101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

Combinations 129

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

Combo Chatter Handout

Assume a manufacturer of coffee cups wants to design a new coffee cup. They might list

“things involving coffee cups” and “things involving people who drink coffee,” as shown

below:

Coffee Cups People

Handles Tense

Hot Addicted

Logos Cream and sugar

Breakable Grind beans

Spills Carry cups

After examining different combinations, they might generate the following types of

ideas:

• Squeezable handles to relieve tension (from “handles/tense”)


• Squeezable handles that inject cream or sugar (from “handles/cream and sugar”)


• A combination coffee cup and bean grinder (from “handles/grind beans”)


• Insulated coffee cups (from “hot/carry cups”)


• Cups that break down into small pieces for easy carrying (from “breakable/carry
  cups”)

06 VG 119-166b 10/5/04 5:03 PM Page 129