摘要：Innovation is the engine of scientific progress, yet we do not train public health students to think creatively. I present the key concepts within an evidence-based method currently taught at the University of Texas. Habitual thought patterns involve deeply held framed expectations. Finding alternatives generates originality. Because frame breaking is difficult, a series of innovation heuristics and tools are offered including enhancing observation, using analogies, changing point of view, juggling opposites, broadening perspective, reversal, reorganization and combination, and getting the most from groups. Gaining cognitive attributes such as nonjudgment, willingness to question, mindfulness, and plasticity is also emphasized. Students completing the class demonstrate substantial increases on a standardized test of idea fluency and originality, more joyful attitudes toward science, and more pluralistic approaches. Americans love innovation. A Google search on the word in Spring 2014 yielded 118 million hits, similar to the number of hits for the terms “girlfriend” or “boyfriend.” Loving something or someone implies that we crave its presence and fear its loss. A 2010 survey of 1500 chief executives conducted by IBM’s Institute for Business Value found that the attribute they most valued on their leadership team was creativity. 1 Research universities, too, consider innovation to be of central importance, indeed the centerpiece of their very mission. The first lines of the influential 2012 National Academies of Science report, Research Universities and the Future of America, read America is driven by innovation—advances in ideas, products, and processes that create new industries and jobs, spur economic growth and support a high standard of living, and achieve national goals for defense, health, and energy. . . . Our nation’s primary source of both new knowledge and graduates with advanced skills continues to be its research universities. 2 (p1) Yet, despite America’s reverence for innovation, we are not faring well in maintaining global supremacy in this arena. The European Union surpassed American scientific output (measured by number of peer-reviewed publications) in 1995, and Asian-Pacific countries did so in 2008. 3 More significantly, despite major advances in information and communications technology, we must ask whether the reason why scientific progress has been slow in addressing critical threats to humanity (e.g., climate change, energy sufficiency, water scarcity, hunger, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity, and emerging infectious diseases) is for lack of originality. Another National Academies of Science report, The Gathering Storm, warned that American science is losing its creative ecosystem. 4 Together, these reports’ recommendations included more funding for America’s scientific universities, more rigor in secondary-school science education, and more partnerships with industry to commercialize discoveries. Calls for more funding, rigor, and entrepreneurship imply that innovation is innately present and will flower with the offering of more incentives and better information. I believe that to overcome humankind’s greatest challenges, we need radically different approaches. Although evolutionary or step-wise innovation is widespread and simply needs nurturance, revolutionary innovation is rare. Moreover, because radical novelty typically shatters existing beliefs and business models, it is often initially dismissed or rejected before it is accepted. 5 Examples include the notion that handwashing mitigates disease spread by Semmelweis, concepts of classical genetics by Mendel, the association between lead and neurocognition by Needleman, and the linkage between nutrition and pellagra by Goldberger, to name but a few. 6 The process by which revolutionary ideas can be generated is not natural and is not easy. Occasionally, disruptive innovation appears de novo as an exceptional trait, such as in creative geniuses. But it can also be developed through training. Decades of research have demonstrated that creativity can be taught. 7,8 Carefully crafted creativity-training programs have been developed predominantly for K–12 educational settings. Evaluations of these programs are now sufficiently plentiful that large meta-analyses have been published, showing substantial and consistent success. In one analysis of 40 creativity-training programs 6 and in another of 70 creativity-training programs, participants increased the number and originality of the ideas they generated by 2- to 3-fold. 9,10 Creativity-training programs equip students with discrete tools. They explain through examples and involve meaningful, disciplinary-specific rehearsal, because to become expert at any skill requires practice. In the few studies evaluating their success in business settings, training led professionals to demonstrate a greater preference for novel problem-solving and more flexibility in work performance. 11,12 In each of the 4 years I have taught innovative thinking at the University of Texas School of Public Health to health science students, pretest versus posttest results on a standardized test of creativity (Torrence Test of Creative Thinking) revealed 2- to 3-fold increases in the generation and originality of ideas (the degree to which solutions to a particular problem were nonnormative—i.e., infrequent within a distribution of offered solutions). 11 Qualitative data also suggest that the class has benefits. Students consistently tell us that after taking the class they are more curious and excited by science, research supervisors report that students are bringing surprising solutions to their work, and mentors describe many instances of students initiating new and unexpected partnerships. Students come into the class with a range of innate predispositions to creativity, just as they have susceptibilities that enhance or diminish responses to any environmental exposures. The experience “lifts almost all boats”; some students reach a higher level of appreciation and acceptance of originality whereas others become quite talented at novel idea generation. The pedagogy of innovation training is not strongly linked to content, except that evaluation studies show that domain specificity is important. Because creativity training for sciences should draw on examples and practice from science rather than from art or music, the training program outlined here was specifically developed for science settings. In this article, I outline select components of a toolbox taught in the innovative thinking curriculum. Greater insight and opportunities for practice can be found in the book that describes the method, Innovation Generation: How to Produce Creative and Useful Scientific Ideas 11 ; the paired workbook, Creativity in the Sciences: A Workbook Companion to Innovation Generation 12 ; and a story book that establishes that creative geniuses actually used such methods, Genius Unmasked . 6
