Our friends at the Creative Education Foundation recently held the 70th annual Creative Problem Solving Institute conference (CPSI) in upstate New York, bringing together hungry minds exploring the Creative Problem Solving method of innovation. What an inspiring milestone for creativity and connection!
While Catalyst Ranch has previously opened our doors to CEF for successful one-off events in the past and highlighted their work in our blog (like here and here), we’ve been fans-from-afar of the work and community shared at their weeklong CPSI gathering.
Lucky for us, earlier this year we caught their virtual workshop introduction to Creative Problem Solving. It was an invigorating glimpse into the myriad extrapolations that happen at the in-person conference and deeply spoke to the innovative mindset we champion at Catalyst Ranch.
Here’s what we loved about CEF’s “Being Creative On Purpose” virtual workshop.
As expected, the most impactful aspect was learning the basic framework of Creative Problem Solving.
For a session spanning 90 minutes, we only scratched the surface. But those foundational ideas offered a lot to think about, such as how divergent thinking and convergent thinking must be balanced, and the four steps of the Creative Problem Solving Model (Clarify, Ideate, Develop, Implement) and how they cycle continuously in real world application.
And a lot of the CPS guidance took the form of valuable truth-bomb takeaways:
• The fact that “You’re all creative. It may bubble up differently than someone else.”
• The encouragement to “Sit in the discomfort. It’s normal, and you’ll get through it.”
• And the reminder that “It’s important to look at what’s wrong but when we’re wanting to be creative, it’s important to see what’s not wrong, what’s working and how we can apply that elsewhere.”
We loved the masterful use of time and format for this Zoom.
A workshop is a meeting, and Catalyst Ranch has a high standard for meetings in terms of focus, efficiency and engagement. That said, this workshop was well done. *And not as in cooked — rather, this workshop was cooking!
“Being Creative On Purpose” is clearly a class that the organization does a lot and loves doing. They planned just the right amount of material to go over in 90 minutes flat, and the expectations and attention spans of each of the 16 of us attendees were managed deftly, with a smooth flow of explanation, activity and discussion.
The CPS folks truly know what they’re doing. And on that note…
We were charmed as much as enlightened by our facilitator.
The excellence of an event doesn’t happen without a leader, of course, and our facilitator was Jane Fischer, one of CEF’s Creativity Trainers. Jane definitely made our 90 shared minutes memorable, with personality and humor.
Interspersed in her explanations were funny asides and relatable pop-culture references. We were charmed into learning! We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Great teachers are truly invaluable .
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It’s no wonder Creative Problem Solving has been a trusted model of thought for businesses large and small for decades. We look forward to one day attending the CPSI Conference in person, but in the meantime, we’re grateful for the engaging introduction from the folks at the Creative Education Foundation.
