The world of business moves rapidly, and organisations need to respond quickly and flexibly to ever-changing conditions. Competitors bring out new products, new suppliers become available from countries around the world, customers quickly. reject last year’s products and demand new ones, organisations continually search for improved ways of working, seeking ever greater efficiency and quality, the list is endless.

This module looks at ways in which managers can think creatively and solve the problems that they encounter in a rapidly changing environment.

You’ll see that thinking creatively is not generally about having a sudden spark of inspiration. It’s just as much about working with colleagues to search for new ideas, letting your imagination roam freely. You’ll see that a number of techniques are available: they all encourage creativity but the challenge is to find the ones that are most useful to you and your team.

You’ll also see that problem solving involves working through a systematic process. You may, of course, have a sudden insight and immediately find a solution to your problem. Finding the best solution, however, usually takes longer. You’ll see that it is often most effective to work through a systematic process of carefully analysing the problem, creatively finding a number of possible solutions, carefully assessing each of those options, and finally selecting the one that best satisfies your requirements.

The four sections of this module relate closely to each of the four learning outcomes. Section 1 looks at theories about how individual and teams think creatively. Section 2 builds on that theory, describes the stages of a systematic creative process, and considers ways of encouraging creativity.

The next two sections then look at problem solving. Section 3 focuses on the early stages of the problem solving process: identifying exactly what the problem is and looking creatively for possible solutions. Section 4 then describes ways of comparing the options and identifying which solution will create the benefits for the individual team or organization.