Creative Thinking Process
薛智文
台大資工
cwhsueh@csie.ntu.edu.tw
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~chsueh/
“It is difficult to say what is impossible,
for the dream of yesterday is the hope
of today and the reality of tomorrow.”
- Robert H. Goddard
Sep 25 1006
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工欲善其事、必先利其器
The entrance to graduate school marks a critical
phase of transition for most graduate students from
absorbing knowledge to creating knowledge…
- Prof. Lui Sha, UIUC
• To excel in research, we must sharpen our
skills in
• positioning R&D strategically
• identifying and formulating high impact problems
• communicating ideas and results effectively
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Cone of Learning (Edgar Dale)
• After two weeks, we tend to remember:
• Passive learning:
•
•
•
•
10% of what we read
20% of what we hear
30% of what we see (pictures)
50% of what we hear and see
• Active learning:
• 70% of what we say
• 90% of what we say and do 
So we want you to say
and do in this workshop
The more energy that you put into a subject, the more you can remember.
- Prof. Lui Sha, UIUC
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Level of Educational Objectives (B.
S. Bloom)
• Level 1: Knowledge: List, and recite
• Level 2: Comprehension: Explain, and paraphrase
• Level 3: Application: Calculate, solve, determine, and
apply
• Level 4: Analysis: Classify, categorize, derive, and
model
• Level 5: Synthesis: create, predict, construct, design,
imagine, improve, and propose
• Level 6: Evaluation: judge, critique, verify, and debate
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R. Keith Sawyer
• Innovation requires no special thought
processes, says an expert. Creative people
just work harder at it.
• Ideas don’t magically appear in a genius’ head
from nowhere. They always build on what
came before. And collaboration is key.
• Creative people have tons of ideas, many of
them bad. The trick is to evaluate them and
mercilessly purge the bad ones. But even bad
ideas can be useful.
from “The Hidden Secrets of the Creative Mind”
Time Magazine, Jan. 16, 2006
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Why You Should Learn Creative
Thinking Process ?!
You don’t want to be the
lower part of M-Society.
(下流社會 -- 中產階級
蒸發了), Mar 15, 2006
• It’s your responsibility
and duty as a person
living in Taiwan.
• Recognize yourself.
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What’s Next about Taiwan and You?
• The World is FLAT.
• Are we still in East Asian Four Tigers?
• How could we compete with BRICs?
• What is the role of Taiwan in the world?
• Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)
• Original Design Manufacturer (ODM)
• Intellectual Property Creator (IPC)
• What are you going to do after graduation?
•
•
•
•
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Be an engineer or a scientist?
Be a professor?
Be an enterpriser?
Any else, for example… ?
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Basic Elements of Successful R&D
Active learning and thinking at higher levels
• How to transit from lower levels of learning to higher
levels of learning: a shift
• from a focus on recites, apply and solve
• to a focus on categorize, critique, and create.
• What are the habits that you plan to
• Overcome?
• Cultivate?
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Basic Elements of Successful R&D
1. Positioning your research
• What is gift and what is your gift?
• To what degree it overlaps with your interests?
• “May the force be with you”: what are forces in
R&D that can help you?
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Research Focus
The path to success consists of three simple elements.
Find what interests you1 that you can do well2, and is needed by the people3.
- Prof. Lui Sha, UIUC
Gifts
Interests
Societal
Needs
Research
Focus
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Being Wisdom - Understanding
Yourself
Understand others is intelligence.
Understand yourself is wisdom.
知 人 者 智 ， 自 知 者 明 - Lao Tze
• What is easier for you?
• Writing a complex software program?
• Proving a difficult theorem?
• What excites the community at large and what
excites you?
• Does it play into your strength?
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Basic Elements of Successful R&D
2. Developing a R&D road map
• What is the role of concrete application
scenarios in research?
• How do you spot opportunities that could
create new trends of R&D?
• What is the key factor that makes a result
significant?
