CPS has been used by many well-known multinationals from Frito-Lay and 3M to B.F. Goodrich and Toyota. It is a field-proven way to solve problems in a more structured and thorough way. CPS is useful at every stage in the problem solving process from the, often ignored, problem identification stage through idea generation and refining those ideas to generate a viable solution. The CPS process even includes implementing the solution. CPS uses both divergent and convergent cognitive processes at each stage to access a broad spectrum of ideas and then focus on applying them to the problem at hand.

Interestingly, certain people tend to be better suited to particular stages of CPS than others. Stage 1 people struggle or lose interest at Stage 4, for instance, and Stage 2 folks find Stage 3 tedious. The optimum innovative team comprises individuals who, together, excel at all stages of CPS.

Creative Paths adds a new dimension to this well-established problem solving technique by incorporating Spherical Thinking™ and by applying the Group Affiliation Model of Creativity™. The result is a powerful, innovative way of generating multiple viable solutions to problems and applying them to achieve organizational goals.

CPPS is explained and explored in the Creative Thinking Workshop. This workshop gives participants the opportunity to apply this powerful process to their own organizational challenges and to see how others apply it to their own situations.

The Creative Paths’ Creative Thinking Workshop provides a valuable education environment from which to take powerful innovative techniques back into your organizational. However, it can also be useful to bring in a CPPS expert to work one-on-one with company personnel to generate organization-specific solutions, and Creative Paths also offers this option.

Solving problems can be a rather haphazard process. We might spread out the data that we have available and, using our knowledge and skills, we might try to plot a deductive path from our data to a viable solution. We may also allow ‘intuition’ to play a lesser or greater role in the solution choice.

This ad hoc approach may produce satisfactory solutions some of the time, but it has several drawbacks. First, we don’t know how exhaustive we have been regarding what the problem really is and what are its causes. Second, we may not have examined all the possible problem solutions; and, third, the solution may have ramifications that we did not anticipate, some of which may be negative and some positive.