Thinking outside the (elevator) box

For Fun Friday, Anna showed us how to literally think outside an elevator box.

We used the exercise of the "Pokey Elevators" as an entry into discussing better ways to think of Creative Solutions. From the Elevators Case Study, we learned that sometimes problems are not what they appear to be at first thought, and that sometimes coming up with an answer to a problem requires us to get to the deeper issues. What you need to do is think about the problems, not just the solutions, in a novel and creative way. We saw that although people might be complaining about how slow elevators are, in reality the problem is that they are just bored while they wait, a completely different problem, that has a much easier solution. We finished with some tips on Creative Thinking- including turning a problem "upside down", "working backwards" from a goal, "inviting randomness" into your thought process and of course, taking a nice, long, piping hot shower.