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Creative Methods for Problem Solving

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Creative Techniques for Problem Solving

Korbinian Dennerlein H0954189

Strategy, Innovation & Management Control Vienna University of Economics and Business

Course: 5876 Personal skills -­‐ Problem solving Instructor: Desislava Vacheva (BSc.MSc.) Korbinian Dennerlein H0954189

CREATIVE TECHNIQUES Innovation and creativity foster and generate a crucial resource in today’s constantly changing business environment. It is essential to handle this resource carefully and to act target oriented in order to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Nevertheless, it is important not to lose focus on the core business and to keep the balance between exploitation and exploration. Therefore, it is important to apply creativity in the right way. This application should preserve the stable and working organization from being too chaotic. A general way to divide the various approaches is to cluster them into divergent and convergent techniques. Divergent techniques aim at generating a high number of ideas in order to have a wide range of possible solutions to choose from. In comparison, convergent techniques deal with a certain problem and search step-by-step for a single right solution.1 In the beginning of this paper I want to explain one divergent concept in detail and briefly introduce a few other techniques. Afterwards I will focus on a convergent solution and shortly explore some more approaches. Moreover, I will explore examples of problem solving techniques in reality. To complete the picture I will explain my personal view on creativity in the end.

Divergence vs. Convergence

The Techniques Divergence Brainstorming

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