Organisational Creativity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Organisational Creativity - Essay Example The idea box is a creativity technique used to explore new ideas as well as options. The idea box technique works by nudging the thinker to enhance creative thinking and come up with apposite solutions. I choose the idea box techniques because I have used it in the past. Additionally, the technique enables one to play with different ideas as well as possibilities before coming up with a solution. This ensures that the root of the problem is identified and the most appropriate solution applied. Additionally, brainstorming makes this method appealing, since it does not include any predetermined approaches. Therefore, it makes it possible to deal with the problem conclusively without making assumptions. This paper focuses on the use of idea box creative technique in enhancing business performance. The paper will make use of a personal experience to describe the procedure followed while developing and using an idea box to come up with a solution. Additionally, the benefits and shortcomin gs of using the idea box will be identified. Overview of the Idea Box Technique The Idea box is a morphological analysis technique that was invented by Fritz Zwicky. The technique enables a person to examine all the relationships in comprised in multidimensional problems. Additionally, the idea box helps in generation of ideas. By using the idea box, one generates multiple ideas, which can be combined in different ways to produce different creations. Having several combinations increases the chances of obtaining a workable combination. Designing and Using the Idea Box for Creative Thinking My brother Alex owns a coffee retail shop, which has three coffee outlets. When he initially opened the business, the number of customers grew rapidly since there were no coffee retail shops in the neighborhood. The business activities include roasting of coffee beans, sale of coffee beverages and other soft drinks, as well as sale of snacks. After operating his business for some time, another ret ailer opened a coffee shop a few meters from one of my brother’s outlets. This was a threat to Alex’s business since some of the clients started switching to the newly opened coffee retail shop. I was one of Alex employees and he sought my assistance in developing a way to prevent the loss of customers. Additionally, he wanted a solution that would enable his business attract new customers. We thus decided to use the idea box to come up with possible ways of attracting new customers and retaining the existing ones. To develop the idea box we followed a number of steps. To generate the idea box, you have to identify your objectives. The next step is to identify the parameters of the problem. After identifying the different parameters, one makes a list of variations. This is followed by combining the different variations and examining the different outcomes (Desaeyere, n.d.). We analyzed the problem and wrote it as the caption of the idea box. The idea was to improve per formance of the retail business to retain the existing and attract new customers. We realized that there were quite a number of factors that we hindering maximum performance in the retail business. We thus identified the different areas that required to be analyzed. The areas identified were those that determined the performance of a retail business. After analyzing the problem, we came up with four parameters and