Creative Thinking

Course details

In order to identify innovative solutions to difficult problems it is important to recognise cultural and personal barriers to creativity that exists in all organisations. Overcoming these barriers opens up a much broader set of potential solutions to any problem allowing organisations greater freedom to choose the approach that best suits their needs. Too often organisations expect that the use of logic and traditional brainstorming methods is sufficient to solve all problems. These organisations may be mistaken as asking the same questions invariably leads to the same answer. Many organisations repeat this error over and over despite having a poor track record at finding sustainable solutions. This eventually leads to complacency where a norm of ‘firefighting’ or less than optimal performance is accepted to be ‘as good as it gets’.

Course serves as a guide in recognizing and overcoming barriers to creativity. Participants will learn how to ‘change the question’ in order to change the answer. A number of easy to use techniques will assist the participant in unlocking the creativity in problem solving teams such that solutions that are much broader and more innovative can be found to tackle those difficult problems once and for all.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this training course, delegates should be able to:

• Identify the source of barriers to creative thinking
• Understand the philosophy of creative thinking approaches
• Describe and use a number of different creative thinking techniques
• Understand what circumstances are most suitable to each technique

Course Programme

• Introduction to Creative Thinking
• Understanding the sources of Creative Thinking barriers
• Getting ‘Outside the Box’
• Leaders in the development of Creative Thinking Techniques
• Creative Thinking Approaches
• Overcoming complacency with an ‘Evil Twin’ approach
• Word Association Games to stimulate alternate approaches
• Changing the question to change the answer
• New ways of looking at ideas to get more out of them
• Games that capture the imagination