Synectics

Rick Harriman from Synectics provided us with a seminar on how to think about the creative process, and different approaches to idea generation and problem solving. It was interesting to hear the Synectics approach, as it went a lot further than simply brainstorming and focused more on different ways of looking at the situation, and triggering ideas from alternative areas to the problem.

It was great to learn new techniques regarding idea generation and there were a number that will be useful for the future, such as the principle that just by thinking harder about a problem, won’t necessarily get you much further down the innovation route, there are other levels that you must build on such as analogies, diversity and absurdity are useful tools to utilize.

The interactive nature of the session was useful, and it was good to work through the tools in a real situation to see how they could be used to rethink a problem within the teams we had.

Rick provided a useful session and it was good to hear the alternative strategies to brain storming.