Better Ideas, Better

Results:
How To Create Better, Faster Ideas with
Creative Problem Solving (CPS)

JD Meier
In/JDMeier
“You are never too old to set another
goal or dream a new dream.”
– C. S. Lewis
“To me, ideas are worth nothing
unless executed.
They are just a multiplier.
Execution is worth millions.”
-- Steve Jobs
 About This Guide
Innovation is a game of ideas + execution to create new
value that gets adopted and sticks.

People that think ideas are a dime a dozen shop in the

wrong store.

On Microsoft Satya Nadella’s innovation team, we needed

to create big ideas to disrupt industries and create new
value and extreme growth.

As head innovation coach, I had to evaluate how to setup

innovation to scale across teams around the world. The
ideation part is hard. Creating high value ideas is hard.
But it’s also where you learn and validate your backbone
for future value.

I’m a fan of speed and simplicity. When I first met Dr.

Roger Firestien, I was an instant fan of his process that he
shared in his book, Create in a Flash. His real-world
experience of more than 40+ years coaching innovation
and helping leaders find their business breakthroughs,
provided an anchor for me in the sea of never-ending
innovation advice.

I hope with this guide to share his approach and inspire

your innovation journey.
The Book That Changed How
Ideation Gets Done

If you need to create better, faster ideas, this is the

book that shows you how.
 Use This Process to Create
Something Great

“Use this process to make your life better. To

create something great. To do something you’re
passionate about – something that you believe
you could not possibly do. I’ve consistently seen
it work for students and clients, and that’s’ the
true power of the process. Creative Problem
Solving can make impossible feats possible.”
-- Roger Firestien
Creative Problem Solving (CPS)
at a Glance

Here are the primary steps, according to Roger

Firestien:

• Step 1: Clarify the Problem

• Step 2: Generate Ideas
• Step 3: Develop Solutions
• Step 4: Plan for Action
Step 1: Clarify the Problem
“A problem half stated
is half solved.”
– John Dewey
 Step 1: Clarify the Problem

Diverge: First, you identify a goal, a wish, or a

challenge. Then compile all you know about the
goal/wish/challenge to look at the whole picture.

Tools: Creative Questions

Converge: Choose the best problem to solve

 Diverge

Generate many ideas for solving the problem

selected.
“If you want creative ideas, you
need creative questions. Lots of
them.”
-- Roger Firestien
 What’s Keeping You from Your
Goal / Wish / Challenge?

Roger frames it up nicely when he puts it like this:

“When you ask a good question, you get good

results. Ask a lousy question, get lousy results.
Ask a creative question, you get creative results.”
 A Problem is Not a Bad Thing
Roger shares insight into what makes Creative Problem
Solving so powerful:

“When Alex Osborn, the inventor of brainstorming, first

coined the phrase Creative Problem-Solving in 1953,
the idea was unheard of. A problem is no good.
Something to be avoided, solved, dispensed of as soon
as possible. A problem was certainly something you
did not want to play around with, or get creative with. A
problem was bad.

And that’s the hook.

A problem is not a bad thing. Every problem is just a

gap from where you are, to where you want to be.

The revolution in Osborn’s approach is that by stating a

problem in a creative way, you increase the likelihood
of generating creative solutions.”
 Put Forth What You
Want to Create

As Roger puts it:

“A creative question puts forth what you want to

create, not what you want to avoid.”
To Generate Creative Questions,
Write Down 15+ Ways to Restate
Your Problem

The language you use to describe a problem

determines whether you create a good question,
a lousy question, or a creative question.

Roger recommends using the following phrases

to begin your creative questions:

• How might…
• How to…
• What might be all the ways to…
• In what ways might I…

Then generate lots of questions to get different

views on the problem.
 Guidelines for Creating
Generating Creative Questions

Roger shares guidelines for generating creative

questions:

1. Defer judgment
2. Strive for quantity
3. Seek wild and unusual questions
4. Combine and build on other questions
 Ask “Why?” and “What’s
Stopping Me?”

Sometimes it helps to ask just a couple simple

questions to see the problem in a new way.
Roger recommends asking two simple
questions to help redefine the problem:

1.Why?
2.What’s stopping me?

Roger writes:
“The purpose of generating lots of different ways
to define the problem is to challenge the initial
definition of the problem. Sometimes it helps to
generate lots of creative questions. Sometimes
just asking a couple of simple questions will help
you to see the problem in a new ways.”
 Example of “What’s
Stopping Me?”
Roger shares an example of how his friends, Dave
and Frank, used the “What’s stopping me?” question
to get their innovation consulting company off the
ground.

Roger writes:
• Goal: It would be great if we had a successful
innovation consulting business.
• What’s stopping us? We don’t have a name for the
company.
• What else is stopping us? We don’t have an office to
work together.
• What ELSE is stopping us? We don’t have a plan to
get new clients.
• What ELSE is stopping us? We don’t have a
company phone number.
• What ELSE is stopping us? We haven’t identified our
key products.
• What ELSE is stopping us? We don’t have copy for
our marketing.
 Converge

Choose the best ideas to refine and develop.

Step 2: Generate Ideas
 Step 2: Generate Ideas

Diverge: Generate many ideas for solving the

problem selected.