• What are the categories of research and their
• Risks
• Impacts
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Creating an Exciting Application
Scenario
“As a mathematical discipline travels far from its empirical source, or still
more, if it is a second and third generation only indirectly inspired by the
ideas coming from ‘reality,’ it is beset with very grave dangers.
…
that the stream, so far from its source, will separate into a multitude of
insignificant branches, and that the discipline will become a
disorganized mass of details and complexities.”
- John Von Neumann, “The Mathematician,” 1957
• Exciting application scenarios will
• motivate you,
• expose the limitations of existing solutions, and
• help you to focus your efforts.
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Thinking Out-of-Box
Great advancements in science and engineering often are the
repudiation (rejection) of generally accepted beliefs.
- Anonymous
• Most researchers/engineers are constrained by models
and generally accepted assumptions of the real world.
But our knowledge of the nature is never perfect, and
the underlining technologies are rapidly changing.
• Velocity of light is constant – embrace it as a low of
physics and we have the theory of relativity.
• Clients request and server computes… -- Why not send
some of the code to client instead?
• E.g.,
• Is TCP appropriate for wireless communication?
• Is fairness a good metric for real-time computing?
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Pick the Right Problems to Work
on
• What is the difference between a theorem and
a homework problem to be proven by students?
• Both were proven to be correct.
• In fact, some homework problems are harder than
some of the theorems.
• E.g., stack scheduling protocol and priority ceiling
protocol are easy but useful.
• Therefore…
If we decide to spend time on a problem, shouldn’t
we work on a problem with greater potential impacts?
Of course, you should persuade your advisor if you find a
great impact topic. ^^
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Know What has been Done and
Estimate the Impacts
• New directions
• Challenging long-held beliefs and pioneering a new path
• Broad applicability
• For the further development of the theory
• For solving practical problems
• Unification / Integration
• Proving a unifying structure or theory and give deeper
understanding to seemingly diversified approaches
• Advancement along an established line of inquires
• You need to significantly improve performance, reliability,
or scale.
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Basic Elements of Successful R&D
3. Getting Your Ideas across
• How can we help audience understand your
points?
What should be made concise and what
should be elaborated?
• How can we make our presentations?
‧More informative
‧More interesting
‧More insightful
- Prof. Lui Sha, UIUC
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Impart an Understanding
• Understanding is an act that builds a bridge
between what your audience already know to
what they need to know.
• Focus on key ideas and key results, go from
specific to general and from concrete to
abstract.
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Managing Human “cache memory”
•
Human short term memory can only hold about 5 unfamiliar
items
•
•
Don’t load it up with unimportant details.
Suppose you need to present an OS overhead formula
unfamiliar to your audience, (2S + …).
•
•
Don’t say we now add “two S” to …. This forces others to
remember what S means. Poor use of human short term memory.
Say we add “round trip context switching time to…”
•
Think carefully about the new ideas you want your audience to
absorb.
•
Keep them in the “cache” by periodic refreshing during your
talk, until your audience “write the new ideas” into their long
term memory.
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Techniques that help get ideas
across
Techniques that reduce “unfamiliarity” and help “write through”:
‧Read out the physical meaning of the terms.
‧Use analogy familiar to your audience.
An ideal presentation is one that is:
‧Informative
‧Interesting
‧Insightful
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Being Informative
Inform: give new knowledge…
• “New” is relative to your audience.
• What they already know?
• What they should know after your presentation?
• What are the steps in-between?
• For example:
• Managers: the key ideas, expected impacts, and
costs.
• Experts: new challenges and new insights/results
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Being Interesting
Interesting: unexpected, counter intuitive, difficult to believe
• Seemingly unimportant fact that actually holds the key
• Seemingly true but it is in fact false
• A “difficult” problem is solved with ease and elegance.
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Being Insightful
Insight: impart a deeper understanding
• Explain a seemingly complex and confusing problem in
a way that is easy to understand.
• Unearth hidden/unstated assumptions. And quickly put
an argument to rest.
• Show things in new angles, new lights and new forms
and gain new understandings.
