Page 7 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

PREFACE

Businesst'. and their managers, professional staff, team leaders
and other employees are confronted with a host of challenges
as they approach the twenty first century. Change is occuring
at an accelerating rate. The number of competitors is increas-
ing dramatically. Business is globalizing. New technology is
being introduced at a rapid pace. The workforce is increasingly
diverse. There is a scarcity of certain resources, including highly
skilled workers. There is a transformation occuring from an
industrial to a knowledge based society. Economic and market
conditions are increasingly unstable, especially on a global ba-
sis. Constituents are more demanding. And finally, the entire
business environment is becoming more complex.

To meet these challenges and the opportunities they create,
businesses are embracing creative problem solving and inno-
vation as never before. To achieve effective and efficient levels
of creative problem solving and the innovation which results,
an organization must improve the creativity of its work groups
and individuals, and it must create the right kind of organiza-
tional culture which will turn that creativity into innovation.

One of the key ways in which individuals and groups can im-
prove their creativity is through learning creativity processes,
techniques that take advantage of innate intuitive and creative
abilities, techniques that channel these abilities to create new or
enhanced products or services, or create more effective and ef-
ficient organizational processes. This book describes the basic
creative problem solving (CPS) model and then describes 101
techniques for unleashing individual and group creativity.
These techniques follow the CPS model.

Managers, professionals, team leaders, and any other employee
interested in improving his or her job performance or that of
the work group, or for that matter, the entire company, will find
this book beneficial. This book is readily useable in company
training programs. Organizational creativity training programs
have grown rapidly in recent months, and this book is designed
to meet the needs of such programs.