Paper Clips

In last trimester, I had a subject called Managing Innovation And Technology. The lecturer was a friendly, beautiful lady who seems so classy and stylish. Her style of lecturing was interesting as well. At the beginning of the class, she started out by asking the students to introduce themselves and thus moved on to a discussion on what we, the students think is the difference between invention and innovation.

She let us all to give our opinions and answers without really analyzing or making corrections to them. Then, she took out a paper clip from her pencil case and asked us what is its use. As we all know, paper clips are meant to hold two or more papers together. However, she asked us to come up with different creative uses for paper clips.

It took us some time to come up with many uses for that single paper clip but the session really went on interestingly. Some of the answers given were so unique and different, that we have never thought of it before.

When it came to my turn, I could not think of anything much than to actually say that paper clips can be used as earrings and to further enhance its look, we can add on some extra decorations using beads and stones. After a while, I thought back about my idea and actually tried to work it out. Well, it turned out well actually. Thanks to the lecturer, I get to work out my creativity and thus producing a new use for paper clips.

Now that is what we call as doing creative thinking warm-up exercise during a brainstorming session.