在科研中，新意（Novelty）和重要性（Significance）是衡量一项科学发现的最重要的两条指标。甚至，有的时候，新意是决定一项科研发现能否发表在顶级刊物上的最重要的指标，因为重要性有时并不是一眼就能够判断出来的。科研中所谓的新意，也可以理解为一般常说的创新。
如何做出创新性的科研工作，是我这一年来着重在思考的问题。基于这一困扰，上个月读完了那本讨论如何产生新想法的书籍，即A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young（2022-09-17产生想法（创意）的5步曲 - (jianshu.com)）。此书讨论的内容是如何产生新想法，所谓新想法，也就是创意。虽然从中受到了不少的启发，但毕竟这是一个广告行业的人士根据个人的经验所写的书，它有多广的适用场景则是一个需要谨慎思考的问题。所以我想，如果能够看看专业的研究人员基于研究所得写出来的关于如何创新的书籍，或许能够收获一些意外的启发。
于是首先找到这本研究创造力的学术著作（Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, by R. Keith Sawyer, 2012），其中作者将创新的过程分解为8个步骤（2022-09-18若想产生新想法，需要先界定问题；提出好问题本身就属于生成新想法的目标之一 - (jianshu.com)）。后来又发现除了这本学术著作，作者还专门写了一本通俗读物介绍实现创新的8个步骤，中文译本叫做《Z创新》（Zig zag : the surprising path to greater creativity）。文中罗列的八个步骤为：
1. Ask. Creativity starts with a penetrating research question, a startling vision for a new work of art, an urgent business challenge, a predicament in your personal life. Mastering the discipline of asking means you're always looking for good problems, always seeking new inspiration. You know where you're going, and yet you're receptive to questions that emerge unexpectedly. （问一个好的问题。）
2. Learn. In a creative life, you're constantly learning, practicing, mastering, becoming an expert. You seek out knowledge not only in formal classrooms but also from mentors, experts, books, magazines, film, Web sites, nature, music, art, philosophy, science …（学习相关的知识，是自己成为某个领域的专家。）
3. Look. You are constantly, quietly aware. You don't just see what you expect to see. You see the new, the unusual, the surprising. You see what others take for granted, and what they incorrectly assume. You expose yourself to new experiences eagerly, without hesitation; you regularly seek out new stimuli, new situations, and new information.（留意并发掘新视角。）
4. Play. The creative life is filled with play—the kind of unstructured activity that children engage in for the sheer joy of it. You free your mind for imagination and fantasy, letting your unconscious lead you into uncharted territory. You envision how things might be; you create alternate worlds in your mind. “The debt we owe to the play of imagination,” Carl Jung wrote, “is incalculable.”（游戏，玩乐。）
5. Think. The creative life is filled with new ideas. Your mind tirelessly generates possibilities. You don't clamp down, because you realize most of these ideas won't pan out—at least not for the current project. But successful creativity is a numbers game: when you have tons of ideas, some of them are sure to be great.（不间断的思考。）
6. Fuse. Creative minds are always bouncing ideas together, looking for unexpected combinations. Successful creativity never comes from a single idea. It always comes from many ideas in combination, whether we recognize them or not. The creative life doesn't box its concepts into separate compartments; it fuses and re-fuses them.（拼接，融合。）
7. Choose. A creative life is lived in balance, held steady by the constant tension between uncritical, wide-open idea generation (brainstorming, done right) and critical examination and editing. Choosing is essential, because not all ideas and combinations are ideal for your purposes. The key is to use the right criteria to critique them, so you can cull the best and discard any that would prove inferior, awkward, or a waste of your time.（选择出最合适的想法。）
8. Make. In the creative life, it's not enough to just “have” ideas. You need to make good ideas a reality. You continually externalize your thoughts—and not just the polished, finished ones. You get even your rough-draft, raw ideas out into the world in some physical form, as quickly as possible. Making—a draft, a drawing, a prototype, a plan—helps you fuse your ideas, choose among them, and build on what you like.（落实想法。）
本书最大的一个特点是，针对每个步骤，作者有针对性地提供了多种练习方法，所以应该说，本书可以当做一本训练个人创造力的实操手册。接下来，可以学习一下作者提供的这些方法，检验一下它们是否真实有用。也可以看看作者是如何将研究所得的结论转化成一般的通俗读物的，这也是一种重要的能力，说不定以后会用得到。