The Rise Of Unconventional Brainstorming. New York Times reports of a new wave of brainstorming consultants that are being tapped to help businesses develop new offerings and come up with solutions on their challenging problems. By conducting unconventional exercises and training sessions, these firms help their clients ‘self-diagnose’ their problems and generate ideas to solve them. Jump Associates is one such company that teaches creative thinking and boasts of a high profile clientele. The Times explains how they helped GE employees think of a new revenue source for its aircraft-engine division. Jump didn’t just conduct brainstorming discussions. As the week neared its conclusion, and as the participants started becoming increasingly antsy, Jump sent them shopping. So what’s the reason companies are lapping up idea generation more than ever before?
One school of thought holds that corporations both rise and die faster than ever today, placing a premium on the speedy generation of ideas. Searching the Brain for the Spark of Creative Problem-Solving. Einstein’s Secret to Amazing Problem Solving (and 10 Specific Ways You Can Use It) Einstein is quoted as having said that if he had one hour to save the world he would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution. This quote does illustrate an important point: before jumping right into solving a problem, we should step back and invest time and effort to improve our understanding of it.
Here are 10 strategies you can use to see problems from many different perspectives and master what is the most important step in problem solving: clearly defining the problem in the first place! The Problem Is To Know What the Problem Is The definition of the problem will be the focal point of all your problem-solving efforts. As such, it makes sense to devote as much attention and dedication to problem definition as possible. What usually happens is that as soon as we have a problem to work on we’re so eager to get to solutions that we neglect spending any time refining it. Problem Definition Tools and Strategies 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm. Enhance Writing Creativity Using Graphical Outlines - Strategies.