Innovative Thinking Tools
2-Day intensive, practical, interactive workshop
On an everyday basis most of us often mistake the process of innovation with the process of creation. The first is focused on finding new value in an already existing reality, the latter is about imagining a completely new reality.
Our approach is therefore based on a very precise definition of the term “Innovation”. We assume that innovation is a process of developing ideas that are new, create new value and, most importantly, are feasible. The last criterion is particularly important. Our understanding of innovation development and implementation process means therefore that we perceive a habit of continuous and systematic questioning of the status quo as the most important aspect of managerial practice.
Metaphorically speaking, in order to make innovative thinking a part of an organization’s DNA, it is necessary to instil in it two kinds of software:
- Software for brains – i.e. how to think in order to be able to notice and develop new possibilities on a daily basis
- Software for the organization– i.e. what routines have to be implemented in order for the employees to accept searching for innovation as a standard part of their everyday activities.
During the workshop we will instil the first one and explain how to instil the latter.
This is a systematic thinking course providing the participants with a thorough understanding of techniques for innovative problem solving and new concept development. Participants also have the opportunity to learn and practice selected “thinking tools” and gain the knowledge and skills needed to increase company effectiveness.
We invite everyone who is interested to attend the course, especially:
- Executives, managers of operational areas
- Project managers and project team leaders, PMO employees
- All interested in innovative problem solving techniques and the creation of innovative products and services
- Anyone who wants to learn the unique tools necessary to achieve maximum effectiveness in management
Course objectives:
- Familiarizing the Participants with Systematic Inventive Thinking – techniques of innovative problem solving and creating new innovative products/services
- Learning and practising selected Thinking Tools: Quality change, Immediate environment, FFF
- Acquiring the knowledge and capabilities necessary for a radical increase in business efficiency
Having completed the workshop, the Participants will be able to:
- When required, use tools to consistently and repeatably move beyond thought patterns and generate new and innovative ideas in a very short period of time
- Work on their own to develop an innovative solution to a problem and to create new innovative products and services
- Use the tools learned to define projects whose implementation increases the competitiveness of the company
Introduction
- Innovation? What is it and how does it differ from creation? Why is that so that people mistake them?
- “Inside the box thinking”? Two stages of innovative thinking process.
- Why everybody wants to be innovative but only few people are spontaneously successful in this process?
- Cognitive fixedness. What is it and how to break it?
- Thinking patterns.
New product/service development
- Function Follows Form (FFF) rule
- Patterns for product/service/process innovation
- Application of FFF process
- Subtraction, multiplication, division, adding new function, new dependency creation
- How to organize a systematic innovation development process?
Innovative problem solving
- Problem vs. problematic situation
- Breaking cause-effect fixedness
- Developing new solutions by use of mental AIKIDO
- Developing new solutions by use of “use what you have in front of your eyes” approach
- Filtering ideas
Innovative problem solving
- The difference between a problem and a problem situation
- The problem situation as a source of seeking innovation. Two stages of the innovative thinking process
- An elegant solution in the language of innovation
- Quality change technique in generating new concepts
- The immediate environment technique in generating new concepts
Creating innovative products and services
- The traditional approach to New Product Development and its fundamental limits
- FFF (Function Follows Form) concept. How to make our minds create concepts that have not been generated by our competitors?
- Methods of manipulating the existing products to create innovation
- Five manipulation patterns. How is it that every ingenious idea we know fits into one of these patterns?
- Regular idea generation
The process of creating an innovation
- Idea vs. concept
- Using the NFS concept to order generated ideas
- Template of concept description
- Translating the results of using Thinking Tools into a portfolio of projects
Bartosz Stawski - a specialist in Thinking Tools in management, a practitioner of Theory of Constraints (TOC) and Innovative Problem Solving based on behavioural economics.
