Brainstorming Strategies: Dissect and Regenerate: A Look at the Birth of Ideas

Brainstorming Strategies: Dissect and Regenerate: A Look at the Birth of Ideas

Let's talk about brainstorming ideas, mate! I'll run you through the Decompose-Recompose model - a nifty process that shows how the brain whips up those genius ideas you've been dreaming about. Let's see how it all goes down with the creation of Pixar's Toy Story, as an example.

You get an idea? Yeah, I'm listening.

The Decompose-Recompose Model of Ideation

In a nutshell, the brain simplifies the idea creation process by breaking stuff apart, fiddling about with it, and then putting it back together in a cool new way. The brain loves remixing everything it soaks up, and that's where some of our best work comes from - the creative stuff.

Here's a TL;DR for you:

• The Decompose Stage: We pick apart the things we know and let thoughts and randomness influence and modify our thinking.
• The Recompose Stage: We piece together the bits we've been tinkering with to create something new. This new creation can then be iterated upon.

For example, when creating a song, you snag building blocks like chords, melodies, and rhythms, reorganize them, add some rules, and viola! You've got yourself a brand new tune.

Now, let's take a closer look at the steps!

Decompose What You Know

When you think, you're focusing on select pieces of knowledge. Sometimes, this happens unconsciously, too. Whether it's your long-term memory or working memory, the brain is breaking things down into their cohesive patterns - called schemas. The brain has got mad skills at thinking, searching, and bypassing limitations, so it can zero in on relevant bits.

Influencing and Modifying Factors

Everything and anything can influence your thoughts when you're brainstorming ideas. It could be something as simple as a goal set by your boss, your wildest mental daydreams, or hidden priming effects that make you seek out similar things. Sometimes, it's formulaic, like applying a known process to create, like those songwriting courses you've taken. Or perhaps it's the visual art techniques you've learned to create anime or Disney-style characters.

Recompose What You Want to Create

Combining all the tools, techniques, bits of knowledge, and personal experiences you've got, based on your goals and intentions, is what the recomposition stage is all about.

Pixar's Toy Story

Let's check out how Pixar created Toy Story using this framework:

• Decomposition: Pixar's team studied children's play and the way toys come to life in a child's imagination. They analyzed classic animated films, drew inspiration from buddy films, and studied the contrast between old and new toys.
• Influence and Modification: Steve Jobs, who owned Pixar at the time, pushed for cutting-edge CGI and brought Disney's expertise in emotional storytelling to the table.
• Recomposition: Pixar combined the contrasting ideas with new CGI styles and applied the idea of toys having their own world when we weren't looking. They came up with the concept of What if toys had their own world when we weren't looking?

The Powerful Mechanisms Within Influences & Modifiers

• The Randomness-induced Creativity: Randomness strikes! When two unlikely things connect in your environment, your brain sees something new and interesting. This moment of connection is the nugget of creative potential.
• Depth of Decomposition: The level of detail at which you analyze an idea affects the direction of your creativity. The closer you look, the more key details you'll focus on.
• Diffused Thinking: The brain moves between ideas haphazardly during creative thinking, which causes changes in your construal levels, shifts perspectives, and activates different memory associations. This leads to linking unrelated or unexpected ideas, which sparks creativity.
• Brain Networks: The Central Executive Network is activated when you get goal-directed, while the Default-Mode Network keeps the random thoughts flowing. These networks guide our individual creative insights and play a crucial role in real-world creativity.

By understanding and harnessing these mechanisms, you can use the decompose-recompose strategy to fuel your creativity and come up with innovative ideas. Here's a formula you can follow:

1. Isolate your knowledge into relevant ideas (decomposition).
2. Access different ideas at different levels of zoom (depth of decomposition).
3. Remix ideas after your brain influences the decomposed ideas (recomposition).
4. The Decompose-Recompose Model suggests that our brains generate ideas by breaking down existing knowledge and remixing them to create something new, utilizing various factors like goals, daydreams, and priming effects.
5. In the Decompose stage, we focus on select pieces of knowledge, breaking them down into cohesive patterns known as schemas, and allowing thoughts and randomness to influence and modify our thinking.
6. The Recompose stage involves combining the tools, techniques, bits of knowledge, and personal experiences we've acquired based on our goals and intentions to create something new.
7. When creating Toy Story, Pixar's team decomposed by studying children's play and analyzing classic animated films, and then recomposed by combining these contrasting ideas with new CGI styles and the concept of toys having their own world when we aren't looking.
8. Randomness-induced creativity occurs when two unlikely things connect, providing a new and interesting nugget for creative potential.
9. Emotional intelligence plays a significant role in the Decompose-Recompose process, as seen in Pixar's use of Disney's expertise in emotional storytelling.
10. Anxiety, a mental health concern, can also influence the creative process, especially with diffused thinking, a mechanism where the brain moves between ideas haphazardly.
11. The Decompose-Recompose strategy can be applied in various aspects of life, from health-and-wellness practices to mental health therapy, education-and-self-development courses, and even learning new habits and skills.
12. Cognitive psychology research indicates that our brain networks, like the Central Executive Network and the Default-Mode Network, are crucial in guiding our creative insights and play a role in real-world creativity.
13. By understanding and harnessing the mechanisms within the Decompose-Recompose Model, we can fuel our creativity, improve mental health, enhance productivity, and foster personal growth in a dynamic and exciting way.

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