From a post by Michael Michalko on How Geniuses Think.
Creative geniuses are geniuses because they know “how” to think, instead of “what” to think. Sociologist Harriet Zuckerman published an interesting study of the Nobel Prize winners who were living in the United States in 1977. She discovered that six of Enrico Fermi’s students won the prize. Ernst Lawrence and Niels Bohr each had four. J. J. Thompson and Ernest Rutherford between them trained seventeen Nobel laureates. This was no accident. It is obvious that these Nobel laureates were not only creative in their own right, but were also able to teach others how to think creatively.
In his post Michael identifies eight strategies “that are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art and industry throughout history.” Geniuses:
- LOOK AT PROBLEMS IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS
- MAKE THEIR THOUGHTS VISIBLE
- PRODUCE
- MAKE NOVEL COMBINATIONS
- FORCE RELATIONSHIPS
- THINK IN OPPOSITES
- THINK METAPHORICALLY
- PREPARE THEMSELVES FOR CHANCE
Photo Credit
Horizon Glow & the Conjunction
