Dear colleagues,
Some time ago, I asked for suggestions regarding practical creativity exercises that could be used in a course on creativity and innovations. I have received many very good suggestions, and I would like to share them with you. Thanks very much to everyone who sent me ideas and tips!
A general recommendation was to join APA’s Division 10. Their journal, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, will soon bring out a special issue on creativity in the workplace, which of course is of particular interest for OB-researchers.
A name that was mentioned a couple of times is Michael Michalko. Specific recommendations were his books “Thinkertoys” and “Cracking Creativity,” but he also has a website with many useful things:
http://www.creativethinking.net. While you’re online, another good suggestion to look up is Tom Wujec's Marshmallow Challenge (http://www.marshmallowchallenge.com). A Google search for “lateral thinking puzzles” also yields useful stuff. Other books that were mentioned are “Judgment in Managerial Decision Making” by Max Bazerman and Don Moore, and “Instant Creativity” by Brian Clegg and Paul Birch.
Several suggestions involved music. For example, there’s the possibility of actually having a jazz trio perform, and there’s the “leadership jazz exercise” by Lengnick-Hall and Lengnick-Hall (Journal of Management Education, 23(1), 65-70). Dancing the tango was also mentioned (by the way, I can never read the word ‘tango’ without being reminded of the Far Side cartoon with the two dancing monkeys: “I don’t think you heard me right; I said I’d like a mango”).
Idea generation or brainstorming exercises were mentioned several times. Two of them were described in some detail:
Brainstorming Exercise
“[Have the students] brainstorm different uses for a couple of items for which they know their uses, and 1-2 items for which they do not know their uses. It emphasizes the impact of prior assumptions and frames of reference on creativity. I emphasize the rules used by IDEO Design and identified in the book, "The Art of Innovation".”
The Diskette Exercise
“One exercise that I use that is received well by students is asking them to come up with an alternative use for 3.5 diskettes. You could use any product. But diskettes have multiple parts and are an item with which they identify [though perhaps not for much longer; EFR]. The class is divided into groups of 4 or 5. Each group is given a handful of diskettes. The scenario is that a company has a warehouse full of the diskettes and wants to explore innovative alternative uses for the diskettes. They "green light" brain storm for 10-15 minutes - no negative thinking - the sky is the limit. They are encourage to hold them, feel them, and tear them apart to really explore with all senses. The group with the most ideas always gets a round of applause. Then the group is instructed to judicially go through the list and choose one idea they would like to present to the class.”
Other concrete creativity exercises or assignments that were suggested are:
- The “ping pong ball in a pipe” exercise (try Google, but watch out for spoilers if you want to try and solve it yourself first)
- Mindmapping (see Wikipedia)
- Making a Fishbone Diagram (also known as Ishikawa Diagrams; see Wikipedia)
- Attribute Listing: have students develop a matrix of attributes (shape, size, weight, color, material, etc.) for the problem at hand and have them brainstorm a different characteristic for each of 3-5 attributes
- SCAMPER (Substitute – Combine – Adapt – Modify – Put to other Purposes – Eliminate – Rearrange; see e.g.
http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/tutorials/scampertutorial.html)
- Have students do exercises which encourage them to see things differently, by identifying certain objects, words embedded in a larger design, objects/words that are obvious to only a small number of people initially.
A suggestion that was aimed more specifically at the innovation end of the process was the following: “As part of the course, teams are to develop a product or service prototype and then make an elevator pitch to either upper management of their company or to a group of investors.”
Yet another suggestion showed how creative techniques can be put to use to illustrate other relevant processes in organizational psychology: “Have students present group assignments on major leadership theories using one of a number of options, such as making a video, writing a poem, drawing a cartoon, writing a short story.”
I hope I haven’t left anything out. Again, many thanks to all colleagues who provided these suggestions!
Kind regards,
Eric F. Rietzschel
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Dr. Eric F. Rietzschel
University of Groningen
Social and Organizational Psychology