You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Audio.

This talk features behavioral and learning scientist Merrily Opezzo, recorded live at TEDx Stanford, 2017.

So the creative process, you know this, from the first idea to the final product product is a long process. It's super iterative,

lots of refinement, blood, sweat, tears, and years. And we're not saying you're going to go out

for a walk and come back with the Sistine Chapel in your left hand, right? So what frame of the

creative process did we focus on just this first part? Just brainstorming, coming up with a new idea.

So we actually ran four studies with a variety of people. You were either walking indoors or

outdoors, and we all found the same, all of these studies on the same conclusion. I'm only going to

tell you about one of them today. So one of the tests we used for creativity was alternate uses, and this test, you have four minutes,

and your job is to come up with as many other ways to use common everyday objects as you can think of.

So, for example, what else would you do with a key other than to use it for opening up a lock?

Clearly, you could use it as a third eyeball for a giraffe, right?

Maybe.

That's sort of interesting, kind of new, but is it creative?

So people came up with many ideas as they could, and we had to decide, is this creative or not?

So the definition of creativity that a lot of people go with is appropriate novelty.

So for something to be appropriate, it has to be realistic.

So unfortunately, you can't use a key as an eyeball.

But novel is the second thing, is that nobody had to have said it.

So for us, novelty, it had to be appropriate first,

and then for novelty, nobody else in the entire population that we surveyed could have said it.

So you might think you could use a key to scratch somebody's car.

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