Productive Thinking has been invented by Tim Hurson and is presented in his book Think Better. It encourages you to use creative and critical thinking skills to look at a problem and come up with better solutions.

The Productive Thinking model is a six-step problem-solving and opportunity-finding methodology:

Step 1: Ask "What is going on?"

• What is the Problem?
• What is the Impact?
• What is the Information?
• What is the Vision?

Step 2: Ask "What is Success?"

Uses a tool called DRIVE to imagine how things would be if the issue were resolved

• Do: what do you want the solution to do?
• Restrictions: what must the solution NOT do?
• Investment:- what resources can be invested?
• Values:- what values must you live by? (e.g. environmentally friendly, etc.)
• Essential outcomes: what are the essential outcomes?

Step 3: Ask "What is the Question?"

Step 4: Generate Answers

Step 5: Forge the Solution

Uses a tool called POWER to develop the selected solution into something more robust.

• Positives: what's good about the idea?
• Objections: what's bad about it?
• What else?: what does it remind you of?
• Enhancements: how can what's good about it be made better?
• Remedies: how can the things that are bad about it be corrected?

Step 6: Align Resources

Uses the wall of time to develop solution into an action plan.

The Productive Thinking model builds on 50 years of research by the Creative Education Foundation, 30 years of research by NASA, and five years of field testing. It combines the situation analyses and ideation strengths of CEF’s methodology with the success criteria and project mapping techniques of NASA’s iDEF methodology.

All the templates in this collection have been reviewed and approved by Tim himself and we are adding new ones regularly.