Creativity and innovation seem to come more naturally to some people and organizations than others. You don’t have to be at the mercy of nature, however. Individuals and organizations can adopt structured methods for improving creativity and generating more innovative solutions. Different phases of the problem-solving process call for different approaches and structured methods can help you select the most appropriate and productive approach. Idea generation, for instance, requires a divergent process that encourages plenty of ideas, whereas idea selection requires a convergent process of sifting through many ideas to pick the best.

Unfortunately, few people make use of any structured creativity processes. Organizations are more likely to use a formal method, but probably have not carefully chosen it from among the many available. Several good sources exist from which structured creativity and innovation methods may be chosen. One excellent source is the book (related to the current item), 101 Creative Problem Solving Techniques: The Handbook of New Ideas for Business.

The current piece has the advantage of being available online. This web resource links to 192 creativity techniques in five categories: Problem analysis and definition, idea generation, idea selection, idea implementation, and processes (covering most of the previous 4 areas).

To help you solve a problem, for instance, you might make use of Assumption Busting, Assumption Surfacing, Backwards Forwards Planning, CATWOE (a mnemonic for a checklist for problem or goal definition), Chunking, or Why Why Why. For idea generation, you might try out Brainstorming or Talking Pictures. For idea selection, your options include Anonymous Voting, Consensus Mapping, Idea Advocate, NAF (new, appeal, feasibility), or Sticking Dots. Methods for structuring the overal creative process include Creative Problem Solving (CPS), F-R-E-E Writing (fast, raw, exact-but-easy), Productive Thinking Model, Synectics, and Thinkx.

Unfortunately, there seems to be little real testing of most of these methods. You will have to try out several of those that seem promising, rather than being able reliably to choose from a list of truly evidence-based creativity methods.