Thinkpak: A Brainstorming Card Deck

On most teams, you can divide the room into two groups: those "Idea-a-Second" somewhat-crazy, but fun people--and then the "I'm-Not-Very-Creative" gang of introverts. Where are you? Today when many organizations, departments and teams are struggling to do more with less, the need for fresh ideas is even greater. But here's good news: Thinkpak (a brainstorming card deck) can help! Michael Michalko, author of Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition) , is described as "one of the most highly acclaimed creativity experts in the world. As an officer in the U.S. Army, Michael organized a team of NATO intelligence specialists and international academics in Frankfurt, Germany, to research, collect, and categorize all known inventive-thinking methods." The problem says Michalko, "If you always think the way you've always thought, you'll always get what you've always got." The solution: "Everything new is really an addition to or modification of something that already existed. To create a new idea, product, service, process, breakthrough, or whatever else you need, just take a subject and change it into something." S.C.A.M.P.E.R. So this creativity guru recommends you "S.C.A.M.P.E.R" and leverage the nine principal ways of changing a subject: Substitute something. Combine it with something else. Adapt something to it. Modify or Magnify it. Put it to some other use. Eliminate something. Reverse or Rearrange it. The Thinkpak brainstorming card deck has 56 cards including two instructional cards, four or five cards for each of the nine key processes, plus seven cards with creative ways to evaluate ideas. It's a brilliant instant brainstorming system. But caution! It could be dangerous to your boring, status quo! The Thinkpak cards contain "idea-triggering questions based on these nine principles. The questions are designed to focus your attention on your subject in different ways and give you different means of interpreting what you are focusing on. These different ways of focusing will break your habitual thought patterns and let you look at your subject in fresh ways." Did our biblical heroes have access to these Thinkpak cards? Maybe! Think Noah's Ark, water-into-wine, and the Red Sea crossing. In the fast-reading 52-page instructional mini-booklet, the author continues, "You'll generate a quantity of ideas quickly, including ideas that you wouldn't have otherwise considered. Once you apply the Thinkpak questions to your subject or situation, ideas begin to appear almost involuntarily." I used the cards at a strategic planning retreat this month. Fun broke out! Especially when the leaders of one entity played the "Reverse It" card--and suggested they trade real estate with the other entity! Each of the nine principles is illustrated with a memorable story, like the Walkman radio. Sony engineers attempted to design a small portable stereo tape recorder. Nothing worked. Then Masaru Ibuka, honorary chairman of Sony, leveraged several creativity principles to find success--recalling a separate project to design lightweight portable headphones. The Sony chief brainstormer asked, "What if you combine the headphones with the tape player and eliminate the recorder function altogether?" At the time, by combining, eliminating and reversing, the Walkman became Sony's top selling electronic product of all time. Steve Jobs should have been grateful! Fire Your Board! Speaking of eliminating, Thinkpak shares the story of the chairperson of a nonprofit board that "wanted to energize her board members out of their lethargy." So she asked the members to imagine that they were all fired. "Then she asked them to reapply for the board. This shocked the board members and forced them to rethink their knowledge and competencies," and most important, what they needed to bring to the table to truly be effective board members. Should you modify or magnify something? One entrepreneur hands out business cards with one rounded corner, with a tagline, "25 percent safer than most other business cards." Clients keep his card and show others. Ray Kroc, after buying the first McDonald's stand, stored his spuds in the basement but couldn't get the french fries to taste right. The original McDonald family had exposed their potatoes to desert winds that cured the potatoes. SCAMPER Solution: "Modify the storage area. Kroc cured the potatoes by installing large electric fans in the basement." Kroc also employed the Rearrange It approach to differentiate his hamburger stand from all the other box-shaped burger joints. Presto: Golden Arches! So to breathe fresh air into your team's ventilating system (now...there's an idea!), and delegate this creativity tool to a team member. P.S. Where do you dream up your best ideas? One company, referenced in Thinkpak, created a special room with educational toys, games, videos and bean bag chairs--and included baby photos of every team member; a reminder that we are all born with creativity.

