Admittedly, Hello Kitty isn’t particularly creative on its own and neither are chainsaws. However, there is something about the combination of the two that results in a creative product. Perhaps it is the incongruity and resultant surprise of seeing the two elements together.  Hello Kitty products are girly, whimsical, and unabashedly cute. Chainsaws are manly, mechanical and unabashedly dangerous. The incongruity of seeing such disparate elements paired with each other occasions surprise. Some have said that surprise along with novelty is a reasonable definition of creativity.

I just finished reading Pride, Prejudice and Zombies and I know that surprise resulting from incongruity was one of the elements that made the book such an enjoyable read. As background, Pride and Prejudice is romance that takes place in the gentile society of Regency-era England.  Pride, Prejudice and Zombies (PPZ) is an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that holds very closely to the original in both plot and dialog. The main difference is that England in PPZ is beset by a plague that turns people into zombies and causes the afflicted dead to rise from their graves. The other difference is that the girls of the Bennett family are well trained in the martial arts by their father and such arts are well respected by society.

The funniest moments of the book are when the author resolves the contradictions inherent in having well-born women of that era who are also well-trained in the martial arts. For example, at a dinner party with the Bennett family, the Bennetts’ cousin and guest, Mr Collins, had been praising and commending the Bennett house, its furnishings and the Bennett sisters.

“The dinner too was highly admired; and he begged to know to which of his fair cousins the excellency of its cookery was owing.

Briefly forgetting her manners, Mary grabbed her fork and leapt from her chair onto the table. Lydia, who was seated nearest her, grabbed her ankle before she could dive at Mr. Collins and, presumably, stab him about the head and neck for such an insult.”

Similarly amusing was a scene in which Elizabeth Bennet was attending a dinner party of Lady Catherine’s and was asked to perform for the other guests after supper for their entertainment. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth played the pianoforte and sang for the guests. In Pride, Prejudice and Zombies, Elizabeth exhibited some of the agility and strength she had developed through her martial arts training by walking around the room on her fingertips (her skirts being tied via a “modestry string” to keep her legs properly covered while she was upside down). The entertainment continued under the watchful eye of Lady Catherine who offered tips and suggestions for technique while

“Elizabeth received them with all the forbearance of civility, and, at the request of the gentlemen, remained on her fingertips till her ladyship’s carriage was ready to take them all home.”

When combining very different concepts such as zombies and Regency-era society, one is faced with contradictions that need to be resolved to make the combination work. Resolving the contradiction requires exploring the concepts being combined to find an internally consistent solution. Regency-era women were taught to be polite and to respond to perceived insults in a congenial manner. At best, they could gasp and flush when an honored guest said something implying they were so low-born as to prepare the meal for a dinner party themselves. However, if Regency-era women were trained to fight zombies, they would have acquired martial skills as well as the courage and resolution needed to wield those skills effectively. Such women would do more than gasp at an insult. They could potentially do something about it by attacking the person insulting them. It is this exploration and resolution of the disparity between concepts that leads to surprising elements in the story which, then, increases the perceived creativity of the product.

It is likely the essence of conceptual combination is the same for both Hello Kitty chainsaws and Pride, Prejudice & Zombies.  It is the differences in the complexity of the concepts and domains being compared that results in differences in perceived creativity.  This makes sense and explains why cognitive psychologists examine the processes involved in interpreting simple conceptual combinations such as “Pet Bird” to better understand how people interpret more complex combinations such as “Restaurants for Intelligent Alien Birds” (Ward, Smith & Fink, 1999).

As I discussed in a previous post, the combination of disparate ideas often results in a creative product/idea. The larger the difference (conceptual distance) between the two components of a combination, the greater the potential for a creative idea. What I didn’t discuss in that post was why the combination of divergent ideas leads to a creative idea. It is believed that one reason conceptual combination results in creative ideas is because interpreting conceptual combinations results in emergent features.

According to James Hampton, an emergent feature is a feature that is not associated with either of the constituents of a combination but emerges as a feature of the combination of those constituents. I know – too much psychology jargon – so let me explain. If I ask people to list the features of the concept of “Pet,” they will list things that are true of pets in general such as friendly, companion, furry, give love, etc. The feature “talks” probably would not show up on this list.  Similarly, if I ask people to list the features of “Birds,” they will list things that are true of birds in general such as has wings, flies, has a beak, poops on cars, eats bird seed, etc. Once again, the feature  “talks” does not usually pop up in this list. However, if I asked people to list the features of the conceptual combination Pet Birds, “talks” is now one of the more common features listed.  In this sense, it is an emergent feature because it emerges when the two concepts are combined but not when they are considered individually.

I believe that the greater complexity of the concepts being compared, the greater the chance of discovering (creating?) emergent features which then increases the creative potential of the combination. Hello Kitty and chainsaws are conceptually distant, but fairly simple concepts. Zombies and the setting of Pride and Prejudice are conceptually distant as well as being complex concepts. The surprise at seeing a cute, pink, cartoon icon being paired with a manly, dangerous, cutting tool is mainly perceptual in nature because there are few emergent features. In contrast, reading a story such as PP&J in which the author has deeply explored the two concepts to resolve disparities and integrate the elements into a coherent whole, leads to the discovery of a multitude of emergent features. For the reader, this results in multiple surprises and multiple opportunities for humor thereby increasing the perceived creativity of the product far beyond that of the Hello Kitty chainsaw.

This suggests that those wishing to get the most bang for their buck using conceptual combination should combine complex, conceptually distant concepts and fully explore the combination. If care is taken to resolve incongruities between the concepts in an internally consistent fashion, then the emergent features that are discovered (created?) in the process should increase the perceived creativity of the final product.

Once you submit your answer, you can then review what other visitors to the site submitted for that word.

I actually thought it was a pretty creative website. Maybe it was intended to get the creative juices flowing or to help snap a person out of writer’s block. If so, it was unique in that most techniques like this to enhance creative writing or innovation have a person combine two or more random words/concepts and then explore the combination.

The idea that creativity comes about through combination of ideas has a long history. One of the first people to explore the use of conceptual combination in the development of ideas was Poincare. Of course he examined it in the context of “the genesis of mathematical creation.” Poincare reasoned that elementary concepts “collided” in the unconscious. The most fruitful combinations were those made up of disparate elements. However, combinations made from disparate elements were also those most likely to be useless. Why then are we not bombarded with a plethora of useless combinations during innovation or problem solving? Poincare believed it was because the unconscious mind engaged in a selection process only allowing the combinations with the most potential to rise to consciousness. As he stated “Invention is discernment, choice.”

There is ample evidence, both anecdotal and empirical, that combinations of disparate concepts result in creativity and innovation. Consequently, many techniques exist to use conceptual combination to enhance creativity. These include the “Random Logline Generator” for writers and Ward’s “Random Adjective Noun Combination” generator.

Some of the most creative work I have seen has come about through the random pairing of concepts. At the top of my list of creative products resulting from random conceptual combination are:

1.) The artist Mark Tansey’s use of a concept wheel to generate ideas for paintings such as “White on White“.

2.) The Nietzsche Family Circus

3.) Working video games created in response to a random name generator. The winning playable entries (created by the 3 week deadline!) included “Post-Apocalyptic Unicorn Uprising,” “Emo Harvest on The Oregon Trail” “Attack of the Banjo on the High Seas.”

Now you can see why OneWord is different. Perhaps it is designed to help people achieve creativity through tapping into the Zen of the sound of one hand clapping.