@article {bnh-7377, title = {Follow up of study participants: brain plasticity and divergent thinking}, number = {613}, year = {2020}, month = {09/2020}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

Unprecedented future disasters will require those in emergency management to be creative in their thinking. The backbone of creativity is divergent thinking; cognitive thoughts that do not converge on one correct answer but diverge to a range of possible options. This Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC project has explored the skills associated with divergent thinking during a series of workshops conducted with our end-user partners agencies.

This document identifies the results from a series of interviews conducted with end-user participants to understand the utilisation of the research provided in the series of workshops on divergent thinking.

Results indicate that the maturity of those agencies involved in this project regarding the utilisation of the divergent thinking research within their individual agency was in the {\textquoteleft}developing{\textquoteright} phase.

This low level of maturity can be attributed to a lack of formalised research utilisation structures within agencies that are hampered by resource and financial constraints. Compounding the ability for agencies to fully utilise research outputs are the challenges of embedding research within the entire policy cycle. To achieve this requires an ongoing collaborative partnership between agencies, research centers and academic institutions that occurs throughout the entire policy cycle, long after the initial research has been delivered.

}, keywords = {brain plasticity, divergent thinking}, issn = {613}, author = {Brooks, B and Steve Curnin} } @article {bnh-6686, title = {Evaluation of pre-intervention data: divergent thinking and brain plasticity}, number = {546}, year = {2019}, month = {08/2019}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

The {\textquoteleft}new normal{\textquoteright} includes larger, more complex incidents. This suggests that
leaders will need to think outside the box and use of higher cognitive skills such
as creativity that includes divergent thinking, to respond and recover from these
incidents. Processes in creativity include thinking skills that are conducive to
taking new perspectives on problems, pivoting among different ideas, thinking
broadly, and making unusual associations.

This document identifies the empirical results from a series of workshops
conducted with end-users to identify if a method for developing creative skills
and specifically divergent thinking, led to teams being more creative in the
development of options analyses.

Results indicate that teams scored significantly higher on a creativity scale after
being taught the methods to enhance their creativity.

The improvement can be traced to improvements in the criteria of fluency (the
number of options) and elaboration (embellishment of the information
provided). Teams did not demonstrate evidence of the other two criteria for
creativity (flexibility in the use of the intelligence provided and originality).
Consideration of how to build flexibility and originality into the existing method
will drive the next iteration, which will be translated into research utilisation
products over the remaining time of the project.

}, keywords = {brain plasticity, data evaluation, divergent thinking}, issn = {546}, author = {Brooks, B and Steve Curnin} }