Week 4 Reading Reflection

Chapter 5 - Innovation: The Creative Pursuit of Ideas

1. There wasn't really a "big surprise" for me in this reading, but in reflection, I would say that the one statement that stood out for me the most in this chapter was how critical recognizing the relationships is. According to the textbook by Kuratko, it states, "Many inventions and innovations are a result of the inventor's ability to see new and different relationships among objects, processes, materials, technologies, and people." I was unaware that the creative people were intuitively aware of this phenomenon of viewing things and people as existing in an complementary or appositional relationship with other things and people. This becomes a talent for recognizing new and different relationships and thus often lead to visions tat result in new ideas, products, and services.
   
2. One part of the reading that was confusing to me was Phase 2: Incubation of the Creative Process. As creative individuals allow their subconscious to think about the information they gathered from the preparation phase, in my opinion, it seems wishy-washy to include the incubation phase if we can't truly measure or be aware of how that may play a vital role in the creative process.
   
3. The first question I would ask the author would be, "What arena would you include your creativity in?"

• This is a question I would ask him because I want to know where he would channel his creativity in out of the seven arenas dicussed in the text; idea, material, organization, relationship, event, inner, and spontaneous.

The  second question I would ask the author would be: "What kind of habit would you have that is considered a muddling mind-set?"


• This is question I would ask him because I want to know what kind of mental habits that he personally has that would block or impede creative thinking.

4. I don't think there was anything that the author was wrong about except for the part about the incubation phase that I mentioned in Question 2, above. I don't think the author was necessarily wrong in this aspect, but from my perspective, it seems too uncertain of a event to include in the Creative Process.