When working with Odyssey of the Mind teams practicing their problem-solving skills, I discovered an interesting aspect of creativity.  Students had to come up with a large of number of  creative ideas to solve a problem on the spot. However, not all students in a large group could participate in this competition, so we set up a way of scoring ideas as a fair way to choose the competitors. Each student was given the same problem scenario. Within a set time, they listed as many possible solutions as they could. I mistakenly thought that coming up with original ideas would require more time. Therefore, students were judged on two scores: the number of ideas and the originality of ideas. Actually there was a positive correlation between number of ideas and originality. Those students that still clung to the tried and true practical ideas came up with noticeably fewer solutions. These…