Blog 1

One of my favorite tools that we worked with was force fitting. I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to incorporate two completely different objects into one solution. While doing this, I felt that attribute listing and SCAMPER were two of the most beneficial tools. I definitely think I will continue to utilize both as I move forward in my education and my career. I think listing all of the individual attributes and then find new ways to substitute, combine, adjust, modify, put to them other uses, eliminate, and/or reverse them to find a creative solution that I likely would not have been able think of on my own. I also feel that differentiating between creations and innovations was an incredibly beneficial aspect of the course. This concept was a significant motivator in all of our activities as we focused on developing the greatest innovation by providing the most value.

I loved that TED Talks were used to inspire us at the beginning of every class. Although I enjoyed all of them, I felt that Ron Finley’s, Temple Grandin’s, and Ross Lovegrove’s forced me to expand my ways of thinking the most. I love that Ron Finley realized that food was the problem in the food desert in Los Angeles and the solution. His innovative solution inspired me to consider how many more issues could be solved by looking at the problem as the solution too. As someone with a left-brained thinking tendency, Temple Grandin inspired me to look at things from a new perspective. She literally looked at things from the cow’s point of view when she was helping to renovate cattle facilities and was able to develop a new and innovative way of handling cattle. I definitely think that this is the approach that should be used with all problems concerning animals since they cannot speak for themselves, but it has broader applications as well. For instance, when completing CPS Activity #4, instead of solely considering which solutions would be most practical for us as the workers, we also tried to see things from the perspective of the child refugees to determine which ideas would be the most beneficial and meaningful to them. I also strongly connected with Ross Lovegrove’s minimalistic approach to problem solving. I believe that this approach is the future of innovation. As everything is becoming more high-tech and complicated, we will eventually need to shift back to the basics and learn to appreciate simplicity again.

At first, I was extremely intimidated by the CPS activities. However, my learning community worked together so well that the CPS activities truly helped us grow and expand our thought process rather than just being more stressful assignments. We began every activity with creative thinking through brainstorming. I quickly became comfortable enough with my learning community members to suggest outrageous ideas that I would have thought to be too silly to even consider, but by doing so I found that my ideas were not as ridiculous as I thought. Once we identified a few current and potential solutions, we would list the attributes of each to determine which aspects we would utilize or eliminate in our new solution. We would then use critical thinking to determine which solution would be the most practical and add the most value. From there, we would begin my favorite part of the process; we would use creative and critical thinking to work together to complete the activity while collaborating and building on each other’s ideas every step of the way. We truly worked as a team, and I am incredibly proud of our work this semester. I can confidently say that we are all better problem solvers after completing the CPS activities and final project together.

I have already begun incorporating my problem-solving skills into other classes. For example, I am working with a team in my marketing class to develop a marketing plan for a rental car company. One of my first steps in determining the direction for the company was to list the attributes of the competitors to decide which aspects to address. After doing our research to understand the problem, I convinced my team to brainstorm potential new directions for the company. By utilizing these creative problem-solving tools, I successfully developed a marketing plan. These tools truly do provide an effective approach that help me create unique solutions to virtually any problem. I plan to continue using these tools as I move forward in my education and my career. As I currently have an interest in pursuing a career in marketing for an apparel company, I feel that this method will definitely provide me with an advantage because I will be able to look at the problems from a different perspective and offer unique solutions. When I am faced with a problem in my future classes and career, I will also focus on always providing the most significant value possible to better benefit others.

I definitely feel that I am better able to identify problems now. For the CPS activities, we were given a problem to address, but by using tools such as fish bone diagrams and attribute listing we were able to delve deeper into the issue to determine the true problem. We initially did this when completing CPS activity #2 concerning plastic waste. We used the fish bone diagram to figure out that inconvenience was the greatest contributor to plastic waste. We used the same approach when developing our final project as well. We initially decided to address the issue of textile waste. We then determined that inconvenience was the root cause of people’s failure to recycle or donate textiles as well. By identifying the primary problems, we were able to create our innovative solution that offers convenience and incentive.

I would really like to actually implement our solution from our final project to solve textile waste on the Oklahoma State University campus. Our solution is extremely practical, and I feel that it would be very beneficial. We would place drop-off bins in Human Sciences and possibly in the dorms to allow students to conveniently discard their old or unwanted clothing. The clothing would then be donated to the DHM department to either supply fabric for the textiles and sewing labs or be repaired or repurposed to be donated to the Thrifty Butterfly or to local families in need of new clothing. This is a fairly simple objective, but I believe it would reduce textile waste on campus tremendously and could potentially be expanded to encompass the whole Stillwater community and further eventually.

I feel that I am already a fairly L-brained thinker, but throughout this course I have been inspired to embrace R-brained thinking more and more. I remember being most encouraged to explore my R-brained thinking by Temple Grandin’s TED Talk. She inspired me to look at problems from a different perspective, and I feel that this has helped me tremendously. The other R-brained technique that I plan to utilize is story-telling. As I mentioned before, I am currently interested in pursuing a career in marketing, and I definitely think using narratives to implement and promote my marketing strategies will help them be more successful. However, I will continue to utilize my L-brained thinking to process the information given to me logically and thoroughly. I believe that combining these approaches will help me adequately assess problems and develop innovative and effective solutions.

My sketch represents my creative journey thus far. When I started, I was an L-brained thinker, and my world was black and white. As I progressed, I began utilizing more R-brianed thinking, and I added color and creativity to my world. The combination of the two leads to an abundance of opportunities and possibilities signified by the rising sun. I was compelled to use nature for symbolism in my sketch because this class greatly encouraged and strengthened my connection to nature, primarily through biomimicry. Overall, this sketch represents my new perspective and biggest takeaways. The experience and knowledge that I have gained from this class has given me a more positive perspective on creativity and problem solving, motivated me to continue taking inspiration from nature, and use both halves of my brain to create truly innovative solutions.