1. Problem Solving, Communications & Innovation
Dr. Brian Mac Namee

2. 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

3. 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!

4. 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

5. 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?

6. 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

7. 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 ( = 25)
Now all the money (€30) is accounted for - €25 for the room, €3 returned to the men, €2 stolen by the bellhop

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

9. 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.

10. 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

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. Can You Believe Your Eyes?

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. Da Vinci’s Notebook

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

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

20. 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

21. Questions
QUESTIONS?