Welcome to the Creative Problem Solving workshop. In the past few decades, psychologists and business people alike have discovered that successful problem solvers tend to use the same type of process to identify and implement the solutions to their problems. This process works for any kind of problem, large or small.

This workshop will give participants an overview of the entire creative problem-solving process, as well as key problem-solving tools that they can use every day.

Workshop Objectives

Research has consistently demonstrated that when clear goals are associated with learning that the learning occurs more easily and rapidly. With that in mind, let’s review our goals for today.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Understand problems and the creative problem-solving process
• Identify types of information to gather and key questions to ask in problem-solving
• Identify the importance of defining a problem correctly
• Identify and use four different problem definition tools
• Write concrete problem statements
• Use basic brainstorming tools to generate ideas for solutions
• Use idea-generating tools, such as affinity diagrams, word chaining, the box method, the six thinking hats, and the blink method
• Evaluate potential solutions against criteria, including cost/benefit analysis and group voting
• Perform a final analysis to select a solution
• Understand the roles that fact and intuition play in selecting a solution
• Understand the need to refine the shortlist and re-refine it
• Understand how to identify the tasks and resources necessary to implement solutions
• Evaluate and adapt solutions to reality
• Follow up with solution implementation to celebrate successes and identify improvements