Funny Cartoons Problem Solving Communication and Innovation
Describing something simply is not easy, and at Oxford Creativity we work as a team to find the best ways of taking complex points and make them easy to understand.
Part of that is through our use of cartoons, and we searched for years for a cartoonist to work with before Karen Gadd found the wonderful Clive Goddard. Clive has worked with us since 2004, and the cartoons we have commissioned from him have a big impact in our teaching and in Karen's book "TRIZ for Engineers: Enabling Inventive Problem Solving".
The process of how we commission and develop cartoons is a nice illustration of one of the cornerstones of TRIZ logic: the difference between ideas and concepts.
A concept is a general way of doing something. An idea is a specific way of putting that concept into practice. Clive's cartoon shown above illustrates this point brilliantly: someone has invented a wheel (the concept) and his friends can see different ways of putting that into practice (the ideas).
When we use TRIZ, we constantly move between the world of abstract concepts and specific ideas: to understand our specific problems we create an abstract model of them by uncovering and defining Contradictions or completing a Function Analysis. These abstract models of our problem then direct us to the right conceptual solutions to our problems, as found in the 40 Inventive Principles, the Standard Solutions, the Trends of Technical Evolution and the Effects Database. These lists of solutions are conceptual triggers that we then have to turn into practical ideas.
When we commission cartoons we follow the same process. We have a specific idea we want to convey about TRIZ, problem solving, creativity or innovation. We then describe it to Clive, and part of his genius is his ability to see the fundamental concepts behind the ideas we offer him – and then offer different (usually funnier) specific ideas.
One example is our illustration of an aspect of creative thinking. One important aspect of thinking creatively is the ability to view situations in another light, to reframe or change the conditions of the problem or redefine it in such a way that new solutions become possible. This is one of the ways that creativity can be subversive – and while this kind of thinking is followed systematically in TRIZ, sometimes it occurs to people in a flash of insight. And it is often very funny…
One creative genius at Cambridge University subverted the meaning of a warning sign to hilarious effect.
This story provided inspiration for our cartoon to illustrate the importance of checking that you have defined what you want correctly (exactly what kind of cycles are we talking about here?).
The concept is the same – the specific application of the concept has changed, from the Krebs Cycle to the Water Cycle. While the brainiacs around Cambridge might all be familiar with the Krebs Cycle, we always want our cartoons to be understood by as many people as possible, and used a more commonly recognised cycle instead (that also is easier to draw in pictures!).
Understanding the differences between ideas and concepts is one of the ways that we can encourage creative teamwork to flourish. If we can understand the clever concepts behind our colleagues' ideas, it will make it easier to build on and develop their ideas, improving them by keeping the good things from the concept but getting rid of any downsides from specific ways of putting it into practice.
Learning to communicate with both ideas and concepts helps people understand what we are looking for in a much clearer, simpler way – and which we hope to continue with Clive Goddard!
If you'd like to check out more of his clever cartoons, we have a gallery of our cartoons or you can check out his personal website.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ideas-concepts-creative-teamwork-great-cartoons-lilly-haines-gadd
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