Leading the Creative Problem-Solving Process Online Course

This is a brief description of the Creative Problem-Solving process and how to use Create in a Flash: A leader’s recipe for breakthrough innovation along with the downloadable PDFs that accompany these videos.

Download the PDF 21st Century Creative Problem-Solving. We will be referring to this throughout the rest of the video series.

Then download the PDF Identify Goal/Wish/Challenge. It will help you identify what you want to create, invent, solve or improve. This is where we start the creative process.

Download the PDF Gather Data. Follow along with me to identify the background data on your situation.

In this video you are introduced to the roles in a Creative Problem-Solving session. You will meet our client Tamara and the resource group. Watch as many creative questions are generated to help Tamara identify the best problem to solve.

Using the PDF Clarify the Problem, generate creative questions about your goal/wish/challenge. You might want to get a few people to help you come up with many creative questions. Just like the resource group did for Tamara.

The “Why? What’s stopping me?” technique is a powerful tool to help you generate creative questions that really challenge your initial impression of the problem.

There are two PDFs for you to download with this video, the blank “Why? What’s Stopping Me?” PDF and the PDF that shows Tamara’s responses. Use the blank PDF to generate creative questions for your situation.

Now, it’s time to converge and pick the creative question that you really want to get some ideas for. Use the back side of the PDF Clarify the Problem. You downloaded it when you watched Video 4 on clarifying the problem using creative questions. Watch as Tamara uses the Highlighting technique to select the best problem to solve.

No, you didn’t miss Video 7. Remember, we moved it to the second video in this training program so you would be warmed-up to generate ideas just like you see in this video.

Look for the forced connections technique to help you get un-stuck when you are generating ideas.

Download the PDF Generate Ideas , then defer judgment and generate lots of ideas for solving your creative question. Once again, if you want to get some friends to be your resource group go ahead. You will be glad you did.

You probably have lots of ideas for solving your creative questions. Now, just like we used the highlighting technique to select creative questions we can use the highlighting technique to select ideas.

Watch Tamara as she selects the best ideas to move forward and then use the back side of the Generate Ideas PDF that you downloaded for video 8 to help you select your best ideas.

Now that you have identified your best ideas and formed them into clusters, it’s time to develop and refine those solutions. Download the PDF Pluses, Potentials, Concerns – Overcome Concerns (PPCo) and follow along with Tamara as she refines her solution using the PPCo technique. You can also use your own resource group to help overcome your concerns.

Get ready to put your solution into action. Watch as Tamara and the resource group generate all the potential action steps to put Tamara’s solution into action. Then use the PDF Plan for Action to generate the action steps to implement your solution.

Let’s build a plan. Now, using all of the potential actions you generated to implement your plan, follow along with Tamara as she develops her Plan for Action. Use the back side of the Plan for Action PDF to create your plan.

Sit back and relax as we review the entire Creative Problem-Solving process from beginning to end. Congratulations. You have done it!