101 Activities For Teaching Creativity And Problem Solving

Ticklers: Related and Unrelated Stimuli 85

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

• Idea Diary [6]


• Tickler Things [21]

Procedure

1. Provide participants with a problem challenge at least one week prior to a training
   or idea generation session.


2. Prior to the session, tell participants to walk, individually, around a department or
   discount store and take in the sights. Tell them to check out the merchandise,
   watch how things are done, how people act, and so forth, writing down all of
   their observations.


3. Instruct them to select one item or action that catches their attention. Encourage
   them to examine it more closely and notice which particular attributes, character-
   istics, functions, concepts, or principles are represented. Remind them to write
   down all of their observations.


4. When the session starts, distribute the Idea Shopping Handout and discuss it with
   them, pointing out how the ideas were obtained.


5. Have them individually think of how their observations might help them resolve
   the primary challenge. Perhaps it can’t help directly, but if you tell them to free-
   associate and see what ideas the item or action might trigger, that might help.


6. Tell them to write down on their Post-it®pads any ideas that come to mind (one
   idea per note).


7. Instruct them to select something else they observed, see what ideas it might stim-
   ulate, and write them on a Post-it®(one idea per note).


8. Tell them to continue this process for at least 30 minutes or until they have gener-
   ated at least five ideas and placed them on flip charts for evaluation.

Debrief/Discussion

This technique has value in using unrelated stimuli (the in-store observations) and brain-

writing (generating ideas in writing), both of which can help produce more, higher-quali-

ty ideas than normally might be produced. For a discussion, consider asking the

following types of questions:

• What worked best and least about this exercise?


• What areas of the stores seemed to be the most useful source of stimuli?


• Did any participants have trouble using the stores for stimulation? Why or why not?

Also, consider having participants debrief using the following questions:

• What was most helpful about this exercise?


• What was most challenging?

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