Chapter 1: The Possibility of Systematic Originality
The state of scientific creativity in economics
Can creative research be a systematic process?
Going beyond existing creativity research
Chapter 2: Originality in Social Science Research
Defining originality
Degrees of originality
What the product of originality looks like
The disciplinary origin of scientific originality
From shared mental model to original contribution
How the leap happens
What will be regarded as conceptions?
Requirements for a systematic approach
Chapter 3: The Representation of Problems in Economics
The importance of problems in science
The importance of problem representation
Economic problems represented as trade-offs
Economic problems represented as conflicts
Comparing representations
How to construct an economic problem as a conflict
Assumption identification
Chapter 4: Originality Through Questions
Generating interesting questions
Questions of critical confrontation
Questions in pursuit of new ideas
Problematising questions
Chapter 5: Reasoning to New Ideas
Abductive reasoning
Abduction, deduction and shared mental models
Mathematical proof and creative reasoning
Abduction with the aid of a logical conflict
Abduction with the aid of questions
Chapter 6: Rational Reconstruction from Case Studies
Amartya Sen and the capability approach
Kydland and Prescott and the ideas of central banking
Ronald Coase and his Theorem
Chapter 7: Dealing with Authentic Economic Problems
The problem of authentic economic problem solving
The social nature of economic problems
The political nature of economic problems
The unstructured nature of authentic economic problems
Conventional ways of dealing with wicked problems
A participative approach to original contributions
Chapter 8: An Instructional Programme
Guiding philosophy
Instructional design
Front-end analysis
Goal, task analysis and objectives
Learning activities
Evaluation
Some additional findings from the first pilot programmes
Chapter 9: Next steps
Direct uses of this research
Obvious extensions
Less obvious extensions
Biography
Arnold Wentzel is a lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, where he teaches economics, education and research writing across a range of disciplines.
