by Carlo Scodanibbio http://www.scodanibbio.com Nowadays, "traditional" resources such as finance, products, technological strength, management abilities, or marketing/commercial assets seem to be no longer sufficient or anyhow adequate to guarantee continued operational performance to Enterprises, Businesses, Professionals and even Individuals. This course will show that only one factor makes the difference between failure and success in any industry, in any business, in any venture, in any project, in any undertaking. That factor, common denominator to all other traditional and modern parameters of performance and success, is Creativity. This course will enable participants to understand fully the "mysteries" of Creativity and the processes that produce valuable ideas - and then to deploy operationally such tools and techniques in three very practical and actual fields: Creative Problem Solving, Search for Opportunities, and Continuous Improvement. Course main Topics: *The structure of human mind and its main mechanisms. The two hemispheres theory. Converging Intelligence and Diverging Intelligence. The limits of traditional logics. *Fantasy, Imagination, Thinking and Creativity. *How to develop Creative Imagination. Which are the factors that inhibit it. *The Idea: the "Bing-Bang". What is an Idea. How to stimulate Creative Imagination to produce valuable Ideas. *Reactive Thinking and Projective Thinking. Why are we so used to deploy Reactive Thinking. Why Projective Thinking is so essential. *Techniques to stimulate the production of ideas individually and in team: Brainstorming and its main rules and features - the "6 Thinking Hats" method - Association of Ideas through the Association Laws - Question Asking Techniques - The Adaptation Technique - The Modification Technique - The Replacement Technique - The "4 Operations" Technique - The "Reshuffle" Technique - The "Inversion" Technique - The "Combination" Technique - The "Attributes" Technique - The "Forced Relations" Technique - The "Discovery Matrix" Technique - The "Automatic Writing" Technique - Lateral Thinking and its main tools: the "Creative Challenge", the "Block", the "Escape", the "Drop", the "Provocation" - the "Secret Computer" Technique. *Main fields of deployment of Creative Thinking: Creative Problem Solving - Generation of Opportunities - Continuous Improvement *Traditional Problem Solving and Creative Problem Solving - main differences. The origin of Problem Solving. The "Cognitive" process. The "Decision-Making" process. The K-T method: basic principles. Closed-ended problems and Open-ended problems. The general approach to Creative Problem Solving in 5 stages Inquisitive - Creative - Evaluation - Implementation - Monitoring). TPS: Total Problem Solving techniques, or, no problem can remain unsolved. *Generation of Opportunities for the Industry, Professionals, Businessmen, Entrepreneurs and Individuals. What is an Opportunity? Thinking and Opportunities. Behind any problem there is always an opportunity. "Turn worries into wampuns". The role of Creativity in Opportunity Search. Managing Ideas and developing Opportunities. Why Opportunities are missed? Tools and techniques for creating Opportunities. Search of Opportunities in the Small Business. Evaluation of Ideas and their transformation into real Opportunities. *The Continuous Improvement approach in Industry: the strategic role of Creativity. Flash concepts on continuous Performance Improvement (Measuring actual Performance - Setting the gap - Making it happen). Kaizen and Kayrio styles of Improvement. Foundations of Kaizen: team-work - "poor-man-approach" - brain power. What does real Improvement mean. Practical applications of the Kaizen approach in industry. To see full details of this e-course and of all other e-courses offered by Carlo Scodanibbio visit http://www.scodanibbio.com/site/e_courses.html