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

Related Activities

• What If...? [49]

Procedure

1. Distribute copies of the Get Crazy Handout to each participant.


2. Work through the sample exercise on the handout with the large group and
   answer any questions.


3. Have the participants write down the most crazy, ridiculous problem solutions
   they can think of. The crazier the better.


4. After about 15 to 20 minutes, tell them to forget about being crazy and zoom back
   to normality and get on with solving their problems and be practical.


5. Tell them to examine each of their crazy ideas to see what more practical solution
   it may suggest. They may not think of one for each crazy idea, but do the best
   they can.


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 consider the following questions:

• What is a “crazy” idea? How does it differ from “normal” ideas?


• Is any idea really “crazy”?


• What effect does the type of problem have on deciding whether or not an idea is
  crazy?


• Would more difficult problems be more easily resolved using crazy ideas?


• What are the advantages of using crazy ideas? Disadvantages?

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?

Basic Idea Generation: “No-Brainers” 53

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