101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

Related Activities

• Law Breaker [50]


• Problem Reversals [51]


• Turn Around [52]

Procedure

1. Distribute the handout, review it with the participants, and answer any questions
   they may have.


2. Tell them to list the major criteria (objectives) they would use to evaluate potential
   solutions to their problem challenges.


3. Instruct them to exaggerate or stretch each criterion in any way possible. Encour-
   age them to avoid any concern with how “correct” their exaggerations are. There
   is no such thing as correct with this technique.


4. Have them use each exaggeration as a stimulus to spark new ideas, write them
   down on Post-it®Notes, and place on a flip chart for evaluation.

Debrief/Discussion

The often-used phrase of “think outside the box” applies to this technique (as well as oth-

ers in this book). In this case, exaggerating criteria forces us to think about a challenge in

unique ways—ways in which we might not otherwise find ourselves thinking. In fact,

such thinking often is the hallmark of “natural” creative thinkers, who have the ability to

distort and twist problem statements and come up with novel ideas.

Have 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?

182 101 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

07 VG 167-216 10/6/04 12:17 PM Page 182