The Creative Problem Solving Process

By Peter Lloyd

The creative problem-solving process is as old as humanity—make that primate-ity. Creativity, as in the ability to solve problems, arose in primates like us millions of years ago. The way to solve problems hasn’t changed much since our ancestors began rubbing stick together to make fire. That’s why some of the oldest advice on the subject holds true today.

The first and most formal and definitive presentation of a systematic problem solving process emerged as recently as the 1950s with the research of adman Alex Osborn and Sidney Parnes. They developed the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process, which divides what some us of do naturally into six steps or stages:

Objective Finding
Fact Finding
Problem Finding
Idea Finding
Solution Finding
Acceptance Finding

They further divide their six steps into three phases. The first three steps fall under Exploring the Challenge. Idea Finding occupies the Generating Ideas phase and the last two come under Preparing for Action. Which reminds me of the legendary Feynman Process:

Write down the problem.
Think very hard.
Write the answer.

Which is what creative people (that’s all people, actually) do as naturally as breathing when they successfully solve a problem. Osborn and Parnes did not invent problem solving, they simiply analyzed and described it. It’s the same thing grammarians have done to the languages invented by illiterate humans.

As expected, then, the Osborn-Parnes outline has not changed much over the years. Others have refined it but it remains fundamentally in tact. For example, in one of the most illuminating and definitive books on the subject of creative problem solving, Techniques of Structured Problem Solving, Arthur B. VanGundy re-outlines the process, providing specific thinking techniques for each of his steps:

Mess Finding
Data Finding
Problem Finding
Idea Finding
Solution Finding

More recently, Tim Hurson created the Productive Thinking Model in Think Better.

The Creative Education Foundation at Buffalo State University has mothered the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process for more than 50 years as if it were the Holy Grail of Creativity. And in a way, it is.

Where to Learn the Creative Problem Solving Process

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

Next Workout »