Crowdsourcing

This might take the form of a web-based business model that solicits the creative insights into problems offered by a distributed network of individuals on the internet. It would do this by openly inviting suggestions. It would involve outsourcing a task usually carried out by employees of a company to an unknown substantial network of people. Usually, a firm might post a problem online to which a large number of individuals offer solutions. The suggestion which is judged most useful would then be rewarded and the company would make use of the idea. Facebook, too, is seen by some businesses as a medium to use for crowdsourcing.

Blogs and everyday activities

Creativity has started penetrating into everyday activities people due to the vast growth of the internet. Let's take an example of a person cooking a recipe and posting it on his or her blog. Thousands of other users looking for a similar recipe come across it and attempt new variations with the same recipe and post this recipe on the same blog. This in turn stimulates others and this cycle goes on in an infinite loop. The same thing happens in every field and topic in our everyday life. Thus, the internet and computers have made our lives more creative.

Visual analogy

The internet has many image files which can be easily accessed with a search engine such as Google. One can also use one’s own photographs to stimulate creative thinking in a number of different ways. One possible way is as discussed below.

One can keep a stock of unusual photographs on a computer. The photographs can be of real events. Alternatively, given modern technological

Digital creativity 115 help that can be provided by photograph-manipulating programmes they can be ‘manufactured’ to give special effects. Such photographs can be used as visual stimuli in the use of visual analogies to get insight into problems. The first step is to select a suitable photograph as an analogy for the problem. Next, one needs to create a problem associated with the picture. Visual images that one can take with one’s own camera can readily be manipulated with available software to present distorted, exaggerated, or unusual images.

There are many ways in which one might use photographs as visual stimuli and create different techniques of your own.