101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

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Chapter 5

Ticklers: Related and

Unrelated Stimuli

T

ickler activities will tickle, tease, and tantalize ideas out of your brain. They will pull

out what you know exists, but couldn’t think of at the time; what you thought exist-

ed, but didn’t know for sure; and sometimes what you didn’t even know existed. When

you use specific stimuli, ideas will pop out surprisingly fast.

Ticklers provide the stimuli needed to free-associate. A tickler is anything that stimu-

lates an idea. You probably use many brain ticklers already. For instance, have you ever

tried to think of an idea and found yourself thinking of something else instead? Say you

have been distracted temporarily by a delivery truck outside. As you examine the truck,

you think of things related to trucking. Suddenly the concept of transportation triggers an

idea related to the problem.

Another illustration: Suppose Sally is looking for creative ways to sell a product to a

really tough customer. As she considers various alternatives, she happens to glance at the

clock on the wall. She absentmindedly looks at the clock and immediately focuses on the

concept of time. Then she begins thinking about her customer and several ideas pop out

in succession:

• Call his secretary and find out at what time he is in his best mood.


• Offer him a limited-time offer.


• Give him a watch if he buys the product.


• Send him data on how the product will help him save time.

The activities described in this chapter do essentially the same thing as the truck or

the clock in these examples: they stimulate ideas. However, these activities make the pro-

cess a little more systematic and help target your efforts more efficiently.

Tickler activities help generate ideas using one of three general sources of stimulation:

(1) words, (2) pictures, and (3) objects. Examples of ticklers using words include: A Likely

Story [15], Excerpt Excitation [13], PICLed Brains [16], and Say What? [19]. Pictures are

used with Picture Tickler [17] and Rorschach Revisionist [18]. Finally, Idea Shopping [14]

is an example of a tickler using objects.

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