Cashing in on Creativity at Work

Creativity pays in business. Find out where to find it and how it can help you.

By Stanley S. Gryskiewicz, Robert Epstein, published on September 01, 2000 - last reviewed on July 15, 2009

HOW TO PLAY: Give participants three minutes to generate at least three solutions to an impossible problem. They won't come up with any "perfect" answers, but it's important that they write down at least three solutions--even if the solutions seem silly. You might pick an impossible problem that's relevant to your industry ("How do we cut our production costs by 90 percent by Tuesday?") or to society ("Propose a way to eliminate all air pollution in this country within the next three days"), or you might even give people a problem I call the Ultimate Creativity Design Challenge: "How can you increase creative expression in your workplace by at least a factor of 10 within the next 10 days?" When three minutes have passed, call on members of the group to share their ideas, and lead a discussion about the results.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. When faced with difficult questions, do people shut down? How do they react?

2. What kinds of replies do people give? Are the replies entirely useless?

3. How can unsolvable problems spur creativity?

4. What are the ultimate challenges in your business?

5. Could ultimate challenges be used by your company on a regular basis to develop new ideas? How so?

SELLING A ZORK

IN A NUTSHELL: Participants try to sell a strange object to the group.

TIME: About 15 minutes.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED: The "Zork" can be almost anything, as long as it's very unusual. Check your garage, attic or the Internet for the oddest stuff you can find. You should have at least one strange object (or drawing or photo) ready for each of the volunteer salespeople in the game. Each item should be out of sight before the game begins.

HOW TO PLAY: Ask a volunteer to come to the front of the room and face the group. Explain that you'll be showing him or her a "Zork" and that--as soon as the Zork appears--he or she must immediately try to sell it to the group for at least $1,000. Now present the strange object and time the performance. As time allows, repeat the procedure with other volunteers and other Zorks from your collection. With a suitable selection of bizarre objects, it should be great fun.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How is it that people are able to sell Zorks, even though they've never seen them before?

2. Is Zork-selling "creative?" Why or why not?

3. if you can sell a Zork, what else might you be able to do that you're not doing now?

4. How, if at all, might Zork-selling be relevant to creativity in your personal or professional life?

THE POPSICOLOGY GAME

IN A NUTSHELL: Participants generate a creative design using popsicle sticks (or toothpicks or tongue depressors).

TIME: About 20 minutes.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: The more resources people have to develop their ideas, the more numerous and diverse the ideas they will produce.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED: 30 popsicle sticks for each pair of teams.

HOW TO PLAY: This is a deceptively simple game. First select a panel of between three and five people to serve as the Judicious Judges. Divide the remaining group in two, with the Perky Picassos on one side of the room and the Marvelous Monets on the other. Now divide each of these groups into teams of about five people each. Give each of the Perky Picasso teams 10 popsicle sticks and give each of the Marvelous Monet teams 20 popsicle sticks. Now give everyone five minutes to generate the most creative design possible using only their popsicle sticks. Finally, have the Judicious Judges circulate among the groups, rate each design and then report their results to the entire group. Lead a discussion about the outcome.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Which group developed the most creative designs: the Perky Picassos or the Marvelous Monets? Why?

2. How could the results of this game be applied to your workplace?

TIP: This game normally produces dramatic results. Why? Even if each stick could only be placed in one of two positions (for example, horizontal or vertical), the Perky Picassos (with only 10 sticks per team) could produce only 1,024 different arrangements, whereas the Marvelous Monets (with 20 sticks per team) could produce over a million!

Robert Epstein, Ph.D.

For more creativity games, please refer to Robert Epstein, Ph.D. 's Big Book of Creativity Games (McGraw-Hill, 2000), from which these were excerpted, with permission from The McGraw-Hill Companies. Epstein is a former editor-in-chief of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY.

For more information, visit CCL's Web site at http://www.ccl.org.