Thoughtflip
We
have been giving a lot of thought to ways of helping individuals to develop ideas and solve problems.
We have developed a process that helps individuals with this. We call it Thoughtflip.
The
Thoughtflip process is simple and, at first glance, appears deeply
uncreative because of its step by step nature. What you will find if
you play around with it is that there are a couple of points in this
process where your creativity is brought to the fore. It is important
to note that Thoughtflip is about improving the creativity of
individuals, not organisations. If you want to work on organisational
creativity you'd be best talking to us. If so,
contact us.
It might be that you do not learn well from written material but prefer to be taught. In this case you might also want to
contact us.
To
use Thoughtflip the first thing you will need to do is to print the
A3 sheet below. Don't worry if you don't have an A3 printer it will
print on A4 and still be useable. You'll just have to write smaller!
This document is in PDF format so you will need to have a PDF reader
installed on your computer. If you don't then you can download
appropriate software from the links at the bottom of this page.
Click
on this symbol
to
download or view the A3 Thoughtflip process sheet.
You
will notice that the process refers to a couple of things that might
not be immediately obvious. The first is generating alternative how
to statements. A how to statement is an expression of your problem or need
for ideas in a sentence that starts with how to. For instance if I wish to be
better at explaining this process my statement might be:
How to explain this process effectively.
Firstly
write a how to statement in the top box of the
sheet. You can then develop it in one of two ways. The first is to
collect a group of people together and have them suggest any and
every way that you could rephrase your statement. You could do this
on your own but you are likely to get a richer set of options if you
use other people. The second approach is to use recursive why
questions. These are used to find the real needs that underlie the
how to statement that you have presented. Having got your initial how
to statement you merely ask 'why' a great deal. In other words, 'why is this a problem?' or
'why do you need ideas?' Whatever is the answer to this question,
write it down and then probe the answer itself by asking 'why' again.
Repeat this process on the next answer. This continues until you feel
you have hit a dead end or until it all becomes terminally dull. For
instance if my statement is how to explain this better. Why? Because
I want people to understand it. Why? Because sharing these skills is
important to me. This can continue for some time from here. You will
find that each response to each question can be rephrased to form
another how to statement. Some of these may be much more fruitful
areas of exploration than the original statement. Choose a statment
(and it might be your original one) and write it into the second how
to box.
The
second area that might not be obvious on your first run through are
the stimulus boxes. If you use creativity techniques you can use any of them here.
If not then you can use Thoughtflip cards as the stimulus. You can click on
the button below to generate random Thoughtflip cards. Some cards are
best suited to particular types of problem. If you get a card that
does not make sense with your problem then simply press the button
again to get an alternative card.
Click on this button
to generate a random card.
Some
of the cards work best if you use intermediate solution sentences.
Again, imagine I am trying to explain this process better.
Intermediate sentences might be:
- The explanation with .......
- Using ....... to explain better
- The ....... explanation process
Your technique will then generate words or phrases that you can
insert into the gaps. At this stage these sentences will be utter
nonsense. This is not a problem because one thing your brain loves to
do is to make sense out of nonsense. In fact in some ways the more nonsensical
the statements are, the better.
Anyway,
enough words - play with the sheet and the random cards with a real
issue and see how it works for you. We have only just put this page
up so the process, or the explanation might not work for you. Let us
know by
contacting us.
Contact us
PDF (Portable Document Format)
Files that end in *.PDF can be viewed by downloading the free
Adobe Acrobat Reader
software.
Note that Linux users (and Windows and Mac users if they prefer opensource
software) should download Ghostview
here
Available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms
