Idea Combination Fluency

topic

Idea combination fluency is the divergent thinking capacity to rapidly generate large numbers of novel combinations of existing ideas — producing many possible new connections before evaluating any of them, exploring the combinatorial space broadly before selecting the most promising combinations for deeper development. It is measured by the quantity, variety, and originality of combinations generated per unit time and is the generative capacity that feeds the subsequent selection process of creative evaluation.

Role

Idea combination fluency is the foundational creative capacity that divergent thinking research has studied since J.P. Guilford's foundational work in the 1950s — with the Alternative Uses Task (generating as many uses as possible for a paper clip) being the classic measure of the fluency, flexibility, and originality of combinatorial thinking that distinguishes highly creative individuals. Research consistently shows that the quality of the best idea generated is positively correlated with the quantity of ideas generated — because the most original combinations are the most remote associations, which require traversing more of the combinatorial space to encounter. Most people stop generating combinations after producing the obvious ones, never reaching the remote but potentially more valuable connections that lie further in the combinatorial space.

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