Author Description

Integrated Creative Problem Solving is the second book in the Delft Studies on Innovating series. This series is intended to give innovation/design researchers, who are connected to the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of the Delft University of Technology, a platform to share their knowledge with a wider audience. Creativity is one of the building blocks of the first book in this series (The Delft Innovation Method: A Design Thinker's Guide to Innovation - ISBN 978 94 9094 747 7). Therefore, it seems logical to have the second book of the series go into details about creativity, creative problem solving, and organizing creative sessions. The central theme of the book is integration. Its approach seeks to integrate people and process, process and techniques, techniques with content, ideas with implementation, and, when all are combined, there should be commitment and fun. Integrated Creative Problem Solving demonstrates how creative sessions are organized and how they should function smoothly. The session's organizer - a specialist called the 'Creative Facilitator' (metaphorically known as a 'juggler') - uses creativity techniques within a group to dive into the process of serious problem solving. The 'Creative Facilitator'/'juggler' plays with cones or balls (lookalikes for ideas) together with the group. During this play, the balls can change into cones or cubes, the weight and the materials will change, as well as the stickiness of the surfaces of the cones, the cubes, and the balls. And, during all these unexpected changes, the show must go on. Integration for this juggler means balancing all the different aspects of the process of creative problem solving. (Series: Delft Studies on Innovating)