提高团队创造性思维的5种方法

    5. 从收发室借一个大纸板箱

    如果你想鼓励人们“跳出固有模式”进行思考，找一个大纸板箱让他们坐在外面，确实会有帮助。

    这是新加坡管理大学（Singapore Management University）安吉拉•梁和同事们在几年前的研究结果。他们给参与者安排各种需要创造性思维的挑战，要求他们表演出各种比喻。有的人坐在五立方英尺的纸板箱里面或外面。有的人拿到两个一半的杯垫，并被要求“根据事实做出推理”。

    结论：那些表演出比喻的参与者，在开发创造性解决方案的时候表现得更加出色。

    没错，听起来像是电视剧《办公室》（The Office）里面的一个场景。

    凡是能让人们跳出常规套路和环境的事情，都能打破他们的惯性思维。只要你允许每个人与众不同，他们就会有不同的思维模式。

    如果坐在盒子外面这样的做法不太可行，梁发现，让人们走出“呆伯特的小隔间”，也能起到类似的效果。（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    5. Borrow a big cardboard box from the mail room

    If you want to encourage people to think “outside the box,” it can actually help to get a big cardboard box and then make them sit outside of it.

    That’s what Angela Leung of Singapore Management University and fellow researchers found a few years ago . While giving participants various challenges that required creative thinking, they made them act out various metaphors. Some sat inside or outside a five square-foot cardboard box. Some were given two halves of a coaster and asked to “put two and two together.” And so on.

    Bottom line: Those acting out a metaphor tended to do better at developing creative solutions.

    Yes, it sounds like an episode from “The Office.”

    But anything that gets people out of their usual routine and environment is likely to break up conventional thinking. If you give people license to be different, they are more likely to think differently.

    If sitting outside a box seems a step too far, Leung notes that just getting people out of their “Dilbert cubicles” is a step in the right direction.