Page 43 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

I^Itio is, (111(1 (111.)111\ 1)1 1)1 Vtie littitil)11. 11(".111(1(111 1 1 d well 101
.\cept creativity. Ti n judges eventuollvinalofthes, CREATIVE
PROBLEM
named Michigan the winner on the strength of its strategic SOLVING
TECHNIQUES
thinking.
29
Douglas Smith, marketing manager for beverages at Gen-
eral Foods, comments, "There were a couple of ideas that
were of interest but nothing we haven't looked at before."
Smith continues, "Business schools deal with the left side of
the brain, with analysis and facts, but they don't help people
much to use the other side, which is judging and intuitive. "14

101 CPS TECHNIQUES

There are any number of ways to improve creative
problem-solving. You might, for example, learn how to im-
prove your intuitive abilities, or you might focus on chang-
ing the organization's culture to make it more receptive to
creativity. Those are the subjects of other books. The re-
maining chapters of this book will describe 101 creative tech-
niques that, when used at the appropriate stage of CPS, can
greatly improve the results of that process. Techniques are
described for environmental analysis, recognizing and iden-
tifying problems, making assumptions, generating alterna-
tives, making choices, and implementing solutions. 70 of
the 101 techniques described are used to generate alterna-
tives. The following table lists each of the 101 techniques by
problem solving stage. Techniques are presented in alpha-
betical order both in the table and in the chapters. Techniques
are numbered twice. The first number denotes the
technique's position from 1 to 101, the second number is the
technique's position within that section of the problem solv-
ing model.

TABLE 2.1 Creativity Techniques by Problem Solving Stage

ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS (Discussed in Chapter 3)

1/1. Comparisons against others: benchmarking, best practices,
racing against phantom competitors

2/2. Hire futurists, consultants
3/3. Monitor weak signals
4/4. Opportunity searches

TABLE CONTINUES ON PAGE 30