Connecting and blogging while here has been even more challenging than I suspected! But I'm going home today and I'll definitely be updating over the weekend to catch up....I've had a lot of interesting experiences and conversations, including a really fascinating one with some guys who presented on SIT, a very different creative problem-solving process than CPS that looks like it'll be a real paradigm shift if it catches on....I guess you could really call it "innovative creativity"!!

I went to an impromptu night-time session called a "Nite Flite" on Monday night and had a terrific experience. Maybe I found this so terrific because I had a couple of beers before I went, but I've had a lot of non-drinking hours since then to think about it, and I still think it's great.

The presenter (again, it was Jon Pearson, the Robin Williams of creativity consulting) had us spend 15 seconds writing on a piece of paper a thought we had never had before. Later, at almost the end of the session, he asked us to turn the paper over and, again in about 15 seconds, write down a thought about the meaning of life.

Then at his instruction we crumpled up our papers, tossed them up in the air like Mary Tyler Moore's beret, and left the room! That was the end!

Later I talked to a fellow participant who said this exercise can be useful in ideation sessions and brainstorming meetings if everybody also is asked to pick up one of the random pieces of crumpled paper and use whatever is written there as a starting point from which to create.

Now I realize I found this so powerful because it reminded me of blogging. Isn't this what we're doing?! Writing bits of thoughts, both profound and not so profound, and sending them out for strangers to pick up at random and use as a starting point for their own thoughts....which they then send out too, and even better, an interesting conversation can be started between random blogging strangers (or would that be random strange bloggers!)....blogging of course is a much better distribution method than crumpling up your written thoughts and tossing them into the wind, or even making a paper airplane out of them and flying them off to Buffalo or wherever....!

I'm in Buffalo, New York, which is oddly enough a hotbed of creativity (no, really!). Every summer the Creative Education Foundation holds its Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) here, and I am here to continue the process of becoming certified as a CPS facilitator. I also have my daughters with me (15 and 17 years old), who are attending a "youth" version of CPSI.  And yes, we are all three staying in the same hotel room, a situation that in itself demands some amount of creative problem solving, especially innovative shower scheduling. But it's fun (no, really!).....for some reason having to do with the movie The Ice Storm they are this week referring to each other as Charles.

Posting will be chancy because I'm using a cranky laptop from my company's "pool" of road-use laptops and I'm on dial-up. But I'll keep at it as best I can.

I'm keeping my eye out for continuations of the creativity vs innovation conversation we've been having here. Innovation per se is rarely mentioned here -- CPSI is all about creativity, from becoming more creative yourself and making your company more creative, to practicing creativity as something of a religion. But to me, innovation (the subject) is lurking around every corner and subtexting every sentence.

Yesterday I went to a jaw-dropping session led by Jon Pearson (imagine Robin Williams as a teacher), and coming away from that I had the thought: Creativity has to do with seeing things differently. Innovation can be (though isn't always) the result, the changed behavior that occurs as a result of seeing things differently.

Frank Patrick blogged on my reports from CPSI's Winterfest so far: "While I might quibble with her comment that a specific 'CPS process' is 'the basis for almost all other creativity and innovation processes,' as an example of common confusion of correllation for cause-and-effect, her description of cycles of convergence and divergence does apply to the TOC Thinking Processes, and probably serves as a common thread -- a meta process -- to any problem solving effort."

That's certainly a reasonable quibble. I did say "almost," though!

Patrick goes on to document similarities between TOC (Theory of Constraints) and CPS, mostly regarding the cycles of convergence and divergence I described yesterday. He ends, "In and out, up and down. Hopefully, not round and round."

My metaphor of the two-step dance didn't serve me as well there as it might have. "Round and round" isn't exactly correct, except in the sense that in solving a problem we are going 'round the hermeneutic circle (or spiral).

Patrick's absolutely right - an up and down motion is definitely at play. Part of our Springboard training was how to frame questions that would move the inquiry up and down. "Why" questions tend to build and move upward in more abstract directions. "How" questions drill downward; they focus and lead to specificity. This was described as moving "up and down the ladder."

But I don't want to give you all the impression that this was all work! We also played games that were meant to foster creativity, open our minds, bring us together as a team, and energize us. In one game we were all blindfolded and asked to find and pick up a rope, then arrange ourselves in a perfect sqaure while still blindfolded and holding on to the rope. The 16 of us managed to get square in 21 minutes.

