
Virginia Mason, Lean, and Innovation ◾ 11
us back into comfortable patterns of thought, and instead move on to create a
brainstormed list of ideas and possibilities that arise out of the attention and escape.
ese three principles, in some sequence and relative emphasis, lie behind all meth-
ods for creative thinking.
Seven levels of change. e range of what might constitute a new and useful
idea, coupled with the endless possibilities that arise out of attention, escape, and
movement, leads to the observation that the degree of creativity of a given idea lies
along a gradient. Author Rolf Smith describes this gradient in his seven levels of ...