Problem solving workshops: unlock your team’s creative thinking
Creativity is not just for artists. Creative Problem Solving (CPS) is a structured method that allows any team to generate new ideas, tackle complex challenges and move from intention to action.
THE METHOD
Creative Problem Solving: creativity as a process, not a talent
Developed by Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes in the 1950s in the United States, CPS is today one of the most rigorously tested creativity methods in the world, continuously enriched by practitioners and researchers across the globe.
Its principle: combining a structured 6-step process with creativity techniques to stimulate the imagination, break out of habitual patterns and produce solutions that are genuinely new and achievable.
This isn’t just “brainstorming”. It’s a rigorous mechanism that guarantees workshops that are both creative and productive. We use it as a core tool in our collaborative workshops and across our facilitation offer.
Diverge, then converge:
the creative breath
The key to a creative process that is both rich and effective is to clearly separate the opening phase from the selection phase. You don’t evaluate an idea the moment you generate it: breathe in first, breathe out after.
Divergence
Open up the field of possibilities
Seek quantity before quality
Welcome “wild” ideas
Defer judgement
Combine and cross-pollinate ideas
Convergence
Look for what’s genuinely novel
Evaluate objectively, without bias
Keep the objective in sight
Exploit every possible avenue
Develop and refine the ideas selected
Practising “yes, and” rather than “yes, but” means opening up the field of possibilities before making a choice.
WHEN TO USE IT
CPS adapts to a wide variety of challenges
As useful in product innovation as in project management, Creative Problem Solving works whenever a team needs to generate fresh ideas or find a creative way out of a deadlock.
→ Imagining new products or services based on real user needs
→ Solving a recurring problem that conventional approaches have failed to crack
→ Re-energising a team that keeps going around in circles on a complex topic
→ Running a strategic meeting in a participative and productive way
→ Driving innovation within a collaborative workshop
The process
6 steps from problem to solution
Clarification
01. Explore the vision
Set the context, identify aspirations and map the data around the problem — so the whole group starts from the same point.
02. Frame the challenge
Reframe the challenge in an open, stimulating way: a well-posed question is already half answered.
Ideation
03. Generate ideas
Produce as many ideas as possible without judgement, activating varied creativity techniques to break out of habitual thinking.
04. Develop solutions
Select, enrich and transform raw ideas into concrete, evaluable and actionable solutions.
Implementation
05. Build buy-in
We co-build with the team and the sponsor a methodological and operational summary — consolidating what was produced and giving the team the tools to keep cooperating effectively without us.
06. Build the action plan
Turn solutions into concrete commitments: who does what, by when, with what resources. The session doesn’t end without an action plan.
A challenge to tackle as a team? Let’s surface solutions together.
Tell us about your context and objectives:
we’ll design a bespoke ideation workshop, calibrated to produce actionable ideas and a shared action plan.
Also explore
Other PROPULSIO facilitation methods
Design thinking
Putting people at the centre to design solutions that are desirable and feasible.
Agile project management
Scrum, Lean Startup, Kanban: running your projects in iterative mode.