The document discusses concepts related to innovation and creative thinking, including: 1) The "catalytic mechanism" concept of empowering people to take action rather than waiting for others. 2) The importance of divergent thinking, including deferring judgement, striving for quantity of ideas, bending reality, and combining/building on ideas. 3) Examples are given to stimulate creative thinking like storytelling and games. Visualization is also discussed as a technique.

2. “Catalytic Mechanism”
Those of you that are familiar with the Jim
Collins’ (author of the book, “Good to Great”) have
heard of the concept of the “catalytic
mechanism.” It’s quite a powerful concept that
truly gives power to people to DO something
rather than wait around for policy or
management to do it TO THEM. This is your
chance to create the Training Manual/Tool of the
century. Do not worry about the
layout, font, structure, formatting (we will take
care of that).
CREATE! INNOVATE!
MORE LIGHTING, LESS THUNDER

3. What do you see?
I hope you see a black dot...but do you see anything else?

4. Maybe you also see...
• Overhead view of a cup of coffee
• A very dirty ball
• An open sewer cover
• A tire that hasn’t had the hole cut out of it yet
• A train in a tunnel that forgot to turn on its headlight
• A bad thing to find in the bottom of a boat
• A bullet hole in your computer screen)
• A hole that a bird will eventually pop his head out of?
You obviously see where we’re going with this.
Creativity and Innovation do not accept the first
thing that comes to mind.
...Boring

5. Training and Development Word Smash:
Trevelopment
There is a fable of a teacher and a student: The
teacher with his eyes covered by a cloth and his
feet placed securely on the earth; drew a bow with
all his energy and released the arrow - aiming
directly at a rose hanging from a tree. The arrow
struck the large oak tree with a thud, missing its
mark by an embarrassingly large distance. The
teacher looked at the unimpressed student and
said “Today’s demonstration is meant to reinforce
my advice on the importance of setting clearly
defined objectives. you will never be able to hit a
target that you cannot see.

6. “Divergent Thinking”
I didn’t make that up – No Limit Thinking!
1. Defer Judgement - “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn
better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible” - This was the response from a Yale
University management professor to a paper written by Fred Smith proposing a
reliable overnight delivery service. He proved the professor wrong by founding
Federal Express.
2. Strive for quantity – The more ideas you come up with the more likely one or more
of them will be good ideas.
3. Bend Reality – What Would Steve Jobs Do?
4. Combine, piggyback, build on ideas – The combination of combining an engine with
a horse carriage or a horseless carriage, also known as the automobile!

7. Some questions to get the brain
warmed up...
1. Do they have a Fourth of July in England? Yes or No?
2. Some Months have 31 days. How many have 28?
3. A farmer has 17 sheep, all but 9 die. How many are left?
4. How many birthdays does the average man have?
5. If there are 3 apples and you take away 2, how many apples
do you have?

8. Trail Blazing Innovation
• Story Telling, Fables, Real Expositions
• Games – there are Thousands of board games on the market, 70 of those are
Monopoly.
• Use Visualizations
• Nike revolutionized fitness goals – Apple Piggybacked (maybe up for debate on
who needed who) and together they created Nikefit!
• Learning is like Climbing a mountain – Mountain Climbing is broken down into
stages – Base Camp, Camp 2, Camp 3, Camp 4 and the Summit – (there’s a reason
for these stages...so you don’t die and of course so you make it to the top)
(Answers: 1. Yes, it comes after the 3rd of July -2. Twelve – 3. Nine ;) – 4. Just one, the day of his birth –
5. Two, you took them remember)

9. “Nothing is impossible, with the
possible exception of skiing through
a revolving door.”
A visualization does not have to be a picture!