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- Tell the group to spend 5 to 10 minutes brainstorming ideas and recording them
all in writing, individually on Post-it®Notes. - Request that they shift their focus to another problem challenge relevant to each
group and spend 5 to 10 minutes generating ideas for it. This problem should be
completely different from the original one. - Call time and have them resume work on the original problem.
- 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
Switching problems in this manner will often allow us to see the original problem differ-
ently. The break from the problem provides a change in perspective. Moreover, working
on the new problem often sparks ideas for the first problem. If switching to another prob-
lem doesn’t help, have the groups try switching to nothing—just take a break and walk
around, then return to attack the problem with new energy.
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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