Fostering creativity by a specially designed Doris tool

Abstract

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. The aim of this study is to shape, introduce and validate a brand-new tool to foster functional creativity of students, who represent a great source of fresh and applicable ideas for the efficient, prosperous and sustainable development.The first step was to create a new tool under name Doris and test it in a pilot study on the group of 40 high-school students divided into experimental and control group. Encouraged by the results we conducted a core study in 5 EU countries on the group of more than 2000 participants in high-schools during the period of 3 years. We have used experimental method for our research, and then conducted a comparative analysis of the experimental and control groups.The usage of the Doris tool showed that such an imaginative game could raise an interest for the expression of creativity in schools, could build self-confidence of the participants, and enhance creative ways of thinking. The participants were in the shoes of decision-making persons and allowed to express their own ideas how to make the world a better place. It is an encouraging fact that the majority of the generated ideas were the result of imagination and focused on radical innovation or new fields of implementation of the existing technologies, and the minority were ideas for innovation efficiency of existing product/services.The implementation of some of these ideas in real life has proven that the Doris tool can be used in schools to foster creative thinking and generate fresh applicable ideas.