Tools: Brainstorming, Brainwriting, Forced

Connections

Converge: Choose the best idea to refine and

develop
 Diverge

Generate many ideas for solving the problem

selected.
 Directions for Idea Generation

Roger shares some guidelines for idea generation:

1. Defer judgment
2. Strive for quantity
3. Seek wild and unusual ideas
4. Build on other ideas
 Practice Getting Creative by
Warming Up
Roger shares some of his favorite warm-up topics:

• What might be all the ways to improve a

refrigerator?
• How to get a hippopotamus out of a bathtub?
• What might you do with ten tons of Jell-O?
• How to get a bear out of my living room?
• How to get a racoon out of a mini-van?
• What might you do with 50,000 bowling balls
that are flat on one side?
 Think of Ideas Like
Photographs
Roger shares a story of a conversation he had with
3 photographers at a wedding:

Me: So how many pictures did you guys take

tonight?
Boss photographer: We took about three.
Me: Three? You guys were all over the place
tonight.
Boss photographer: We took 3,000 pictures.
Me: 3,000? Really, 3000?
Boss photographer: Yes, 3000. We show the
bride and groom about 900. They pick about 50.
We delete the rest.
 Set a Quota

If you want to get new ideas, set a quota.

Roger shares insight into the power of different

quotas:

“Between 40-50 is a reasonable quota if you want

to generate ideas to improve your current
practice. More than 50 will help you to begin to
stretch your thinking, but if you want to
completely redefine the work you are doing and
create some disruptive ideas, a quote of 100 ideas
or more is not unreasonable.”
 Brainwriting
Here are the steps of the brainwriting process
according to Roger:

1. Participants write the problem

statement/creative question at the top of
each grid.
2. Use the guidelines for generating ideas: defer
judgment, strive for quantity, seek wild and
unusual ideas, and combine and build on
other ideas.
3. Participants write three ideas on the first
open row of the brainwriting grid. One idea
per box.
4. After writing three ideas, participants place
the form in the middle of the table and pick
up a different grid that another participant
has started. If there are none, they start with
another blank grid. With extras in the middle,
n one has to wait for other members of the
group. A grid will always be waiting for them.
 Forced Connections:
Seek Wild and Unusual Ideas

According to Roger, Forced Connections is the

essence of creativity; the practice of combing
ideas that don’t appear to be related in a new way.

This method helps you get ideas flowing when

you’re stuck.
Step 3: Develop Solutions
“You can respect an idea without
implementing it.”
– Roger Firestien
 Step 3: Develop Solutions

Ideas have become possible solutions. They are

evaluated for their strengths, potential
implications, and weaknesses (concerns).

This stage of the process polishes out the rough

spots in your idea.

Diverge: After concerns are identified, generate

many ways to overcome them to make them
stronger.
Tools: Pluses, Potentials, Concerns, and
Overcome concerns (PPCo)
Converge: Select the best way to refine the
solution
 The PPCo Technique
PPCo stands for Pluses, Potentials, and
Overcome concerns.

Start by stating the idea you want to develop in the

form of an “idea phrase,” beginning with the
words, “What I see myself doing…”, then follow
these steps:

1. List at least three good things about the

idea. (These are the pluses).
2. List the potentials.
3. List the concerns about the idea.
4. Overcome your concerns about the idea.
Generate ways to overcome each one of
them, one concern at a time.
 Make the Right Mistakes:
From Trial and Error to
Trial and Learn
Here’s how Roger frames up the journey as a
chance to embrace mistakes to learn and
improve:

“A music director once told me that when he

rehearsed, he preferred the musicians to make
mistakes confidently. He wanted the mistakes to
be big and loud so he would notice them quickly,
provide coaching and help the ensemble improve.
In the end, the concert audience would only hear
the orchestra at their best.

When you’re working toward a solution, don’t

avoid mistakes on the path. There are plenty of
“right” mistakes that can be made. In fact, the
greatest mistake possible is trying to avoid
mistakes at all.”
Step 4: Plan for Action
 Step 4: Plan for Action

Diverge: Generate all the potential actions you

might take to put your solution into action
Tools: Planning for action questions
Converge: Choose the best actions to implement
your solution
 What is an Innovation?

In his classic book, Diffusion of Innovations,

Everett Rogers studied how new ideas get
adopted into the world.

According to Rogers, “An innovation is an idea,

practice or object that is perceived as new by an
individual or other unit of adoption.
 Increase Your Chances of
Adoption

According to Roger Firestien, you dramatically

increase your chances of your idea being
adopted, used or put into practice, if you can
show Everette Roger’s characteristics of
innovation:

Relative advantage: How much better is the

innovation than the product it is replacing?
Compatibility: Is this consistent with your values
or past experiences?
Complexity: Is the idea easy to understand?
Trial Ability: Can you try before you buy?
Observability: Can you see it?
 Generate Action Steps
Roger shares guidelines to generate action steps:
1. Defer judgment.
2. Strive for quantity.
3. Seek wild and unusual actions.
4. Build on other actions.

Build them into a plan that identifies:

1. The action you want to take.
2. Who is going to do the action.
3. When the action is going to be done.
4. Who you’ll need support from or who you
need to report to as you move forward.
 Use Questions to Get
Your Idea Adopted

Roger shares a set of questions to help you

generate your potential action steps:

1. How might you make the solution easy to

understand?
2. How might you demonstrate how your
solutions is better than what is currently being
done?
3. How might you demonstrate the advantages
of your solution?
4. What might you do to gain acceptance of your
solution?
5. How might you earn other’s enthusiasm for
your idea?
 Final Thoughts
Creative Problem Solving (CPS) is more than a tool.

It’s a mindset shift that turns obstacles into

opportunities.

Roger Firestien is a master of the process and has

turned it into a pragmatic approach that’s inclusive and
high impact.

The steps outlined here—clarifying, generating,

developing, and planning for action—empower you to
approach challenges with creativity and confidence.

Every problem is a chance to move from where you are

to where you want to be.

Use CPS to transform your approach to innovation, and

make it a habit to ask better questions and drive better
results.

Lead with purpose, and create solutions that stick.

Get the Book
 RogerFirestien.com

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In/JDMeier

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