101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

Ticklers: Related and Unrelated Stimuli 83

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

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.... I can resist everything but temp-

tation.

—Oscar Wilde

Don’t worry about avoiding temptation—as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.

—The Old Farmer’s Almanac

To illustrate how to use quotations to generate ideas,

consider the employee theft problem again. The two lists of

quotations might stimulate the following kinds of ideas:

• Install weight-sensitive pressure pads in storeroom
  areas that would trigger alarms when stepped on dur-
  ing closed times (from “Probe the earth and see where
  your main roots run”).


• Conduct intensive background checks of all current and
  future employees (from “The fly that doesn’t want to be
  swatted”).


• Reward employees with free trips to dude ranches when they reduce theft (from
  “Each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best”).


• Assign in-house “marshals” to monitor employee behavior (from “Each one of us
  requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best”).


• Attach small, easy-to-conceal alarms on valuable items so that an alarm sounds when
  an item is removed from a room (from “I believe... that security declines as security
  machinery expands”).


• Install one-way mirrors in high-risk areas (from “I find I always have to write some-
  thing on a steamed mirror”).


• Use items that are often stolen as performance rewards (from “The only way to get rid
  of temptation is to yield to it”).


• Assign big brothers and sisters to new employees to help with general orientation and
  to educate new workers about theft (from “Don’t worry about avoiding temptation—
  as you grow older, it starts avoiding you”).

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