Combinational Creativity
It is an idea proposed by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, which is based on the assumption that all creativity is combinational in nature. This means that we can create “original” content by creatively combining two or more existing ideas. We can see it prevalent in Computer Science where many of the new and emerging fields are just permutations of ideas from different related fields, e.g., Quantum Machine Learning, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Probabilistic Graphical Models, etc.
Benefits
- It reduces the pressure when creating content.
- It gives you permission to make and share your work.
- It is more active, mindful, and playful consumption of knowledge.
Use Cases
You can use the Combinational Creativity principles:
- to generate content.
- be it for an article, video, tweet, or anything else for that matter.
- in conversations.
- By honing your idea linking skills, you can easily detect how different ideas link together.
- in problem-solving.
- You can look at unconventional methods and ideas that might become useful for your particular problem.
# How to combine
We can combine the different ideas by:
- Chaining: How one idea impacts another, e.g. How spaced-repetition impacts long-term memory?
- Commonality: What are the common themes between them, e.g. what do note-making and comprehension have in common?
- Comparison: How they compare and contrast, i.e. How are these ideas similar or dissimilar to one another?