Increase creativity by actively looking for different associations.
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” – Steve Jobs
Some of the most groundbreaking ideas came about not by logical thinking, but by combining unrelated ideas and changing the paradigm completely. Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn’t try to make a faster or a more efficient search engine – they completely changed what a search engine should do. But how did they get the idea that eventually made Google?
By combining ideas from two previously unrelated domains! They used the concept of academic citations – a more cited journal article is likely an important one – into ranking websites and created their PageRank algorithm. That algorithm allowed them to surface higher quality links to their users that didn’t have to be manually curated.
Importance of Associational Thinking
The ability to connect unrelated things, or associational thinking, is a fundamental process that underlies creative thinking. Professor Mednick, who created the Remote Associates Test for creativity, defines the creative thinking process as “the forming of associative elements into new combinations which either meet specified requirements or are in some way useful.” The more remote the elements, the more novel the solution. Consider how the structure of Benzene was discovered. August Kekule had a dream about a snake eating its own tail, which he couldn’t shake off. By connecting that image with his work on chemical structure, he got the idea of the cyclic structure of Benzene and made a significant contribution to the understanding of aromatic compounds.
Finding Simple Pathways to Creativity
But is there a better way to increase creativity without having to wait for serendipity?
The answer is surprisingly simple – by actively looking for different associations! These different associations could be either internal or external. Internal connections are those that lie in the same problem domain but may not have been used together. One way to find internal connections is by combining various form and function attributes in different ways. External connections, on the other hand, combine ideas from completely different domains and often lead to much more novel ideas. Techniques like the using random stimulus like poem fragments or BruteThink where a random object is used as a trigger are examples of external associations. Our brain, because of its associative nature, is actually quite good at connecting unrelated ideas and combining them in a useful way.
Playing games that help build associational thinking can improve creativity. For example, Chindogu, the Japanese art of “unuseless inventions” and Wacky Inventions are fun activities that allow people to combine unrelated objects in interesting ways to create a new product. These games use random stimuli to trigger the brain to think in different directions.
Creativity Can Be Simple and Fun
The simplest of all associative thinking games? Spotting shapes in clouds! A similar technique that Leonardo da Vinci often used was to throw a paint-filled sponge at a wall and try to make sense of the meaningless stains. Playing this game built up his ability to make remote associations that eventually helped him in many of his inventions. It’s always possible to find some way to connect unlikely elements, even if that leads to bizarre ideas occasionally. Like da Vinci himself said, “Realize that everything connects to everything else.”
Further Reading
- edCircuit – Dr. Pronita Mehrotra Articles
- The Conversation – What creativity really is – and why schools need it
- Education Week – The Quest for Creativity in Schools
We have so many content standards to get through that we just skim the surface and have difficulty getting students to a place where they have an enduring understanding about the content. With enrichment, even though the content standards are all covered, because gifted students usually get the basic understanding fairly quickly, the teacher can go more into depth regarding the topic, digging deeper than your typical classroom. What this might look like is the teacher has a brief explanation on how vibrations cause sound and then allows the students to conduct experiments and put this idea to the test. Or a math teacher who after the class gets the gist of what she wants them to know, might do a project exploring the standard further or ask them to find a way to apply this to real life. 
Given these advantages and disadvantages, I still haven’t answered which one is better. As my educational law professor used to tell us all the time, “it depends.” It depends on the subject area (English is much easier to accelerate and skip content because it always circles back on itself and builds on layers while math can be more challenging). It depends on the student because some may have the maturity to handle moving up with older students while another may not. It depends on the teacher who may or may not have the proper training to get students to dig deeper into something and enrich them. It depends on the parent who might think their child will have social and emotional issues if they leave their friends to go to a higher grade, or who are not ready for their child to begin having older conversations with the older students. Also, tt depends on the administrator who might not be willing to put kids into enrichment groups because they do not want to appear elitist with students receiving special services (of course overlooking the fact that by not doing this, they are in fact denying them of services specific to their needs). Finally, it depends on the school. A school may not be able to cluster gifted students together into gifted cohorts because there are not enough of them or they are spread out amongst other schools. It depends on the schedule. The schedule may not allow for younger students to attend higher classes because they are held at another building or at different times.
Don Wettrick is the founder of StartEdUp, author of “Pure Genius” and Innovation Specialist at 
Erin Klein is an award-winning educator, national keynote speaker, author, and mother who serves on the 
They also instituted a more rigorous course of study that more closely mirrored the college experience with a focus on independent study and time management. Students were also offered more equitable access to Advanced Placement courses and tutoring by teachers.
Fran Rabinowitz was named Executive Director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents in June 2017. Most recently she served as Interim Superintendent of the Bridgeport Public Schools and has been a classroom teacher, district administrator, Associate Commissioner of Education for the State of Connecticut, and Superintendent of the Hamden Public Schools in the past as well. Fran Rabinowitz has been a respected educational leader in the state for over 30 years.
Rob Waldron has been the Chief Executive Officer of 