Seven important steps to creatively solve problem or conduct an innovation workshop

As a guy who has attended innovation workshops & conducted few of them, I am writing briefly few steps show casing the important steps involved in conducting creative problem solving sessions with a team or conducting a innovation workshop

1)A small creative activity to make the participants relaxed.

2)State objectives of the workshop/meeting to make everybody clear on the objective

3)Identifying the problem(s)/Formulating creative challenges & discuss elaborately about them, especially the boundaries of it.

4)Divide people into smaller teams to get different & multiple ideas at the end of session.

5)The most important & place where bulk of the activity is done, Ideating, here is where the participants are encouraged to Identify a problem’s root cause, and find the paths that point toward a solution look at the problem from various angles like asking them to look between seemingly unconnected things, using visual thinking techniques, Simulate and explore complex systems, interactions, and dynamics.

6)Idea focusing & refining by asking the teams to prioritize the most feasible idea that has come up in ideation session & focusing on it. Typically the end result of this session may look like this

7)All the groups coming together, giving a small presentation of there idea, which includes pros & cons of the groups idea. Usually the audience/other teams are encouraged, to give feedback after the presentation to make ideas work better.

The bonus 8th step

8)After this, Draw up an action plan & implement it if the entire process is for benefit of real life problem. But before going ahead, see that all the stake holders are involved, especially the ones who where left out during the session since they might add somethings which were missed.