• Demonstrate subtle but important connections/interdependencies between seemingly unrelated subjects.
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Syllabus
• Meeting 0: Introduction
• Meeting 1: Creative thinking process, case
study, and team formation
• Meeting 2: Presentation – each team should
propose two potential research topics.
• Meeting 3: Discussion and refinement
• Meeting 4: Presentation (,discussion, and
refinement) – each team should further
elaborate one research topic.
• Meeting 5: Final presentation
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Assignment
• Each one has to prepare a five-minute
presentation, which should introduce:
•
•
•
•
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The global trends that you think
Your interests
Your gifts/strengths
The trends related to your interests or strengths
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“The Creative Thinking Process”
Workshop
Meeting 1
Creativity is a mechanical and
learnable process.
- Prof. Lui Sha, UIUC
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Creative Thinking Process
•
Identify potential research topics in the context of people’s gifts
and interests.
• Position the research focus on the intersection of your gifts, your
interests, and societal needs.
•
Examine the Trends
•
•
•
•
How the idea relates to the research trends?
What are the key related works?
How to spot opportunities that could create new trends?
Look deeper into the Challenges
• What can be solved by current technology?
• What needs to be invented?
• What is the estimated effort?
• What is the key factor that makes a result significant?
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Creative Thinking Process (Cont.)
•
Estimate the Impacts
• What are the categories of research and their
risks/impacts?
• new directions, unification/integration, broad applicability,
incremental improvements.
•
Look ahead into the Future
• What else will the future technology enable?
• What are the new and exciting application scenarios that
established technologies stop working?
• What is truly hard and what can be removed from your
design?
• understand the true nature of constraints and separate the
hard constraints from the soft ones.
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Creative Thinking Process (Cont)
•
Expand to a Device Family
• A group of devices where each member is complemented
and reinforced with each other .
• What are their intrinsic characteristics?
• What are their strength and limitations?
•
Layout an Elegant Architecture
• Optimally use the advantages of each member.
•
Build Low Level Details
• Publish papers and file patent.
• Create new architectures, protocols,…
• Prototype demonstration and identify industrial partners.
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End Products
• From incremental improvements to existing
architectures & product lines
• To the creation of a new product line
• architecturally different from the existing products
• new form of information sharing and exchanging
• enabled by emerging technologies
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The Process to Find the NextWave Technology
Details
Trends
gifts
A New
Architecture
interests
societal
needs
Research focus &
next-wave
technology
Device Family
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Challenges
Product Line
Future
Impacts
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Creative Thinking Process Summary
How the idea relates to research trends?
Identify
Potential Research Topics
Trends
Key related works
Estimated efforts
What needs to be invented?
Challenges
Look Deeper
What can be solved by current technology?
What are the key factor/cores?
Expected impacts
Impacts
Creative Process
-Mechanical
-Learnable
Nature of impacts
New directions
Broad applicability
Unification/integration
Incremental
Look Further
What else will the future technology enable?
Extend to
Device Family
Role Setting
for Each Member
Intrinsic characteristics
Strength and limitations
Optimally use the advantages
Elegant
Architecture
Build
Low-Level Details
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Successful Stories
• Apple Computer Company
• E-Ink Corporation
• Discussion
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Case 1
The Apple Computer Company
Steven Wozniak and Steve Jobs had been friends in high
school. They had both been interested in electronics, and
both had been perceived as outsiders. They kept in touch
after graduation, and both ended up dropping out of school
and getting jobs working for companies in Silicon Valley.
(Steven Wozniak for HewlettPackard, Steve Jobs for Atari)
Apple Computer was born on
April 1, 1976. At that time
Jobs was 21 and Wozniak
was 26.
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Product History (1/2)
1976 Apple I
1977 Apple II
1983 Lisa / Lisa 2 / Mac XL
1984 Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Macintosh
1987 Macintosh II
1989 Macintosh Portable
1991 Power Book
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Product History (2/2)
1993 Newton Message Pad
Macintosh Color Classic II
1994 Power Macintosh
1998 iMac
1999 iBook
2004 iPod Mini
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Steve Jobs
• He is the CEO of Apple Computer and the
Chairman and CEO of Pixar Animation
Studios.
