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Apple might have trademarked “Think Different” as a marketing tool, but few individuals epitomize the slogan better than artist Salvador Dali.
His mind-bending, surrealist works draw legions of visitors to St. Petersburg’s renowned Dali Museum.
More than an art gallery, the museum also offers educational programming aimed at business and nonprofit leaders who want to improve their critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. Its latest InnovationLabs course on the topic was held in late September.
“There’s an obvious synergy between Dali, his works and processes and the general frameworks for creativity and innovation,” says Kim Macuare, InnovationLabs administrator and education manager. “One of the things we can certainly say about Dali is he helps us see things differently. I like to say he lets us make the familiar strange and the strange familiar.”
Macuare, who has taught the InnovationLabs’ Introduction to Creative Thinking and Problem-Solving course, tells Coffee Talk the material is geared toward anyone who wants to improve their process for creatively finding solutions to challenges. She says it could benefit businesspeople, particularly managers and team leaders, because it also aims to boost awareness of how people approach problems with different "cognitive styles.”
For example, says Macuare, “I ask lots of questions and get down in the weeds. But in a meeting, my intent is not to keep us from taking action. On the other hand, you have a person who has a high implementation preference, who might look to move quickly to action. It's important to know those things so that you better understand each other.”
The course also covers ways to more effectively tackle open-ended problems and overcome the brain's hard-wired tendency to see patterns where they don’t exist. “We want to develop people’s comfort with ambiguity,” Macuare says. “The longer you can sustain ambiguous tension, the more you give your brain a chance to work out what could potentially be innovative solutions.”
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