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Creativity exercises

  • 1.  Creativity exercises

    Posted 06-21-2011 15:40
    I'll second Eric on Thinkertoys.  When I started using it I had the fortune of a seasoned manager who was planning to buy out his company in the class, and he liked the book a lot and told the class that it saved his company a lot of money.  This gave the book credibility.  Some students will tend to find some of it a bit too far out.  That is one reason I suggest giving students a range of possible exercises (chapters) to do.  Further, although the book makes this clear, it's important to link each exercise to a particular challenge that the user is trying to overcome.
    I haven't used Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur.  It's a more focused creativity book - focused on business models, of course, and it IS a creativity book despite the generic title.  I might use it in the Fall - haven't decided yet.  Certainly the topic of business models tends to give students trouble.

    Alex Stewart, Ph.D.
    Coleman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship
    Marquette University
    Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881
    Office: 414 288-7188