Creative Problem Solving for Managers: Developing Skills for Decision Making and Innovation

Stimulating and developing the creative potential of all members of an organisation is widely seen as contributing to performance and results. This prestigious textbook provides a complete overview of the creative problem-solving process and its relevance to modern managers in the private and public sectors. It introduces ideas, skills and models to help students understand how creative thinking can aid problem solving, and how different techniques may help people who have different thinking and learning styles.

This updated fifth edition includes fresh case studies, exercises and suggested reading, alongside extensive diagrams and thought-provoking questions. A new chapter considers the use of heuristics in decision-making situations faced by managers, and examines how aspects of creative problem solving can relate to such situations. It also introduces a complex in-tray exercise, which demonstrates how the conflicting demands on an individual manager can be considered in practice. Supporting PowerPoint slides for lecturers are available for each chapter.

Creative Problem Solving for Managers will continue to be an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying problem solving, strategic management, creativity and innovation management, as well as managers looking to develop their decision-making abilities.

Table of Contents

1. Creativity and its Importance in Business

2. Blocks to Creativity

3. Theories of Creativity and the Creative Problem-Solving Process

4. Problem Solving and Improvisation

5. Factors Influencing People's Ability to Undertake Ideation

6. Objective Finding, Fact Finding and Problem Finding/Definition

7. Morphological Analysis and Related Techniques

8. Brainstorming and its Variants

9. Lateral Thinking and Associated Methods

10. Synectics

11. Paradigm-Breaking Techniques

12. Miscellaneous Ideation Techniques

13. Evaluation

14. Decision Making and  Problem Solving

15. Implementing Ideas

16. Computer-Assisted Creative Problem Solving

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