Strategy Survival Guide

Strategy Survival Guide Version 2.1
Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit
home | strategy development | strategy skills | site index
Strategy Skills > Structuring the Thinking
Creativity techniques
> in practice
Creativity tools are used to help policy makers develop innovative solutions to problems
and spot opportunities that might not be identified through more conventional analysis
and policymaking approaches.
There are a number of different creative techniques that can be useful when approaching
a strategy project. These include Brainstorming, ?WhatIf!’s 4Rs, Synectics’ idea
development model, and Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats.
Brainstorming
The brain is a very powerful instrument. It learns responses based upon previous experiences. This can be
very useful - we do not have to learn how to get dressed every day, we know that pants go on before
trousers (usually). ?WhatIf! describe these regular responses as ‘rivers of thought’. When faced with a
problem, we automatically start exploring the things we know for a solution. But radical solutions are never
going to be found within the problem area. We have to force our brains to jump out of the well-worn river
channel into another one. There are a number of brainstorming techniques to encourage this out-of-the-box
thinking. ?WhatIf!’s technique is called the ‘4 Rs’.
?What If!’s 4 Rs
Random Links
This is the technique that feels most creative - and it is also the easiest to do and is very effective. There are
2 rules: the random item must be truly random; and you must find a connection. The random item can be
physical (a tennis ball, some feathers, a glove . . .) or a word picked at random from a book or a list of words.
The technique then involves thinking about the characteristics of the random stimulus, and applying them
back to your problem.
Example: You are looking at the problem of young adults' education; your random object is a pack of sweets.
The sort of connections you may start to make might include:
• Sweets are small treats – divide courses into very short
sessions, about a day, with a reward for each day
completed.
• Sweets are full of sugar, which gives you energy –
emphasise how learning makes you more interested in
learning more.
• A packet of sweets is easy to carry around – make course
notes into pocket books, or put them onto CD so people
can study on the move.
There are thousands of other connections that can be made. Each of these ideas would collapse easily if
faced with criticism at this stage; so they need to be built upon, greenhoused, and support built up around
them. An idea should never be discarded until it has been given a chance.
Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Skills
Page 107