group members as your primary source of stimuli, this pure brainwriting activity
is for you.)- Museum Madness [86] (This cousin of Drawing Room [59] shares some advan-
tages—multiple stimuli and walking around—and differs primarily in that partic-
ipants browse among the written ideas of others instead of their pictures of
possible solutions.) - Brainsketching [94] (If you have little time but like the more time-consuming
Drawing Room [59] activity, this is an excellent substitute. Ideas are generated
using pictures drawn by the participants, but instead of people circulating among
the drawings as done in [59], this activity works by circulating the pictures among
group members only.) - Balloon, Balloon, Balloon [92] (Need an energizer and want to generate ideas at
the same time? Then this activity is for you. It also encourages novelty by using
unrelated stimuli. This activity exemplifies the “fun factor” that often is vital to
novel thinking.) - Brain Splitter [73] (Requires a little more time than some activities, but attempts to
synthesize both left- and right-brained types of ideas to produce workable solu-
tions. It also involves some physical movement with the participants as well as
creates a relatively fun environment.) - Grab Bag Forced Association [75] (A variation of Tickler Things [21], this activity
is slightly more structured, introduces random selection of the stimuli, but pro-
vides the same benefits of relying on tangible, unrelated stimulus objects.) - Pass the Hat [63] (Provides an interesting and usually productive blend of stimuli
from problem attributes as well as from the ideas of others. The use of “silly” hats
to pass around the stimuli also introduces the “fun factor” for creative climates.)
A Guide for Selecting Activities
The activities in the Top Ten lists will help you get many ideas for a broad spectrum of
challenges. However, you may want more help than these lists provide. For instance, you
might have specific needs for new product ideas or for ways to handle various people
problems. You might want an activity that doesn’t require much time but has the poten-
tial to generate a fairly large number of ideas. Or you may want an activity that can help
energize a session while generating ideas as well. To help, I’ve put together a technique
selection guide to help you make more informed choices about different activities.
This guide reflects my subjective choices based on my knowledge of and experience
in using the activities over twenty-five years. Once you experiment with different activi-
ties, you may want to develop your own guide, or at least make your own judgments
about which ones work best for you and people you facilitate or train.
The activities in Chapters 4 through 12 are described in the selection guide in twelve
different ways:- Individual vs. group: Indicates if an activity originally was developed for use by either
or if a group method originally designed for groups also can be used by individuals.
26 101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving
03 VG 21-31 10/5/04 4:29 PM Page 26