Creative Problem Solving, Approach and Process

CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING

Creative problem solving (CPS) is a way of solving problems or identifying opportunities when conventional thinking has failed. It encourages you to find fresh perspectives and come up with innovative solutions, so that you can formulate a plan to overcome obstacles and reach your goals.

Why Use Creative Problem Solving?

Dealing with obstacles and challenges is a regular part of working life, and overcoming them isn’t always easy. To improve your products, services, communications, and interpersonal skills, and for you and your organization to excel, you need to encourage creative thinking and find innovative solutions that work.

CPS asks you to separate your “divergent” and “convergent” thinking as a way to do this. Divergent thinking is the process of generating lots of potential solutions and possibilities, otherwise known as brainstorming. And convergent thinking involves evaluating those options and choosing the most promising one. Often, we use a combination of the two to develop new ideas or solutions. However, using them simultaneously can result in unbalanced or biased decisions and can stifle idea generation.

Principles of Creative Problem Solving

CPS has four core principles. Let’s explore each one in more detail:

• Divergent and convergent thinking must be balanced. The key to creativity is learning how to identify and balance divergent and convergent thinking (done separately), and knowing when to practice each one.
• Ask problems as questions. When you rephrase problems and challenges as open-ended questions with multiple possibilities, it’s easier to come up with solutions. Asking these types of questions generates lots of rich information, while asking closed questions tends

to elicit short answers, such as confirmations or disagreements. Problem statements tend to generate limited responses, or none at all.

• Defer or suspend judgment. As Alex Osborn learned from his work on brainstorming, judging solutions early on tends to shut down idea generation. Instead, there’s an appropriate and necessary time to judge ideas during the convergence stage.
• Focus on “Yes, and,” rather than “No, but.” Language matters when you’re generating information and ideas. “Yes, and” encourages people to expand their thoughts, which is necessary during certain stages of CPS. Using the word “but” – preceded by “yes” or “no” – ends conversation, and often negates what’s come before it.

PROCESS OF CPS-

CLARIFY -> IDEATE -> DEVELOP -> IMPLEMENT

1. Clarify

Explore the Vision

Identify your goal, desire or challenge. This is a crucial first step because it’s easy to assume, incorrectly, that you know what the problem is. However, you may have missed something or have failed to understand the issue fully, and defining your objective can provide clarity.

Gather Data

Once you’ve identified and understood the problem, you can collect information about it and develop a clear understanding of it. Make a note of details such as who and what is involved.

Formulate Questions

When you’ve increased your awareness of the challenge or problem you’ve identified, ask questions that will generate solutions. Think about the obstacles you might face and the opportunities they could present.

2. Ideate

Explore Ideas

Generate ideas that answer the challenge questions you identified in step 1. It can be tempting to consider solutions that you’ve tried before, as our minds tend to return to habitual thinking patterns that stop us from producing new ideas. However, this is a chance to use your creativity  .

Brainstorming and Mind Maps   are great ways to explore ideas during this divergent stage of CPS. And our articles, Encouraging Team Creativity  , Problem Solving, Role storming  , Hurson’s Productive Thinking Model  , and The Four-Step Innovation Process  , can also help boost your creativity.

3. Develop

Formulate Solutions

This is the convergent stage of CPS, where you begin to focus on evaluating all of your possible options and come up with solutions. Analyze whether potential solutions meet your needs and criteria, and decide whether you can implement them successfully.

4. Implement

Formulate a Plan

Once you’ve chosen the best solution, it’s time to develop a plan of action. Start by identifying resources and actions that will allow you to implement your chosen solution. Next, communicate your plan and make sure that everyone involved understands and accepts it.

CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING APPROACH

• Mental State Shape

Changing one’s focus away from active problem solving and towards a creative solution set.

• Multiple Idea Facilitation

Increase the quantity of fresh idea based on the belief that a greater number of ideas will raise the chances that one of these is valuable.

• Including A Chance Of Prospective

Efficiently entering a fresh prospective may result in a solution that there by becomes obvious. This is especially useful for solving particularly challenging problem.