MBA research has revealed that all creativity and problem solving workshops use a variety of techniques to do essentially four things: a) unblock the mind, b) tap into tacit knowledge, c) trigger the mind into working at various cognitive levels and d) apply a) and b) and c) to the areas of problem identification and idea generation. Individuals and groups are given a set of mental and physical tasks or exercises designed to elicit ideas. Creativity and problem solving workshops can be useful: working in groups can produce a lot of laughter, the coordinator can help reduce the negative elements of group dynamics and personal psychology that hinder creativity but, most importantly, the coordinator forces you to think of ideas (extract tacit knowledge, form relationships) using various exercises. However, you can't attend a workshop everytime you need an idea, so this software contains more than 300 of those exercises, which can be performed alone on a single computer or in a group over a network.

Each exercise requires only five ideas. Each exercise requires you to look at the problem or the solution in a different way. Each exercise is chosen randomly. Thus, only by performing five exercises, it is possible to quickly produce 25 ideas. By persisting through 50, 100, 200, 300 exercises, it is possible to generate a substantial idea pool.

Research has revealed that by requiring five, short ideas and performing many, different exercises the mind is forced to frame-break and reduce path dependency; multiple areas of the subconscious are accessed to a significant depth in short bursts; the mind is tasked and stimulated at various cognitive levels; energy is conserved (intensely thinking of ideas can be tiring work). As it can be said with great confidence that simply being prolific produces good ideas, by completing 20, 50, 100, 150, 200, 300 or more exercises, you will greatly increase the chance of producing a quantity of quality ideas. Further, the more exercises you perform, the more unblocked and confident you become and the more fun and radical will be your ideas. The randomness of the exercises means that you can start again without fear of repetition.

More than 300 well known and original exercises are included, such as REVERSAL, ATTRIBUTES, SCAMPI, ENHANCEMENT, REDUCTION, RANDOM INPUT, ASSIMILATION, various ASSERTION techniques, various UNBLOCKING techniques, PROVOCATION, REFRAMING, various MATRICES, HOWTO combinations, OVERSIZE, UNDERSIZE, GENIUS, FEEL ME, DISTORTION, MUD-SLINGING, TWO-WORDS, METAPHOR, AERIAL, SWOT, SECOND BEST, SHOUT, CONCEPT FAN, STORYTELLING and STORY FORMING scenarios and much more.

The variety of exercises means that any form of problem can be addressed or any type of idea can be generated - from thinking of a new brand name to saving your marriage to developing a character for a film script to coming up with new products to finding something original to say at your next business presentation. Even complex problems that require new knowledge and have practical impediments can be solved, usually by incrementally toying with various ideas until radical leaps are made. Apply these techniques to any problem at your convenience and never be stuck for a good idea again.

Once you have generated a pool of good ideas, the next step is innovation (idea selection, development and commercialisation). The MBA dissertation Managing Creativity and Innovation discusses and illustrates quantitative techniques for valuing ideas.

This release contains 372 creativity + 117 creative writing exercises. Works on Windows 9x, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003. All users will need to unzip the file before they can run setup.