Problem Solving, Communications & Innovation Dr. Brian Mac Namee

Dublin Traffic Exercise Dublin traffic is terrible! Come up with 3 ideas to help solve Dublin’s traffic problems 1st idea should be easy to implement within 1 to 2 months 2nd idea should be more long term Go wild for the 3rd idea! Stephen’s Green East Stephen’s Green West Clanbrassil St O’Connell Bridge

Problem Solving, Communication & Innovation The exercise demonstrated what this course is all about How do we solve problems? What are the best ways to think? How do we communicate? Between colleagues during problem solving Communicate our solution after problem solving Innovation The goal of problem solving! How to think!

But Surely We All Already Know How To Think? We all assume that we know how to think as it is something we do every day However, a lot of the time we are mistaken! Let’s see how easily we get confused

Chase The Euro Three men pay €30 as a group to rent a room. The clerk discovers he has overcharged the group €5 and he gives the bellboy the money to return to the three men. The bellboy decides that €5 is too hard to divide by three and then he gives each man a euro and keeps the remaining €2 for himself. The three men have paid €9 each, the bellhop has kept €2, making €29. Where did the extra euro go?

Chase The Euro - Solution Words and the way they are arranged play a significant role in the way we approach problems This problem is structured so that we focus on how to divide the €5 by 3 We’re looking at the wrong things

Chase The Euro – Solution (cont…) To find the missing euro: Subtract the €3 the bellhop returns to the men from the original €30 This leaves €27 Now subtract the bellhop’s stolen two euro (27 - 2 = 25) Now all the money (€30) is accounted for - €25 for the room, €3 returned to the men, €2 stolen by the bellhop

How Many Fs? FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

How Many Fs? The necessity of training farmhands for first class farms in the fatherly handling of farm livestock is foremost in the minds of farm owners. Since the forefathers of the farm owners trained the farmhands for first class farms in the fatherly handling of farm livestock, the farm owners feel they should carry on with the family tradition of training farmhands of first class farms in the fatherly handling of farm livestock because they believe it is the basis of good fundamental farm management.

How Many Fs? (cont…) The answer in the first case is 6 and in the second 36 For some reason our brains concatenate the letters ‘o’ and ‘f ’ in the word ‘of ’ so we can’t count them The following slide illustrates a similar phenomenon

Can You Read It? Aoccdrnig to rseerach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Can You Read It? (cont…) According to research at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole.

Can You Believe Your Eyes?

So, What Are We Going To Do? Learn How to Think! We will examine a set of techniques to aid in successful problem solving and innovation Brainstorming Critical Path Analysis Leapfrogging Deductive & Inductive Reasoning We will also look at communication techniques Six Hats CoRT Techniques Mind-Mapping Polya’s Heurisitcs

We Can Change Your Life! This all smacks a little of self-help! The important thing is to cherry pick from this course There’s good stuff in here so take what you can The rigidity and artificiality of the thinking techniques is what makes them useful

Impressive People Use This Stuff Thomas Edison, holder of 1,093 patents set himself the following quota: Minor invention every 10 days Major invention every six months Da Vinci apparently used streamwriting to solve problems and come up with unique ideas Einstein used to set aside specific time in his day simply to sit and think

Da Vinci’s Notebook

One of these people changed the world! Spot the Genius One of these people changed the world! Which one?

Miscellanea Me: Lectures: Assessment: Dr. Brian Mac Namee E-mail: Brian.MacNamee@comp.dit.ie Office: K-026A Lectures: Wednesdays 19:00 – 22:00 Assessment: 100% continuous assessment => no exam More on this to come later on

Books Etc We will take bits and pieces from a while range of books, articles etc Don’t worry about buying anything for now Here are some of the books we will take bits from

Questions QUESTIONS?