Creative thinking generated

Brainstorming is an excellent technique for tapping the creative thinking of a team quickly to generate, clarity, and evaluate a sizable list of ideas, problems, issues etc. The team leader stimulates the team to create numerous ideas irrespective of their quality, which are then clarified and evaluated. 

Creative thinking and the generation of ideas need to he stimulated at both the individual and company level. 

The generation of new ideas is key to opening up the vista for innovative research, so any methodology which helps the process is welcome and valuable. Over the last forty years an extensive and growing list of techniques for creative thinking have been devised, as illustrated in Table C2 [C-12]. 

Laying out the logic of the incident in this manner generates creative thinking. For example, the condition that the truck is a source of ignition may lead to an eventual recommendation to brining in the chemical in a new manner, say by use of a pipeline. 

The paper also recommends that engineering faculty be conscious of fixation and its adverse effects and educate students. In the long run, as educators, we must reflect and reformulate the curriculum to balance fundamental understanding with the need to foster creative thinking skills so that the next generation designers not only analyze designs but also synthesize innovative solutions. 

The production of effective recommendations for the prevention of recurrence is unlikely to be straightforward in these complex accidents and incidents so that techniques such as Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) may be required to analyse the causal sequences. In addition, creative thinking techniques such as brainstorming and systems thinking may be required to generate a suitable range of recommendations. 

A good way to begin researching your topic is to generate a list of questions you will research. Think of things you want to learn about your topic, why they are important, and why you want to learn them. This activity should get your creative juices flowing. 

Everybody can develop some kills in creativity by thinking laterally and by using specific techniques for idea generation. 

Some call this technique a Concept Fan, or Concept Abstraction and Alternatives. For more information, see "Generation of Alternatives" in Lateral Thinking Creativity Step by Step, by E. de Bono, New York Harper Fbperbacks, 1973. 

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