Discover what to expect at a creative problem solving workshop and when your organization could benefit from a training session.
Creative problem solving is an innovation framework focused around utilizing a stage-by-stage process to generate solutions for a specific challenge. The framework encourages better ideation and brainstorming sessions. This methodology helps you get outside your own mind to unlock new solutions to problems or challenges you’ve faced even for years. If your organization is interested in implementing these techniques, you’ll want to learn more about this framework and how you can get started with a creative problem solving training workshop here.
About Creative Problem Solving Training Workshops
A creative problem solving training workshop will teach you the basics of this innovation methodology and help you implement it effectively into your own work and that of your organization. Discover creative solutions you never would’ve found before by looking at the problem/challenge through a new lens. Through our creative problem solving training workshops, you can practice this innovation framework and build on skills and tools to leverage for future use.
Who are Creative Problem Solving Workshops For?
Our workshops are developed for people looking to innovate, adapt their mindset to look through a new lens, and solve problems or challenges creatively. Organizations, companies, and educational institutions are just some of the groups that can benefit from our in-person creative problem solving workshops, as well as our other online programs for innovation and design thinking.
We build a customized sequence of activities for you and your participants to get better at ideation and implementation through the Creative problem solving process. Our programs are designed to be highly collaborative so that every member of your team will get involved in the process. Through our sessions, you’ll learn the creative problem solving methodology as well as gain tools and techniques that can help you implement the framework in your own challenges or problem solving.
What Can I Gain from Creative Problem Solving Workshops?
Some of the greatest inventions of all time came from one person looking at a problem in a new way and coming to a better solution. By learning to think about problems differently and create better brainstorming and ideation sessions, organizations can stay ahead of the competition and stay relevant in a fast-paced world. Creative problem solving workshops can help companies who are already innovating to find new ways to work together, generate ideas, and implement change. Companies who may never have thought of innovation before can learn about this methodology and how it has a place in their own organization.
What Happens in a Creative Problem Solving Workshop
A session follows the creative problem solving process, with each stage run as a facilitated activity rather than a lecture. Participants work on a real challenge from their own organization wherever possible.
Clarify the challenge
Groups almost always arrive with the problem stated too narrowly or too vaguely. We spend real time reframing it as an open-ended question, because the framing determines the quality of everything that follows.
Ideate without judgment
Structured divergent thinking, with techniques chosen to suit the group. The facilitation matters here: teams that have tried brainstorming and found it disappointing usually collapsed generation and evaluation into one conversation.
Develop the promising ideas
Convergent work to combine, evaluate and build out the concepts worth pursuing, turning them into something concrete enough to test.
Plan the implementation
The stage most sessions skip. Participants leave with an action plan and an owner for each idea worth carrying forward, so the energy of the workshop survives contact with the calendar.
Creative Problem Solving Workshop Formats
Half-Day Workshop
One full pass through the creative problem solving process on a single defined challenge. The most common starting point for a team new to the method.
Full-Day Workshop
More time in ideation and development, with prototyping and testing added so ideas leave the room in a more developed state.
Multi-Day or Recurring Program
For groups who want to build the capability rather than solve one problem. Sessions are spaced so teams apply the method to live work between them.
Virtual Creative Problem Solving Workshop
Run on collaborative whiteboards, which suit this method well because divergent work is visible to everyone at once.
Conference or Event Session
A shorter working session for a larger audience, organized into small tables so everyone practices rather than watches.
Facilitator Training
For people who need to lead creative problem solving sessions themselves inside their own organization.
Challenges Groups Bring to These Workshops
The method works on almost any challenge that is genuinely open-ended. Groups have used our sessions to work on a service that customers find confusing, a process that everyone agrees is broken but nobody has redesigned, a product line that needs a new direction, recruitment and retention problems, and the question of how a team should work differently after a reorganization.
What does not work as well is a challenge where the answer is already decided and the session is meant to generate agreement. It is worth being honest about that in the planning conversation.
How We Design Your Creative Problem Solving Session
We build a customized sequence of activities rather than delivering a fixed agenda. The design depends on how familiar the group is with structured ideation, whether there is a live challenge on the table, how much time we actually have, and what the person sponsoring the session needs to be able to do afterward.
If you want the underlying method before booking anything, the creative problem solving process is explained in full, and the creative problem solving techniques guide covers the specific activities. Related sessions include our brainstorming workshop series and design thinking training.
We also take more inquiries than we accept. When a request would be better served by a facilitator based in your country, or by someone who specializes in a particular method, we will say so and point you toward a person or firm we recommend. Most people getting in touch are not looking for us specifically. They have a problem to solve and they want that done well.
Creative Problem Solving Workshop with InnovationTraining.org
If you’re ready to get started with a creative problem solving training workshop, consider completing a course with us! Our custom-tailored approach works with your specific organizational needs and experience level. From beginners to more advanced training needs, we’ll familiarize you with creative problem solving and the innovation process.
Our goal for these programs is to make the methodology accessible to your team. We can start with the very basics or complete a follow-up lesson at any time with more advanced techniques. You can find examples of past sessions we have done on our innovation workshops or design thinking training page.
Contact us for more information about our customized creative problem solving training workshops or how to get started with creative innovation at your organization.