the available experience, the system in use, or the policy
that is being followed. The black hat must always be logical .
• Do we respect other people’s opinion?
• Is this solution suitable for our problem?
• Has anybody previous experience to justify solutions?
• Does it fit?
• Can we find solution to remove difficulties by moving to green hat?
Yellow Hat thinking –
Benefits with rationale. The optimistic view. Plus points.
• The Yellow Hat symbolises brightness and optimism.
• This is the logical positive. Why something will work and why it will
offer benefits.
• It can be used in looking forward to the results of some proposed
action, but can also be used to find something of value in what has
already happened.
• Frames of value tool.
• Levels of feasibility tool.
• Competitive advantage screen.
• Sense of potential.
Green Hat thinking –
Creativity. Ideas. Alternatives. Solutions. Possibilities.
• This is the hat of creativity, alternatives, proposals, what is
interesting, provocations and changes.
• So, this hat serves as an idea generating tool and gives time and
space for creative thinking.
• What if we followed plan A?
• Why don’t we brainstorm?
• Let’s imagine this solution in practice.
• Why don’t we draw pictures to represent our ideas and connect them?
Blue Hat thinking –
Process control. Managing the thinking.
• The Blue Hat is used to manage the thinking process.
• This is the overview or process control hat. It looks not at the
subject itself but at the 'thinking' about the subject.
• "Putting on my blue hat, I feel we should do some greener hat
thinking at this point."
• In technical terms, the blue hat is concerned with metacognition.
• This hats include action planning for next steps, roles,
responsibilities, time management plan, etc.
Design Thinking?
• Design Thinking believes (and has been proven) that the people who
face problems are the ones who hold the key to their problem’s
answer.
• Design Thinking is Human-centered problem solving tool which
emphasize on Empathy, Collaboration, Co-creation and Stakeholder
feedback to unlock Creativity and Innovation, which devises feasible
and viable Big Idea/solutions. The key to the process is empathizing
with the users (citizen) to uncover unmet needs by understanding
their beliefs, values, motivations, behaviors, pains, gains and
challenges and to provide innovative solution concepts.
design thinking is:
• A process that results in a plan of action to improve a situation.
• A skill that incorporates situational awareness and empathy into idea generation.
• A tool that invokes analytical as well as creative thought to solve problems that consider
context, stakeholder requirements and preferences, logistical issues, and cost.
• A mindset in which ideas are triggered from diverse, even discrepant, sources, and then
built upon to inform progressively better solutions to challenges.
• A series of actions and an accumulation of provisional inputs that are structured by a
loop in which problems are defined, research and analysis are conducted, and ideas are
proposed and then subjected to critical feedback and modification, which in turn leads
to repeating parts of the loop to further refine the ideas.
• a fundamentally creative process that is driven by specific problems and individuals, yet
transcends conventional or obvious solutions. (Andrew Ressman)
An Example of Problem solving: The Encumbered Vs. The Fresh Mind
• Some years ago, an incident occurred where a
truck driver tried to pass under a low bridge.
But he failed, and the truck was lodged firmly
under the bridge. The driver was unable to
continue driving through or reverse out.
• The story goes that as the truck became stuck,
it caused massive traffic problems, which
resulted in emergency personnel, engineers,
firefighters and truck drivers gathering to devise
and negotiate various solutions for dislodging
the trapped vehicle.
• Emergency workers were debating whether to
dismantle parts of the truck or chip away at
parts of the bridge. Each spoke of a solution
which fitted within his or her respective level of
expertise.

A boy walking by and witnessing the intense debate looked at

the truck, at the bridge, then looked at the road and said what?
The boy said
• The boy said , "Why not just let the air out of the tires?"
Design Thinking human-centered problem solving approach is
based on a few easy-to-understand principles:
Mindsets, Skills and Thinking
The Phases of Design Thinking
WHAT is the Empathize mode in Design Thinking?
• Empathy is the centerpiece of a human-centered design process.
• The Empathize mode is the work you do to understand people, within
the context of your design challenge.
• It is your effort to understand the way they do things and why, their
physical and emotional needs, how they think about world, and what
is meaningful to them.
 WHY empathize?
• As a design thinker, the problems you are trying to solve are rarely your own—they are those of a particular group
of people; in order to design for them, you must gain empathy for who they are and what is important to them.
• Observing what people do and how they interact with their environment gives you clues about what they think
and feel. It also helps you learn about what they need.
• By watching people, you can capture physical manifestations of their experiences – what they do and say. This will
allow you to infer the intangible meaning of those experiences in order to uncover insights. These insights give
you direction to create innovative solutions.
• The best solutions come out of the best insights into human behaviour. But learning to recognize those insights is
harder than you might think. Why? Because our minds automatically filter out a lot of information without our
even realizing it.
• We need to learn to see things “with a fresh set of eyes,” and empathizing is what gives us those new eyes.
Engaging with people directly reveals a tremendous amount about the way they think and the values they hold.
• Sometimes these thoughts and values are not obvious to the people who hold them, and a good conversation can
surprise both the designer and the subject by the unanticipated insights that are revealed.
• The stories that people tell and the things that people say they do—even if they are different from what they
actually do—are strong indicators of their deeply held beliefs about the way the world is. Good designs are built
on a solid understanding of these beliefs and values.
 METHODS & TOOLS
• FIELD OBSERVATION: Structured approach to observing people in their
natural environment to uncover user insights and fresh perspectives of
people and their behaviours.
• DEEP USER INTERVIEW: An art of conversation to elicit stories and
uncover deep user insights and needs – both latent and unmet needs.
• NEEDS FINDING: Human process of making sense & transforming your
observations and deep user interviews into usable data cluster
&meaningful insights to uncover the unmet needs of your users.
• PERSONA DEVELOPMENT: A process of humanising your target users,
giving voice and character and making them real.
100 Uses – Individual and/ or Group Activity for Design Thinking
Each individual or group will challenge to come up with 100 uses for the
paperclip object. No repeats! Time the challenge for 5 minutes. When time
is up, have each group share how many ideas they generated. The group
with the most ideas wins!

Purpose: Thinking outside the box, encouraging wild ideas