They are 56 cards with a 64 pages instruction booklet, here's the fun part, the booklet is full rich experience with the card deck, it makes you start thinking with the scamper on your everyday, it has creativity study cases and a lot of scamper made decisions in the past, like why does the hotdog comes with a bread, the answer is that a frankfurt sales man and his brother-in-law a baker where trying to find out a way to make the frankfurt sales more profitable, because at first they sell it in a plate so people wont burn their fingers with the hot frankfurts, then they tried with cotton gloves, but they were to expensive and some times the customers walk away with the gloves on, so they ask them self, how we can COMBINE the sausages to make people wont burn their fingers when eating it, the conversation between the sausage salesman and the baker was: "what if i baked a long bun and slit it to hold the frank? then you can sell the franks, and i can sell you the buns. who knows, it might catch on." and the hotdog as you know it today was born. The cards have scamper questions so youll be driven into the subject problem to the solution evaluation, then you decide if its worth or not. This is by far one of the best gifts someone has given to me...

Quite frankly, the negative reviews of this product annoy me. This is a great tool when used exactly as it is intended. I've been working with creative thinking methods since the 70s, when I was a design engineer, and needed creative thinking to do my job. Michael's book ThinkerToys has been one of my most valuable books for many years, and the Thinkpak deck is very helpful in making me think of new possibilities for dealing with an issue or problem. I have found that almost anyone can have good ideas, unless they are so rigid and close-minded that they block the process. As for using the deck with children, you certainly should be able to do it, in spite of one negative review saying the deck is only for adults. By explaining to children how to do what the card says, you can teach them to think creatively at a very early age, and I am sure they will floor you with new ideas. And if you can't explain the card so children can understand it, then you yourself do not understand what is being suggested.

If you are facing any problem in your work, your life or business and you are looking for more creative, outside the box ideas this brainstorming deck of cards by Michael Michalko will help you find new connections and creatively solve any problem. ThinkPak comes with a 57 page manual with instructions and strategies to follow when you are using the idea stimulator cards. There a of examples in the little booklet including real life examples where real people have used ThinkPak deck of cards to solve problems and create new inventions. There also many examples used in the manual, from big companies like Mc Donalds, Starbucks and Sony where it is more clearly demonstrated how the creative problem solving methodologies can be used and better understood through real life examples. The manual also includes creative problem solving strategies that will help you organize your thoughts and approach problem solving more strategically rather than just sitting back, looking at the sky and waiting for the big idea to come to you. Asking the right questions is essential in solving any problem you face that something that the great Albert Einstein truly understood and often talked about. The Brainstorming deck of cards use the SCAMPER approach and are basically a series of mainly questions with some examples to help guide you in your creative thinking process. ________________________

This is a SCAMPER pack. So don't expect anything more than that. What Michalko did is to split each SCAMPER manipulation into a few cards that touch some other aspect of it. For example, out of the 56 cards, there are 5 Magnify cards. Each touches a differnt angle: Explanation&Example card, general questions card, Exaggeration card, broadening card, and adding value card. Some of the cards have too much text on them and are good for getting to know the manipulation but not for ongoing work. It is nice having SCAMPER on cards that you can shuffle and use randomly when ideating. But as SCAMPER is such a commonly used method I expected to get more methods in this pack. There is a also a small instructions booklet that gives some extra techniques.

This is my favorite purchase of all times on Amazon. As an educator in a project based learning system these cards revolutionized the creativity and innovation in our projects. Most people believe that you are either born creative or you were not. Nonsense. Use these cards to tackle any problems or projects in your life and you will amaze yourself with the ideas you generate. Although I know it is probably strange, I carry this deck with me everywhere I go, every day. This is my most valued tool in being innovative. Love, love, love these!!!

This gorgeous deck of 56 colorful cards complements the highly acclaimed book "Thinkertoys" by the same author. It will immensely help you in augmenting your Creative Skills and challenge the way you think. However reading the material alone won't help. You have to put the ideas in practical use and practice the material on a regular basis to get maximum benefit. A small accompanying booklet is an added bonus. I only wished the cards were made of plastic material for durability.

I used this for a group exercise at work and their creativity levels went up. So much so that I had to give them the cards to keep.