You, your staff or even your boss have been on a course
or bought a self help book that described some creative
techniques. You have tried one or two and they sort of worked,
but not as you had hoped. Or maybe they did not work at all.
Why could this be?
Sometimes Creativity just doesn't
work for one or more of the following reasons:
- The problem scenario or situation has not been properly
defined
- The facilitator does not have the correct skills
- The participants are unwilling
Or more than likely the wrong techniques have been
selected. Alas you cannot use brainstorming for everything! So
how should you go about categorising and selecting techniques?
The following ideas might be useful:
Group/Solo working - who is going to use
this technique? Will you use it for one person or a group?
Converge/Diverge - are you looking to
focus on, or identify just one possibility or are you wishing
to actively generate many options or ideas?
Exploration/description - does the
technique allow you to just explore or perhaps describe the
situation more fully?
Reality checking/planning - you know what
the possibilities are but you need to check that your ideas
are feasible or to set out some course of action.
Idea generation/building - this is
divergent but are you generating lots of ideas or taking a
smaller number and building upon them?
If we want to classify Reverse
Brainstorming then we could classify it as Solo or group
working, convergent, exploring, idea generation. A Cartoon
Storyboard could be classified as Solo or Group working,
convergent, planning or building.
So how should you select a technique?