101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

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

Procedure

1. Have someone in each group write down a problem challenge on a flip chart.


2. Distribute the Stereotype Handout.


3. Instruct participants to select some occupation and think of how a stereotypical
   person in that position would try to resolve the challenge. Ideally, this occupation
   should be unrelated to the problem. Suggest that they think of how a police offi-
   cer, lawyer, accountant, chemist, physician, butcher, or carpenter would resolve
   the problem.


4. Have them write down on the flip chart everything they know about how some-
   one in another occupation would solve the challenge.


5. Tell them to think about kinds of solutions that person would think of and to use
   them to generate ideas to resolve the challenge.


6. Tell them to write down any ideas on Post-it®Notes (one idea per note) and place
   them on flip charts for evaluation.

Debrief/Discussion

Ask the groups to discuss what occupations might be best for what types of problems. In

general, the more different an occupation is from the challenge, the more likely it is to

prompt creative ideas. 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?


• What will we be able to use from this exercise?


• What ideas were generated, and which ones were most interesting?

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