It's been a good day at SPA 2007 - I attended a Creativity workshop this morning, which was pretty neat. The idea was this: we got a problem statement, and then we did some brainstorming exercises to either find solutions or better understand the problem. Our group had a "Lotus Blosson" exercise:

• Toss out an idea
• Find eight related ideas and ring them around it
• Then pick one or more of those, put them out, and repeat

We didn't find solutions, but we iterated towards understanding the problem. Here's a shot of one of the other groups, using lots of paper on another approach:

Earlier, we had a little exercise that went like this: Statements on a board, handouts with other statements. Find the ones that are "opposite" and tack them up:

So that was a fun session - I might well try some of the ideas out at work.