Project Genesis

HOW TO MAKE IT MULTI-SENSORY

Your trainer has already used some activities and games with you. In groups brainstorm as many different kinds of training room / classroom games and activities as you can.

DAY-02

Numbers don’t lie!

Objective:

• 
  Making mistakes with glee
  

• 
  Easing into the Creative State of mind
  

Materials needed:

None

Duration:

5 minutes for the briefing

15-20 minutes for the game

10 minutes of the debrief

Sample Briefing Lines

“I’d like to see a show of hands. Has anyone made a mistake? Or is it just me?”

“Has anyone made more than one mistake? Do you know that every creative genius;

Edison, Disney, Ford, Einstien – has had far more unworkable ideas than workable ones?

The differentiator is that they were willing to take risks”

“If we want to be creative, we have to catch up with those geniuses. I’m not saying that

we should try to make mistakes. I am saying we must be willing to – agreed?”
Process:

• 
  The group stands in a horshoe formation. Count off down the line so that each player has a number
  
• 
  The first person (Number 1 in the lineup) calls out someone else’s number: “Twelve!” That person immediately calls out someone else’s number: “Five!” That person quickly calls out another number “Eight!” and so on. The first person to hesitate at all, or call out a wrong number (either their own or one that doesn’t exist), relinquishes his or her place and goes to the end of the line. That person and all those who were behind him or her in the lineup now have different numbers. The game resumes.
  
• 
  As it continues, people will constantly “blow it” and have to move to the end of the line. But there’s a hitch: Rather than grimacing or groaning they must pump their fists and say “Yes!” with triumph, and trot proudly to last place. Everyone else must applaud admiringly.
  
• 
  Call time after about 5 minutes
  

Debrief Questions:

• 
  How did it feel to ignore minor failures?
  
• 
  Major mistakes cause pain, loss and embarrassment to others. Minor mistakes cause only embarrassment and only for you. Doesn’t saying “Yes!” relieve everyone present of the burden of feeling unnecessarily uncomfortable on their team member’s behalf?
  
• 
  Isn’t it important that we ignore the minor mistakes to take up the bigger challenge of creativity?
  

DAY-03

Free Association

Objective:

• 
  Getting rid of the mental block
  
• 
  Realising that creativity often stems from quantity, and not quality
  

Materials needed:

Flipchart, Whiteboard, Marker

Duration:

2 minutes for the briefing

10-15 minutes for the activity

10 minutes of the debrief

Sample Briefing Lines

“We’ve already seen that we’re happy to make mistakes and that we all do! Now, how

any of us have had an unoriginal idea? [Show of hands] Wow – that many? Great! Looks

like we’ll excel at the next activity!”

Process

• 
  Have your learners come up with a goal or objective they need to fulfill.
  
• 
  Write the objective in the center of the flip chart, preferably in a diagonal slant.
  
• 
  Have learners call out as many words and phrases that occur to them w.r.t the objective. Originality is not required. All words that come to their mind should be said aloud. Words should come thick and fast. Write everything they say.
  

• 
  When the group has exhausted its storehouse of words, stop. Look at what you’ve got and select the word or phrase that interests you most. Write this in the middle of a new flip chart.
  
• 
  Repeat step 3 and 4 two to five times. The idea is to take the group further and further off on a tangent. Continually remind them of the original objective. Keep going till you hit goal, or stumble upon a concept that relates to your objective, and is – yes – original! Have the group give themselves a hand when they accomplish this.
  

Debrief Questions:

• 
  Why did this process work? That is, how did we come up with original ideas when we weren’t trying to be original? [Answer: We tried to have lots of ideas, not original ones.]
  
• 
  What keeps most people from having more original ideas? [Answer: They don’t stay with it – they quit when their ideas seem to be going nowhere.]
  
• 
  What have you learned about originality?
  
• 
  KEY POINT: Are you an original, innovative person? [Answer: Yes!]
  

DAY-04

Methods of Creativity
Evolution

This is the method of incremental improvement. New ideas evolve from other ideas, new solutions from previous ones, the new ones slightly improved over the old ones. Many of the very sophisticated things we enjoy today developed through a long period of constant evolution.

Eg: Automobiles
Synthesis

With this method, two or more existing ideas are combined into a third, new idea.

Combining the ideas of a magazine and an audio tape gives the idea of a magazine you can listen to, one useful for blind people or freeway computers

Eg: restaurant + movies = multiplex

Revolution

Sometimes, the best new idea is a completely different one, a marked change from the previous ones.

Eg: Air-Deccan & Kingfisher
Reapplication

Look at something old in a new way. Go beyond labels. Unfixate, remove prejudices, expectations and assumptions and discover how something can be reapplied. One creative person might go to the junkyard and see art in an old model T transmission. He paints it up and puts it up in his living room.

Eg: Paint used as glue, hair-pin as a key, clip as a screw driver
Changing direction

Many creative breakthroughs are achieved when attention is shifted from one angle of a problem to another. This is called creative insight.

Eg: Archimedes’s discovery of buoyancy is an apt example

DAY-04

The Splattered Walls
Objective:

• 
  To introduce the group to the concept of brainstorming
  
• 
  To bring out the importance of idea generation in analytical thinking
  

The problem:

The new head of a public sector unit in Bihar in Eastern India found that the corners of the newly painted walls of the brand new corporate office were being splattered red with chewed betel nut juice.

Whats the conventional solution?
What’s the creative solution?
What questions should we ask?

DAY-05

Challenge # 1

Find what each of the following words has in common.

Sign

Letter

Score

Common Denominator: _______________________________________________

Challenge # 2

Insert the missing numbers:

1/5 8/4 7/11 ?/?
Answer: _______________________________________________

DAY-05

Challenge # 3