Research

Academic Partners

Our academic partnerships with Prof. Nobuko Yoshida from the University of Oxford, Prof. Souheil Khaddaj from Kingston University and Dr. Radouane Oudshiri who is a visiting scholar at a few universities have been important in developing LIVUS® and MAGIAN.AI. We are very proud to have them as our Academic Advisors.

Research Base

Many fascinating research projects have been made into the human and social processes behind creativity, invention and innovation. Many have fed into our development of Linkology.

For example, the Divergent Association Task (DAT) was designed by Jay Olson and his team at Harvard University and posits that asking people to name random words and assessing how different the words are from each other could be a new way to measure creativity. Inspired by this approach, we calculate the Proximity Index of the two words to connect in our LIVUS®️ HOPS and Explore Your Mind games to inform the degree of difficulty of a challenge for bonus points. The games train your mind to connect diverse concepts and builds your strength in Connective Thinking.

If you're playing the game of Explore, try to do so with your children, or nieces and nephews, or you may be a teacher playing it with your students. It’s fun to see how they engage and discuss which words to add. Explore not only trains your connective thinking but also strengthens the bonds between people, especially kids. Please do try playing it at home or school. When you complete the game, it shows you the results as explained below. 

 In the book entitled ‘Teaching with Charisma: A teaching styles overview’, Lloyd Duck explained that convergent and divergent thinking are two ends of the spectrum of cognitive approaches to problems. On the one hand, divergent thinkers are very comfortable seeking diverse perspectives and answers to problems. On the other hand, convergent thinkers tackle problems with the bias that there is a correct way to do things. They are quite conservatives.  

Let's superimpose this explanation on the T shaped model of knowledge. Divergent thinkers are explorers, and they are really comfortable flying across the horizontal bar of the T shape model and picking bits and pieces of answers from a diverse range of knowledge. Conversely, convergent thinkers exploit a single solution as they believe a problem has one correct answer. They dig deep into a field to find the solution. 

A study carried out by Kellogg School of Management - The team researched great innovators who had periods of a hot streak in creativity. Their performance was substantially better than usual. They found that neither exploration (navigating the horizontal bar) nor exploitation (drilling through the vertical bar) alone in isolation is associated with a hot streak of creativity. It's the sequence of them together. So, I believe there's no such thing as a convergent or divergent thinker. There's only the concept of convergent and divergent thinking. The human brain evolved to enable a person to switch between both types of thinking, depending on the problem. 

 Divergent thinking, or exploring numerous atypical solutions to a problem, is vital to the creative process. However, convergent thinking brings the rigour of analysis to derive accurate solutions. When you blend divergent with convergent thinking and allow your mind to play with both, innovation becomes the best of both worlds' experiences. 

 Convergent thinking keeps the project focused and ensures an idea get realized in the practical world. At the same time, divergent thinking provides possible breakthrough ideas. Never brand yourself as a pure convergent thinker or a pure divergent thinker. Instead, plan for training your brain to accommodate both, and you can do it. It's why you must nurture your T shaped mind. 

 As a result, both the games of HOPS and Explore calculates the scores for both types of thinking.  

 Having both scores in hand, we formulate a convergent vs divergent thinking score ratio and present it to you. The ratio compares the performance of your convergent thinking with divergent thinking. In the beginning, the divergent thinking score will be less than the convergent thinking score. It's because it's hard to find atypical connections whilst linking two words, for its contradictory, and that's ok. The gap will reduce as you play more, and an ideal ratio to aim is within a goldilocks zone (sweet spot) where the upper limit ratio (CT : DT) is 65:35 and lower limit ratio is 70:30. It's what you and your loved ones should aim to hit, and as explained earlier, you must be truthful to yourself as you find new words as connections.