Die Eliminationsmethode – Förderung kreativer Ideen durch die Elimination bekannter Lösungen

This pilot study presents the first implementation and evaluation of a new technique to raise creative performances by eliminating common ideas and conventional solutions in a first step and subsequently generate new ideas. This technique is termed “elimination method”. The experiment of this study was conducted with individually working subjects, not involving group interaction. 30 subjects worked on a creativity task with the elimination method, 30 subjects worked on the same creativity task with brainstorming technique instructions. They produced 1919 ideas which could be summarized to 268 different cognitive elements as the baseline of the research. The theoretical focus of this study is to highlight the role of common knowledge in group discussion and the corresponding intra-individual processes and cognitive processes. Overall results of data examination were in line with expectations and support future testing of the proposed elimination method in a group context. This study was able to show that the instructions for the elimination method induced effects as intended, producing mainly common ideas in the first step and mainly new ideas in the second step, overall resembling the output of the brainstorming condition. The second step of the elimination method outperformed the brainstorming condition in producing idea output with a higher creative density and one-tailed differences were significant (p? =? 0.028). Furthermore, interactions between method and creativity measures were explored. Findings were connected to corresponding research where appropriate and implications for future research were remarked upon.