Creativity Blitz | Creative Thinking

Strategically focused Creativity Blitz – with critical and creative thinking

Try a strategically focused Creativity Blitz to get the ideas you want, right now!

creativity-blitz-australia A Creativity Blitz is a 2-hour to 2-day strategically targeted frontal assault on any important issue where you need exciting new ideas and solutions fast, by applying some key components of the design thinking process.

The more specific the issue the better, whether it is an urgent or nagging problem or challenge, an opportunity that has come up, or just a possibility you want to explore – a creative blitz can help. In these rapidly changing times, there has never been a greater need for new ideas, more relevant solutions, and greater collaboration.

Strategic issues facing many organisations include: supporting Sustainability, embracing Diversity, recovering from 2020, and more. So if you face challenges that need a facilitated Strategic Thinking approach – fast, this is for you.

It is not the same as our 90-Day Innovation Challenges, where teams work over a period of time to address major issues, applying a full design thinking process. Instead, a Creativity Blitz is designed to create a sudden, possibly radical shift in your thinking on any specific focus, just when you need it.

This could be as simple as a 2-hour lateral thinking session, using provocation and movement to blitz ideas on a specific issue, or extend to a couple of intensive days. This is much like a design thinking idea generation session ‘on steroids’.

In a 2-day format a blitz is more like a design thinking Hackathon or Innovation Scrum, where a mix of people from different fields work together, sometimes in a team competitive way, to develop innovative new solutions, strategies, products or services.

We’ve done many of these each year since starting Mindwerx in 1998, and each one is exciting and different.

Using the best Design Thinking and Deliberate Creative Thinking methods available, we work with you to break you free from any blockages in your current thinking. So whatever your focus we can get you the breakthrough ideas you need.

To discuss how Mindwerx can design and facilitate a blitz for you, contact Innovation Facilitator and Mindwerx Co-founder Bill Jarrard at bill@mindwerx.com.

[easy-social-share]

Here are just some of the many Creativity Blitz sessions we’ve facilitated…

The Director of a newly formed Marketing Team wanted to be sure his new team would go way beyond the ideas they’d successfully used in the past. The state based organisation had very high brand recognition and very poor brand reputation due to a number of recent mishaps. His stated aim was to have his team of 8 generate no less than 500 new ideas, before they even started looking at a new marketing strategy. The Blitz was scheduled for 4-hours one morning, and by lunch they had the ideas they needed. Today, that organisation is a recognised leader in its field.
A group of animal health scientists wanted some ideas on where to focus future research efforts, so 80 scientists participated in a 2-hour Creativity Blitz, and got about a hundred harvested unique ideas. Over the next year they would meet informally and individuals explored ideas that interested them, and sometimes teaming with colleagues, they went on to define previously unconsidered areas of valuable research. And they had some fascinating quick wins along the way.
The Innovation Lead in a small R&D organisation wanted us to join them for 90 minutes each week for three weeks, to facilitate some high Provocation exercises. The aim was to shake them loose from traditional things they would likely have worked on. In week two the team turned up to work to find the chief scientist working in the lab in his pyjamas and dressing gown (thank goodness). Apparently the provocation we’d done the day before had emerged as a fully-fledged idea at 3 AM and he just had to work on it right away.
A Sales team, selling $100K+ telecom systems was experiencing a drop in sales, that saw them drop from Number One to Number Two in their field. Fewer prospects, fewer conversions, and importantly for them dropping sales commissions. In a 4-hour Creativity Blitz the 25 strong Sales team generating more than 100 ideas, that turned into a dozen actionable strategies to overcome sales objections, build client loyalty, and beat the competition. They returned to being Number One in the Market within six months.
A young would be entrepreneur wanted to convince a Business Angel to fund his patented product idea. The angel was a colleague of ours and recommended he call us. We planned a 2-hour workshop, inviting 20 people from a range of areas, including right off the street, as the idea was around a retail product. The group generated about 90 ideas, which they presented quickly, and we let them go with gifts in hand. Ideas were then sorted and harvested, and over the next 6 months 12 distinct products in three product lines were conceived and production was being planned. He got twice the funding initially sought, and we can see the product in craft shops today.
An international confectionary company, know globally for its signature chocolate bar, wanted ideas on how extend the product range building on its already impressive success. In a fun filled 3 hours over evening dinner Creativity Blitz, about 50 people from all areas of the company used Idea Boxes and lateral thinking to generate a range of ideas, some wild and many that we see in the shops today.
A government policy group wanted to develop some new ideas on how to better formulate and successfully deploy new policies. Seemingly a tough challenge given the usual bureaucracy involved in policy deployment. A two-day hack was planned, with day one being a large group blitz of ideas, leading into day two where several small teams started working on emerging strategies. It was a tough challenge, breaking the usual mindsets in the area, but the team managed to at least push thinking in some new directions with those above and around them.
A regional NFP Art Gallery was faced with the challenge of dropping numbers of visitors, and more disturbingly a 30% drop in the number of volunteers so necessary in keeping such an institution going. They felt their number one problem was the limited space available in the Gallery to create exhibits that attracted the people and visitors they needed. Bringing together the Board, staff, artists and other stakeholder, a one-day workshop blitzed ideas on what they might do, and by the end they began to see that their gallery wasn’t the two-room heritage building they had, but the 32,000 square kilometre area with 80,000 plus residents as their new ‘gallery’.
A doctors and nurses’ association asked us to assist their day-long conference with some short blitz activities to look at ways of improving hygiene in hospital, specifically the washing of hands by everyone coming into a hospital, from doctors to visitors. In a series of Deliberate Creative Thinking exercises through the day, they amassed a range of ideas and workable strategies to take away for further development.
And we have lots more examples done over 17 years since Mindwerx did it first Creativity Blitz.

So, a Creativity Blitz is just that – a frontal assault on any pressing issue where ideas are needed. The more specific the better, whether it is a problem or challenge, or an opportunity or possibility, we use design thinking and Deliberate Creative Thinking tools to structure the workshop you need.

To discuss how Mindwerx can design and facilitate a blitz for you, contact Innovation Facilitator and Mindwerx Co-founder Bill Jarrard at bill@mindwerx.com

Bill and the Mindwerx team designed and facilitated a program to unleash the creative powers of ANZ’s Institutional teams with outstanding business results.

David Holmes, Senior Consultant at The Mosaic Company (formerly with ANZ Bank)

Bill Jarrard and Mindwerx have been at the forefront of providing the latest creativity and innovation products and services for many years. This, combined with a passion and dedication for assisting others, makes them one of the leading innovation practitioners in Australia.

Sebastian Salicru, Sebastian Salicru – Business Psychologist, Innovation & Change Leadership

LEARN MORE