Creative Post-its

Brian is a founder and director of Creativity Unleashed Limited, with experience of training in creativity in a wide range of organizations. He is author of a wide range of books from the creativity guide Instant Creativity (with Paul Birch) to a wide range of popular science titles including A Brief History of Infinity and Before the Big Bang. He has recently written more on green issues and the corporate approach to the environment in Ecologic.

The humble Post-it Note provides one of the most simple but flexible tools for creativity. They are particularly valuable at three stages in the creativity process.

Understanding the problem

The first step when attempting to a solve a problem or generate new ideas is to be clear just what it is that you are dealing with. It is very easy otherwise to end up solving the wrong problem. By assembling facts about the problem, each on a separate note and then assembling them on a wall it is easy to gather together and structure your thoughts about the problem.

Idea generation and structuring

Even more effective is to use Post-its at the idea generation stage. One of the hardest things in a group creativity session is keeping track of ideas and collecting similar ideas together. Write each idea as it comes up on a Post-it note (you can give everyone in a group their own pad) and stick on a wall. Then group ideas to merge them together before they are evaluated.

Idea selection

During idea evaluation an effective technique to help a group to come to a consensus on selecting ideas to implement is to give each member of the group a number of small Post-its (say five or ten each). Each of these acts as a vote - all a person's votes can go on a single idea, or they can be spread according to their opinion of the ideas. Make sure that the voters are aware of the criteria being used. Always use 'appeal' as one - but you may have to bring others like risk, cost, benefit etc. into the equation.

Special notes

If you feel that the rectangular shape of conventional postits leave you thinking within the box, Banxia Software has developed oval shaped postits. We are frankly rather doubtful that the benefits are anything more than cosmetic, but if you want to make a point and break out of that rectangular thinking, check Banxia's products.

A whole book

If you are interested in learning more about using Post-it's in creativity there's a whole book on the subject: see below for more information.

Rapid Problem Solving Through Post-It Notes by David Straker

Post-It notes are an ideal medium for identifying and manipulating chunks of information. They are particularly suited to group problem solving where both the information and the process need to be shared. David Straker's book will introduce you to refreshingly simple, practical, yet highly effective techniques. Click an Amazon button for more:

Creative Post-its

Brian Clegg