101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

Ticklers: Related and Unrelated Stimuli 89

101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving.Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley &

Sons, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. http://www.pfeiffer.com

Related Activities

• Idea Diary [6]


• Text Tickler [20]


• Fairy Tale Time [40]

Procedure

1. Distribute the handout, review it with participants, and ask whether they have
   any questions.


2. Decide on a group challenge statement and distribute it to all participants along
   with the following statement:
   “Your task for this exercise is to write a brief, fictional story of fewer than 500
   words (about two, typed, double-spaced pages). Your story should be related
   directly to the group problem. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Just let
   go of your imagination. Sometimes, humorous stories work best, but don’t limit
   yourself. Then read over your story carefully. Scrutinize it for major themes, con-
   cepts, principles, actions, thoughts, and whatever else strikes your fancy. Make a
   list of these and write down any ideas suggested to resolve the challenge.”


3. Distribute the handout to be used as a sample story, discuss it with the partici-
   pants, and ask if there are any questions.


4. Convene the small groups and instruct members from each group to share their
   three best ideas, write them down on Post-it®Notes (one idea per note), place
   them on a flip chart, and then vote on the best ideas shared.

Debrief/Discussion

A Likely Story generates ideas using random stimulation from data generated from the

story. It helps us explore our subconscious creative thoughts and use these thoughts to

stimulate ideas. And the quality of writing really isn’t important. What is important is to

generate a variety of stimuli that might be used to trigger ideas. Consider asking the

groups to discuss whether this exercise worked and why it did or did not. Note that not

all groups will benefit from this exercise since it does require some creative imagination.

It also is possible that someone who can’t think of any ideas with one story may experi-

ence a different outcome with another story he or she writes.

Also consider having participants debrief using the following questions:

• What was most helpful about this exercise?


• What was most challenging?


• What can we apply?


• How would you rate the value of this exercise to helping us with this issue?


• Will this exercise be helpful in the future for other sessions?


• What did you learn?

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