6.8.5 Generating Alternatives

Generating alternatives involves cataloging the known options (a rational act) and generating additional options (a rational and intuitive act).

To the extent that you can clearly identify and formulate useful options, you can maximize the chances that a problem will be solved satisfactorily. The purpose of generating alternatives is to ensure that you reach the selection stage of CPS with enough potential solutions. Creative techniques for generating alternatives can help you develop many more possible solutions than you might come up with otherwise.

Generating alternatives is partly a rational and partly an intuitive exercise. It's rational in that you follow a series of steps. It's intuitive in that these steps are designed to unleash your in­tuitive powers so that you can use them effectively. In this stage, you should be more interested in the quantity of new ideas than in their quality. For most people, creativity reaches its highest levels in this stage of CPS. When Apple Computer Corporation's engineers designed the "Newton", the firm's new personal digital assistant computer (a small computer designed to help people in a wide range of jobs), they generated hundreds of alternative capabilities for the machine. In the end, several major ones were chosen over the others’.