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Pragmatic Creativity

How to solve problems and profit from opportunities in today's workplace

Who should attend this workshop?

Managers who want to improve their products and processes
Team Leaders who want to encourage creative strategies
Consultants who want to be remembered for innovative ideas
Facilitators who want to enhance their participants' productivity
Trainers who want to increase motivation

Objectives
(Benefits for individuals)

Identify and profit from opportunities
Explore and analyze products, processes, and problems
Create and generate alternative ideas
Evaluate and enhance these ideas
Market and implement profitable innovations

Benefits for the organization

Remove organizational barriers to innovation
Improve the process and results of staff meetings
Identify new markets for existing products and services
Re-engineer organizational structure and workflow
Increase the power of employee-involvement programs

Workshop Content

Basic Concepts

WHAT is creativity?
WHY is creativity important in your workplace?
WHAT FACTORS facilitate creativity?
WHAT are the basic principles of creativity?

A Systematic Process To Enhance Creativity

Initialization. Recognize problems or opportunities.
Investigation. Collect relevant facts.
Identification. Specify goals and criteria.
Incubation. Encourage your brain to multitask.
Illumination. Recognize intuitive insights.
Innovation. Generate more and better ideas.
Selection. Separate useless ideas from profitable ones.
Iteration. Repeat the creativity process to ensure continuous improvement.
Implementation. Market your ideas and get them used.

Analysis Techniques

Getting started. How to identify targets of opportunity
Selecting the tool. How to choose the best tool for your needs
Question lists. How to use standardized question sets to explore your situation
Attribute analysis. How to isolate different features and steps and identify the critical ones
Visual thinking. How to use doodles to gain better understanding of your situation
Critical steps, key success factors, and short cuts in the analysis process

Idea Generation Techniques

Selecting the tools. How to choose the best tools to suit your idea generation needs
Roleplay. How to increase the number and quality of ideas by assuming diverse roles
Morphological analysis. How to use a simple matrix to generate hundreds of ideas
Forced associations. How to use random thoughts to focus your ideas
Analogies. How to find better solutions to one problem by thinking of another problem
Reverse thinking. How to succeed by systematically planning to fail.
Critical steps, key success factors, and short cuts in the idea-generation process

Evaluation Techniques

Selecting the tools. How to choose the best tools to suit your evaluation needs
SWOT analysis. How to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Marketing analysis. How to evaluate your ideas from the customer's point of view.
Cost-benefit analysis. How to reduce the costs and benefits of each idea to monetary terms--and identify the most profitable ones.
Continuous improvement. How to convert useless ideas into profitable ones.
Critical steps, key success factors, and short cuts in the evaluation process

Implementation Techniques

Selecting the tool. How to choose the best tool for your implementation needs
Backward chaining. How to work backward from the future.
Template thinking. How to do the right things at the right stages of implementation.
Critical steps, key success factors, and short cuts in the implementation process

Team-Based Techniques

Getting started. Why and how to establish creative design teams
Selecting the tool. How to choose the best tool to suit your team
Brainstorming. New wrinkles to this traditional creativity tool
Framegames. How to use synergy and playfulness to generate more ideas.
Critical steps, key success factors, and short cuts in using team-based creativity techniques

Computer-Enhanced Techniques

Getting started. Why and how to use computers to enhance your creativity
Selecting the tool. How to choose the best software to suit your needs
General software. How to use spreadsheets, outliners, and graphics software for improving your creativity
Dedicated software. How to use specialized software to enhance your creativity
Groupware. How to use computer software with teams
Trade secrets. Critical steps, key success factors, and short cuts in using computers to enhance your creativity

Thiagi's expertise with creativity

Back in Madras, India, Thiagi won first prize in his elementary school science fair -- for an artificial volcano. He also set fire to the exhibition hall. Since then, Thiagi has continued to create -- short stories, magic tricks, and training game -- and he has added a pragmatic element to keep his fireworks under control.

Professionally, Thiagi's creativity is best demonstrated by his training games and simulations. While others create complex and comprehensive simulations, Thiagi specializes in elegant little exercises that capture the essence of the process being simulated. Often, when workshop participants see Thiagi improvise on the spot they are awestruck at how fast he thinks and how creative he is. Thiagi says this is just the result of using the creativity tools that he teaches in his workshop.

5 Things That Make Thiagi's Workshops Unique
Thiagi's Special 3-Way Guarantee

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