Creative problem solving techniques

As you might expect, this involves looking at what might go wrong with your plans! It is a combination of potential problem analysis and negative brainstorming. Because you're looking at what might go wrong, this technique is great for identifying problems before you go on to use the other techniques to solve them. That's why we've put it at the top!

To use the technique, place each area identified in a table, indicating how likely the event is to occur and if it did occur, how serious the implications would be for your plan. The issues you worry about the most will likely be towards the top right of the table - major problems that are very likely to happen. If there are quite a few, you may first need to prioritise them, to enable you to focus your efforts on the most important. Then use any suitable problem-solving method like the ones suggested on this page, to work out ways of dealing with them.

For more on bullet proofing, click here.

Brainstorming is a problem solving technique more students will be aware of than any other technique. There are simple principles that help guide you to 'brainstorm' ideas and solutions to your problems.

1) Don't criticise. This is to ensure deferred judgement, and is the most important of the four rules.

2) Expression of ideas must be uninhibited. Whatever comes to mind is welcomed: free associations, random thoughts, images that are funny, taboo, way-out, interesting, boring, apparently relevant, apparently irrelevant, etc., etc.

3) Go for quantity The more ideas recorded, the more chances there are of success.

4) Hitch-hike As well as contributing your own ideas, it is important to build on others ideas. This encourages idea improvement and elaboration and enhances group interaction.

An example that I always remember about brainstorming related to a business scenario. Workers in a factory were packing goods into boxes that needed to be wrapped in newspaper. The Company was struggling with productivity because the workers kept reading the newspapers. During a brainstorming session, one of the team joked that a solution could be to poke all the workers' eyes out. As silly as this sounds, there is a sensible answer to the Company's problem right there in that suggestion. The Company deployed the workers elsewhere and hired blind workers for that particular part of the process. Productivity increased substantially and of course, there was the PR benefit of hiring so many workers with a disability too. It goes to show that no idea should be dismissed when brainstorming.

For more on brainstorming, click here.

This problem solving techniqe involves applying constructive evaluation to potentially interesting ideas. You consider the idea, brainstorming all the advantages, without any 'buts'! You then brainstorm all the limitations, weaknesses and problems. Finally, you brainstorm what is unique and different about the idea.

This helps you constructively evaluate the value of the idea from different angles.

Click here for more information on advantages, limitations and unique qualities.

This creative problem solving technique involves considering qualitatively different descriptions of plausible futures. They help you consider the potential environments that you might have to operate and what you may need to do in the present. You will also identify what environmental factors to monitor over time as part of the process, so that when the environment shifts, you can recognise where it is shifting to.

To use the technique, you first state the specific decision that needs to be made, then identify the major environmental forces that impact on the decision. Then, you build four scenarios based on the principal forces. With the scenarios in hand, you identify business opportunities within each scenario. After, you examine the links and synergies of opportunities across the range of scenarios, helping you formulate a more realistic strategy for investment.

For more information about alternative scenarios, click here.

This creative problem solving technique helps make underlying assumptions more visible.

To use the technique, you identify a particular choice you have made, and ask yourself what assumptions guide this choice - why you feel it is the best choice. You then list the assumptions, and beside each write a counter-assumption: not necessarily its negation, but the opposite pole of the construct it represents.

For more on assumption surfacing, click here.

An analogy is saying that something is like something else (in some respects but not in others).

To use analogies in your problem solving, you can:

• Identify what it is you want ideas for, and try to find a core verb phrase that captures the essential functional nature of what you are looking for, e.g. 'How to make X'. 'How to prevent Y', 'How to speed up Z', 'How to become better at A'.


• For each verb phrase generate a list of items (people, situations, objects, processes, actions, places, etc.) that is 'like' it in some way, e.g. analogies to 'making X' (having a baby, making apudding, the Genesis creation story, a robot car factory, %u2026).


• Pick one of these analogies that seems interesting -preferably where the verb phrase and analogy are from different domains - e.g. a biological analogy for a mechanical problem.


• Describe the analogue, including active aspects (such as how it works, what it does, what effects it has, how it is used) as well as passive aspects (size, position, etc.).


• Use this description to suggest ideas relevant to your problem. Does the analogue have features you can use directly? Do the differences suggest other ways of looking at your problem?

So using analogies, you look at the way other things similar to your problem work, and look at what solutions you could adapt for your own problem.

For more on analogies for problem solving, click here.

This simple creative problem solving method from de Bono helps you to bring potentially relevant aspects of your problem back into your awareness.

To use the method, you write down an initial statement of the problem, and underline key words. You examine each key word for hidden assumptions. One way of achieving this is to consider how the meaning of the statement changes if you replace a key word by a synonym or near synonym. When you have explored how the particular choice of key words affects the meaning of the statement, see if you can redefine the problem in a better way.

For more on boundary examination, click here.

CATWOE is a mnemonic helping you consider various aspects of your problem. Using the technique, you look at:

C: The 'customers of the system'. In this context, 'customers' means those who are on the receiving end of whatever it is that the system does.

A: The 'actors', who are those who would actually carry out the activities envisaged in the notional system being defined.

T: The 'transformation process' which is what the system does to its inputs in order to transform them into outputs.

W: The 'world view' that lies behind the root definition. The relevance of a particular system often depends on the wider system of beliefs and values in which it is embedded.

O: The 'owner(s)', i.e. those who have sufficient formal power over the system to stop it existing if they so wished (though they won't usually want to do this).

E: The 'environmental constraints', which includes things such as ethical limits, regulations, financial constraints, resource limitations, limits set by terms of reference, and so on.

For more information on CATWOE, click here.

Familar to most of us from early on at school, the words: 'Who? Why? What? Where? When? How?' provide a powerful checklist for imagination or enquiry (often recommended to journalists) that is simple enough to prompt thinking but not get in the way. It doesn't need much more explanation as you've probably used the list before!

For more on 5 Ws and H for problem solving, click here.

I hope these creative problem solving techniques have helped you as a student, business person or just a person with a problem that needs solving. If you liked them, you may like to look at another lens: more creative problem solving techniques.

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