Abstract
Dealing with problem-solving has been a growing challenge in teaching engineering and over the career of these professionals. To increase the ability to understand a problem and consequently improve the quality of the solutions, an exercise was proposed to students of an MBA program, and they have experienced some challenges on interpreting briefing and procedures, to improve creativity and ability on solving problems. The implicit goal was to deal with the understanding of procedures to perform activities in a company and the exercise showed different ways of communicating a scenario and, consequently, different reactions depending upon the briefing. Preliminary results of the exercise indicated that the higher the degree of uncertainty on the problem definition or on an activity description, the more often association is attempted through individual repertoire, covering more varied options. In the case of a tight briefing, the creative effort appears to be overlapped by the execution of simple operations, resulting on a deviation from the required goal. Through a brief theoretical framework, this essay intends to validate these perceptions and increase the use of techniques that improve creative and problem-solving capacity in product design and development.
Highlights
As society deals with more complex problems since a long time ago, to be precise on its interpretation and innovative in its solutions became one of the greatest challenges of most varied professionals. Nezu and D'Zurilla (1981) state that a good approach on their proposed 4 initial stages on problem definition (1—clear description of all available facts; 2—identification of relevant and objective facts; 3—goals definition; and 4—explanation of why the situation is considered problematic) has a significant importance on the efficacy of the stages that follow in the process of generating alternatives, decision making and verification of proposed solutions
In order to introduce the concept of problem solving to students in an MBA program (“Corporate Information Management” course, PECE’s MBA in Product and Service Management and Engineering (Escola Politécnica da USP), April 2015 and April 2016), an exercise focused on interpreting procedures or demands was designed to demonstrate how the capacity to solve problems or perform activities may change based on the context
This kind of exercise has been applied in a different format in other years—basically defining one single target and providing different ways to reach it, after some literature review regarding creativity paths, this exercise was proposed
Summary
As society deals with more complex problems since a long time ago, to be precise on its interpretation and innovative in its solutions became one of the greatest challenges of most varied professionals. Nezu and D'Zurilla (1981) state that a good approach on their proposed 4 initial stages on problem definition (1—clear description of all available facts; 2—identification of relevant and objective facts; 3—goals definition; and 4—explanation of why the situation is considered problematic) has a significant importance on the efficacy of the stages that follow in the process of generating alternatives, decision making and verification of proposed solutions. In order to introduce the concept of problem solving to students in an MBA program (“Corporate Information Management” course, PECE’s MBA in Product and Service Management and Engineering (Escola Politécnica da USP), April 2015 and April 2016), an exercise focused on interpreting procedures or demands was designed to demonstrate how the capacity to solve problems or perform activities may change based on the context This kind of exercise has been applied in a different format in other years—basically defining one single target and providing different ways to reach it—, after some literature review regarding creativity paths, this exercise was proposed. In Item 4, some tools are proposed to facilitate—according to the analysis—a broader understanding of a problem and more creative ways to the solutions, and in item 5, a taxonomy is presented to better understand which tool should be used in each case
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