Deferred judgment
Αναβολή της κρίσης
The rule that producing ideas and judging them are two different operations and should not run at the same time. It is not a ban on criticism. It is a decision about when the criticism arrives, taken before anybody starts.
How to spot it
Ask out loud which part of the session everybody is in. If nobody can answer, you are in both at once, and the ideas are being judged at the size they had when they were interrupted.
The research behind the term
The term is not our invention. It comes from published research, and what follows is what that research found — our own synthesis of the published abstract, not a translation of the original.
Runco, M. A., & Acar, S. (2012). Divergent Thinking as an Indicator of Creative Potential — doi:10.1080/10400419.2012.652929
What it found
- Divergent thinking tests are very widely used in the study of creativity, but divergent thinking does NOT guarantee actual creative achievement.
- They are reliable and reasonably valid predictors of specific performance criteria — that is, an indicator of potential, not a measurement of creativity itself.
- Validity is not an "all or nothing" property but a matter of degree, and it is meaningful only in relation to specific criteria.
- The article enumerates both the uses and the limitations of divergent thinking, conceptually and psychometrically.
How it found it
A conceptual and psychometric review of the research base for divergent thinking tests and of the criteria with which they are correlated.
What it means for creativity
Producing many ideas is an indication of potential, not proof of creativity. That is why the exercise separates generation from evaluation: first you open up the range, then you judge.
Practised in
The term does not stay a definition. It appears inside missions where the pattern happens in real time and you have to recognise it as it happens to you.
The Prize for the Best Idea
Sources
Every claim on this page maps to published research. The citations link to the original source.
- Runco, M. A., & Acar, S. (2012). Divergent Thinking as an Indicator of Creative Potential — doi:10.1080/10400419.2012.652929