ABSTRACT
Teachers often pose the question: how can I help my students think more creatively, think up innovative solutions and perhaps even enhance their creative potential? However, we also need to think about why we want them to think creatively. I became interested in creative thinking as a way of helping engineering graduates solve problems for the world in innovative ways. To me, that means finding creative technical solutions to social and environmental problems – global problems, our problems. However, I am also concerned that we do not increase our effectiveness in destroying our planet or in killing each other with new and clever devices:
the technologies which save us time and labour individually – that empower each of us – bind us collectively into a frenetic, mad race in which we often feel more caged by obligations and demands than before … the people who succeed in this technologically hyper-charged environment make up a narrow elite that thrives on constant stimulus … they usually don't think a lot about who they are, about what their ultimate aims are, or about the broader consequences of what they are doing.
(Homer-Dixon, 2000: 102)