The improvement of ideation by hybrid-metaphorming

Abstract

In modern society, creative and productive thinking skills are considered a top priority for survival, and numerous studies on thinking skill have been pouring out by researchers of academia and enterprise respectively. However, these studies of academia and enterprise are quite different from each other, and are sometimes even contradictory. Also, unscientifically confirmed thinking methodologies of enterprise are rampant, and misguided beliefs or common notions on thinking are prevalent in present society. First, in this context, this paper investigates human cognition, thinking skill, creativity, and the principles and limitations of thinking methodologies within the framework of cognitive science. This paper looks to offer insight in these areas. As the conclusion of these theoretical considerations, thinking is by no means a sinecure to control intentionally in itself, and artificial controlling on thinking entails a certain bias. That is, thinking methodologies may lead thinking in useless directions or to useless results. However, those methodologies and techniques on thinking as a pseudo theory generally enforce only artificial controlling, and this activity may hinder probability of creativity that is emergent from randomness or free-willing. Next, this paper investigates centrally analogical reasoning, a major principle of ideation, and proposes an improved method based upon the theoretical considerations above. The improved method of this study does not use one-sided use thinking techniques (i.e. analogical reasoning), instead, it proposes mixed thinking through a combination of techniques, randomness and free-willingness. Specifically, this proposal consists of two kinds of mixed forms. The first proposal is to combine free-association and analogical reasoning. In other words, this method uses thinking techniques after thinking free-willingly for a sufficient period of time. This may maximize performance of voluntary thinking as well as minimize the constraining effects of thinking techniques. The second proposal is to combine randomness with systemicity on ideation. In other words, this method suggests using certain concepts which are random, irrelevant and opposite, on target beyond on specific concepts that are used in conventional thinking techniques – e.g. systematic clues, knowledge, schema, etc. This method may mitigate one side bias through systematic techniques as well as aid in the generation of creative ideas through whimsy unusualness. This paper denominates the above mixed method as hybrid metaphorming, and confirms its effect through two experiments on ideation. Experiment 1 was conducted with a task of finding a new function about a given target product, and experiment 2 was conducted with a conceptual design task in the field of industrial engineering. As the common result of the experiments, the hybrid metaphorming group as an experimental group showed the better performance than control groups that were applied with the conventional thinking technique (i.e. analogical reasoning) or free-association in terms of quantity and quality of idea. In summary, this paper offers theoretical consideration and insight on thinking and ideation against the misguided beliefs of conventional thinking methodologies. Also, it proposes an improved method and supports its effect through experimental results. Therefore, this research is not only meaningful in the field of thinking and creativity of academia, but also is valuable in terms of practicality in modern day society.