TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

OF CREATIVITY AND
INNOVATION

CREATIVITY AND
INNOVATION
CREATIVITY: we can say that creativity
involves the generation of new ideas or the
recombination of known elements into
something new, providing valuable solutions
to a problem.
INNOVATION: The process of translating an
idea or invention into a good or service that
creates value or for which customers will
pay.To be called aninnovation, an idea must
be replicable at an economical cost and must
satisfy a specific need.

TOOLS TO SUPPORT
CREATIVITY AND
INNOVATION
There are four different types of innovation
tools that well describe here, including the
design of the work place itself, practices that
encourage and even enable effective
collaboration, open innovation approach to
connect inside innovation teams with outside
partners and experts, and online tools that
constitute the virtual work place. Separately
and especially together, these can make a
tremendous enhancement in the performance
and the satisfaction of individuals, teams,
and your entire organization.

Four Tools to Support Creativity and Innovation

The work place

Effective collaboration
Social tools
Open Innovation and the Innovation
Ecosystem

Creativity Tools
What is it and how can it help me?
Creativity tools are tried and tested ways of coming up
with new solutions and perspectives to an issue or
problem that won't seem to go away.
If you want to think innovatively, you need to observe
what is going on around you. We are used to viewing
situations from our own personal perspectives. However,
by developing the skill of looking at things in a variety of
different ways, you can make new connections and
lateral leaps. When you are stuck in one way of thinking
and feel that you have exhausted all the options, a fresh
pair of eyes' can see a whole new way of doing things
that you hadn't thought of before.

When does it work best?

You have probably already identified and fixed the easy things,
but now you need to improve and fine tune all the elements of
the patient journey. To do this, it helps if you see things with new
eyes, gathering different perspectives to tease out the alternative
ways of getting things done (then you can test them out).
Paul Plsek says there are five reasons why organisations should
be concerned with creativity and innovation'.
Superior long term financial performance is associated with
innovation.
Customers i.e. patients and commissioners, are increasingly
demanding new ways of doing things.
Competitors are getting better at copying past innovations.
New technologies enable innovation.
What used to work doesn't anymore.

How to use it
Techniques for stimulating resourceful
thinking typically involve three mental
processes:
Focusing attention on something that you
don't normally focus on
Escaping the way you traditionally think,
commonly called thinking outside the box'
Suspending judgment and allowing your
imagination to explore different possibilities.

Examples
A great example of creative thinking:
Prof Elliot connected car racing to
heart surgery and used the learning
of a pit stop to improve transfer
processes at the end of heart
surgery. ('Ferrari Pit Stop Saves
Alexander's Life' by William Greaves The Telegraph 29 August 2006).

Tools of Brainstorming
Phases
Phase
Application
Orientation

Define the problem to be studied for the participants,

clarify the rules of the game.

Preparation

Gather data and information necessary to approach

the problem in an efficient manner.

Warm-up

Carry -out the exercise: redefine a problem different

from the one to be studied, experiment with it for a
few minutes.

Production of
ideas

Generate the maximum of ideas without prior

judgement - always ask what else - quantity of
ideas is quality - no limits - no criticise - modify
others ideas to produce new ones. Let the
subconscious work.

Incubation

Let the subconscious work.

Syntheses

Gather the ideas generated - analyse them - work

with logical thinking.

Evaluation

Evaluate the ideas gathered and analysed - develop

and combine them before proceeding to put them in

TECHNIQUES TO FIND NEW

IDEAS FOR YOUR BUSINESS
An innovative culture and the right
set of creativity techniques are
crucial in every business. This 2-day
training will bring your team a
structured process and the
necessaryidea generation tools. It
will enhance your teams skills in
developing new product, service and
business concepts, as well as finding
new markets for your innovative

LEARN CREATIVITY TOOLS &

INNOVATIVE MINDSET
Participants will walk away with mindsets that
will boost creative performance. They will
adopt a variety of innovation tools to generate
new solutions and business ideas. The goal of
the training is to increase effectiveness in
R&D and innovation projects by means of the
creative problem-solving toolbox, as well as
the understanding of innovation as a
structured process

7 Ideation Techniques

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Questioning assumptions
Opportunity redefinition
Wishing
Triggered brain walking
Semantic intuition
Picture prompts
Worst idea

Questioning assumptions
questioning assumptions during every point of the product
or service development process, we can entertain new
ideas and possibilities.
Example : Gary Fraser, who took over the oral care business
unit at Unilever, and had to take on two much larger, deeply
entrenched competitors in the toothpaste market, Colgate
and Crest. He couldnt compete with them head-to-head
from a product standpoint, and couldnt possibly outspend
them in marketing. The solution was for Fraser and his team
to question every facet of their business, including product
packaging, pricing and advertising. The result was the
worlds first baking soda and peroxide toothpaste,
Mentadent, which was very successful.

Opportunity redefinition

This ideation technique is

deceptively simple, but can
generate extraordinary results.

Wishing
For this ideation technique, you start
out by asking for the impossible and
then brainstorm ways to make it, or
at least some approximation of it,
possible. The first step is to make
your wishes tangible

Triggered brain walking

Mattimore characterizes brainwalking
as the most flexible of the seven
ideation techniques, because it can
be easily combined with other
techniques. Its also an ideal way to
ensure that everyone in your group
gets an opportunity to contribute
ideas.

Semantic intuition
Semantic intuition is a technique that
can inject fresh energy into a group
that is starting to feel brain dead
toward the end of a brainstorming
session, according to Mattimore. It
prompts participants to create new
ideas by having them combine
several categories of key words to
create a name for a new idea even
though they have no idea what the

Picture prompts
Visual techniques have a way of
surfacing our intuitions, emotions
and feelings. This makes them
especially valuable for brainstorming
solutions to creative challenges that
involve people and management of
them, or problems that have a deep
emotional or psychological root
cause. Its also an easy and fast
technique that any group can use to

Worst idea
This is another technique that can
help to save the day when nothing
else seems to be working, and can
re-ignite the energy levels of groups
that are approaching creative
burnout. The technique is simple: Ask
the group to create a list of bad,
terrible, stupid, illegal or gross ideas.