In another very fascinating game we paired off and "sculpted" each other. That is, one person was "clay," allowing the other person to arrange their limbs whatever way they wanted (with some ground rules for the clay's comfort, of course!) that would showcase a "creative spirit" in the clay. This fostered an amazing sense of intimacy between the partners. The person who "sculpted" me looked at me more thoroughly and carefully than probably anyone has in a long long time, as she gently placed my limbs this way and that, trying to get at whatever she was seeing in me. Finally she stood back, cocked her head to one side, and muttered to herself, "Beautiful!"

We actually did have a little graduation ceremony, which we were allowed to plan ourselves. At the end we tossed our blindfolds (the ones we had used for the "making a square" game) in the air like some graduates toss their caps.

So ended Springboard training, though the conference goes on through the weekend with some "extending activities" scheduled. But I'm flying home tomorrow morning - my daughter is playing Yente the Matchmaker in her high school production of "Fiddler on the Roof" and I don't want to miss it!

My question’s been answered: Our Springboard facilitators are teaching us the dance that gives CPS its power.

We’re also learning how to frame the questions that drive this process, and the tools that help all along the way. But the basic step is in fact a two-step:

Step One - Diverge, or make a list

Step Two - Converge, or make choices

We dip and sway across complex problems, dancing in and out of the lists and lists and lists we make. Diverging and converging at every stage of the process. “Round and ‘round the problem we go, developing a goal statement here, honing a problem statement there, brainstorming criteria, facts, ideas, and, finally, a solution and an action plan.

Tomorrow, we will practice on each other until hopefully by the end of the day we will not only be able to do this on our own, we will actually be graceful as we lead a client or a group through this dance.

Sorry for the blog silence from here of late. In addition to watching hours of NASA press conferences (Ron Dittemore is now my hero, and I'm not alone there), I have been getting ready to travel to where I am now - in San Diego, at the Creative Problem-Solving Institute's Winterfest, which starts today.

A little CPSI background: This foundation exists to teach creativity skills, most notably using the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) process developed by Dr. Sid Parnes and Alex Osborn (who coined the term "brainstorming"). CPS is the basis for almost all other creativity and innovation processes. It's also the basis for the Triz creativity and innovation software products.

I'll spend the next three days with the same group of 18-22 participants also going through what's called Springboard training in CPS, since although I've had some creativity training, Springboard is a prerequisite for all other CPSI programs. Updates to follow!

LATER #1:  While I was waiting for the opening remarks to begin, an older gentleman with a twinkle in his eye and no nametag hurried in and sat down at my table. "Hi, I'm Sid," he announced to us all. It was Dr. Sid Parnes, one of the creators of CPS. His main interest these days: Planning for next year's 50th anniversary of CPSI.

LATER #2:  A terrific keynote presentation by Kerry Ruef of The Private Eye, and certainly the first time in years I've seen a presentation given using transparencies and an overhead projector! Ruef wielded these low-tech tools masterfully and artfully. We were each given bags containing two jeweler's loupes (singly, each offered 5X magnification; we put them together for 10X) and a variety of everyday items. Looking closely at an object through a jeweler's loupe, Ruef said, "helps strip the ordinary of its cliche."  She stepped us through her process of working with the questions ("What else does it remind me of? What else does it look like?")  she calls "the tools of the private eye." Next step: Use analogy and its "compressed forms - metaphor and simile" to theorize - and create. Powerful and fun.

Here's Ruef in her own words:

In a hot summer day, five years ago, I'd been thinking about the enormous power of the metaphor mind, the mind that sees the world but through the lens and network of analogy. The doors of my studio were open and bees sometimes swept in and began banging their heads against the skylight. The bamboo outside was rustling like taffeta skirts and it was an altogether lovely day to be thinking.

LATER #3:  Springboard participants were split into groups, so we'll spend the remainder of the daytime sessions this week working with the same 20 or so people. Three facilitators led us through the six steps of CPS, teaching us at the same time the process and tips on how to facilitate the process in a group setting.

I've already had some training in the "generate ideas" step since we use that in our ideation sessions, so I'm focusing on picking up more insights and tools there and learning more about the rest of the steps in the CPS process. The six steps are:

1. Identify goal, wish, or challenge
2. Gather data
3. Clarify the problem
4. Generate ideas
5. Select and strengthen solutions
6. Plan for action

We'll be delving more into these six steps the next two days. It's clear to me that the CPS process is complex when done correctly, but still I wonder what we'll do to learn it that will take up two entire more days?!!