• He was stripped his duties in 1985. After that,
he founded NeXT Computer.
• In 1986, Steve Jobs bought Lucasfilm's
computer graphics division from George
Lucas for $10 million and named the new
computer animation studio Pixar.
• In 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $402 million,
bringing Jobs back to the company he
founded.
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Case 2
The E-Ink Corporation
Electronic Ink is a display technology designed to mimic
the appearance of regular ink on paper. Unlike a
conventional flat panel display, which uses a backlight to
illuminate its pixels, electronic paper reflects light like
ordinary paper and is capable of holding text and images
indefinitely without drawing electricity or using processor
power; as these resources are only required to change or
erase the image.
Sony Librie EBR-1000EP, 2004
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Technology Review
Developed in 1997
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Product Lines
• High Resolution Displays
• Segmented Displays
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Discussion
• Please give us your opinions.
• How to keep a company alive?
• Does every creative product work?
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Reference
• http://www.apple.com
• http://www.apple-history.com/
• http://www.eink.com/
• http://www.wikipedia.org/
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Homework 2
• Team formation – 2 to 4 people in a team
• Select one possible research topic or new product. The
slides should includes:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The trend related to your topic
Your topic or your product
Target feature or system architecture
Claimed goal (give us the killer application if possible)
Key related work such as paper or data sheets
The Strength of each member related to your topic
Related issues and challenges when marching to the goal
(rank the priority of these challenges)
• List possible future technologies related to your topic in the
future if needed
• Expected Impacts
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Q&A
• Q1.據在業界的父母說，台灣的資工人才由於能力
不敵大陸及印度，國外公司都不喜歡用台灣的資
訊工程師，而學生缺乏哪些能力呢?教授對此一現
象的看法為何??
• Ans: 父母說的都對！不對的是我們自己。
• 智力 耐力 生產力 溝通力 英語
• 創造力 解決問題 團隊合作
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Q&A
• Q2.近年來國內指考分數資工系有逐漸向下的趨勢，
教授的看法是?
• Ans: 認識自己 資訊最適性
時勢所驅 資訊最寬廣
Computer Science and Information Engineering
資
訊
工
程
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資
訊
科
學
資
訊
管
理
資
訊
教
育
資
訊
電
子
資
訊
服
務
生
物
資
訊
醫
學
資
訊
圖
書
資
訊
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融
資
訊
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Q&A
•
Q3.未來資工系大學生畢業後，在找工作上占有什麼優勢?未來可從
哪方面的相關部門著手?
•
Ans: 了解事情的本質 不怕沒優勢 只怕沒本事
•
R&D Engineer, Product Manager, Project Manager, Field
Application Engineer, Sales, Marketing, CTO, CIO, CSO, CMO,
COO, CEO, President, …
•
比創意與願景所要具備的能力
• 市場 格局 架構 組織團隊 想像力 創造力 執行力
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工研院創意中心
• 魔境 水之械 廢土花盆 吸水泥土 光電共生原生
植物園 導電玻璃罐 影舞集
innovation
future
before
innovator
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Conclusion
• 台灣製造台灣創造
• 削弱補習班文化
• 創意心法
• neuro-linguistic programming
• Innovation = invention ＋ insight
• 個人成功要件
• skills + expertise + intrinsic motivation (passion)
• 團隊成功要件
• people + product + press （氛圍） + platform
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Valuable Life
Value
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100 110
year
-Value
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It’s not Luck
• Eliyahu M. Goldratt
• Theory of Constraints (TOC)
•
•
•
•
•
constraints
limitations
conflicts
?
solutions
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The World is FLAT
• 10 bulldozer (forces)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1989 Berlin Wall
1995 netscape IPO
workflow
open source
outsource
offshore manufacturing
insource
supply chain
search engine
light tech, steroid
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