Day 1: Introductory Concepts and Creativity Enhancement Techniques
Introduction and Course Overview. Defining creativity. Creativity Stages. Taylor’s hierarchy of creativity. Creativity obstacles, including fear of the unknown, fear of failure, reluctance to exert influence, frustration avoidance, resource myopia, participation reluctance, overcertainty, and structured thinking patterns.Why we lose most of our creativity before we finish high school, and what we can do to regain it. Group exercise.
Brainstorming and Painstorming. Brainstorming approaches. Brainstorming rules. Identifying areas of customer dissatisfaction. Sources of customer product satisfaction information. Examples. Group exercise.
Synectics. Disciplined idea harvesting. Documenting “I wish” comments. Including customer participation. Funneling ideas into manageable options. Examples. Group exercise.
Functional Decomposition. Identifying functional requirements. Inputs and outputs. Flowcharting. Identify functional interactions and conflicts. Systems engineering and requirements allocation. Making trades. Examples. Group exercise
Ethnography. Definitions and approach explanation. Gathering information by examining cultures. Understanding design impacts on individuals and cultures. Understanding the consumer experience. Examples. Group exercise.
Biomimicry. Definitions. Seeking solutions by emulating nature. Finding appropriate emulation targets. Reducing cost and waste. Examples. Group exercise.
Day 2: Advanced Approaches: QFD, Axiomatic Design, and TRIZ
Quality Function Deployment. The house of quality. Identifying, requirements, needs and wants. Prerequisites. The what’s, the how’s, and the how much’es. The graphical approach. Quantifying engineering and client tradeoffs. Internal and external benchmarking assessments. Using Excel. Examples. Group exercise.
Axiomatic Design. The independence and information axioms. Matrix methods. Maintaining design parameter independence. Transitioning from functional requirements to design parameters to process design with axiomatic design. Transforming customer needs into products and processes. Examples. Group Exercise.
TRIZ. TRIZ background and development history. The theory of inventive problem solving. Using the TRIZ matrix and the 40 design solutions. Analogical thinking. Putting constraints to work. Using the conflict resolution matrix. Available software resources. Examples. Group exercise.
Day 3: More Creativity Stimulation Techniques and Workshop Wrap-up
Lateral Benchmarking. Finding best practices. Looking outside your industry for best practices. Strategies for identifying lateral industries. Not knowing what can’t be done. Examples. Group exercise.
Kano Model. Product development and customer satisfaction. The attractive, one-dimensional, must-be, indifferent, and reverse categories. Relationship to quality function deployment. Examples. Group exercise.
Trimming. Identifying functions, developing approaches for alternative assignment, recipient functional assignment, function elimination, redesigning for improved functionality, and identifying new markets as a result of improved functionality. Examples. Group exercise.
Nine Windows. The nine windows grid. Considering innovation from the perspectives of time (past, current, future) and space (super-system, system, sub-system). Examples. Group exercise.
De Bono’s Six Hats. The Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono. Information, emotions, bad points judgment, good points judgment, creativity, and meta-thinking. Overcoming our natural tendencies toward black hat thinking. Examples. Group exercise.
De Bono’s Concept Fans. Discovering alternative solutions. Graphical presentations. Taking steps back to gain a broader perspective. Similarities to mind mapping. Examples. Group exercise.
Bisociation. Blending elements from two fields previously considered unrelated. The comparison, abstraction, categorization, analogies, and metaphors matrix. Concept blending theories. Examples. Group exercise.
Course Wrap-Up. Course review. Questions and answers. Plans for future actions. Course critique.
