Samvinas HelpThe process at a glance
Creative Problem Solving is usually drawn as four stages — Clarify, Ideate, Develop, Implement — but in practice the work breaks into six steps: Clarify is big enough to take three of them. This page lays all six side by side for one specific job: working out where to enter.
Because you don't start at step one. You assess the situation — what does the group already have? — and enter at the step whose starting condition matches. Read down the Start here when… column until a row sounds like your situation.
| Step | Start here when… | Sounds like… | You leave with |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Frame the goal (Clarify) | you want to create, improve or invent something, but it isn't defined yet | "I wish…" · "It would be great if…" | a goal, wish or challenge the group owns |
| 2 · Gather data (Clarify) | you have a goal but haven't explored the territory around it | "What do we know?" · "What have we tried?" | the key facts and feelings that shape the challenge |
| 3 · Find the problem (Clarify) | you want to pinpoint the best problem to solve | "How might we…?" · "In what ways might we…?" | a well-defined question naming the problem worth solving |
| 4 · Generate ideas (Ideate) | you have a clearly defined problem and need ideas for it | "What might be all the ways to…?" | a shortlist of ideas the group wants to pursue |
| 5 · Develop solutions (Develop) | you have promising ideas that need to become workable | "What I see us doing is…" | a developed, detailed solution |
| 6 · Plan for action (Implement) | you have a solution and need buy-in and a path | "Who does what by when?" | a concrete plan of action |
Inside every step, the diverge–converge heartbeat runs at least once: widen first, then choose. Here's what that looks like per step.
1 · Frame the goal
Diverge on wishes: ambitions, irritations, daydreams — "I wish…", "It would be great if…". No solutions yet, just appetite. Then converge on a challenge that passes three tests: the group cares about it, can act on it, and it genuinely needs new thinking — if a known fix exists, go do that instead. Samvinas tools: a Brainstorm of wishes, Word Cloud.
2 · Gather data
Diverge on the territory: What's the story so far? What's already been tried? Who's involved, and how do they feel about it? What would ideal look like? Then converge on the handful of findings that change how you see the challenge — those travel with you through the rest of the process. Samvinas tools: Brainstorm as a data harvest, Five Whys to dig under the surface.
3 · Find the problem
Diverge on question framings: turn what you learned into many candidate problems, phrased as invitations — "How might we…?", "In what ways might we…?", "What might be all the…?". Ask "why?" to go broader and "what's stopping us?" to go narrower (see framing problems as questions). Then converge on the question that names the problem actually worth solving — often not the one you walked in with. Samvinas tools: Five Whys, a Brainstorm of questions, then Voting to pick the frame.
4 · Generate ideas
Diverge against the clarified question, with the ground rules in force — judgement deferred, quantity first, wild welcomed, building encouraged. Push past the first wave: the obvious ideas come early, the interesting ones after the group thinks it's finished. Then converge by highlighting: mark what stands out, cluster it, restate it. Samvinas tools: the generating tools, then Voting, Ranking or Clustering.
5 · Develop solutions
Take the shortlist and make it strong. Start by telling the solution story: describe the idea in the present tense, as if it's already running — "What I see us doing is…". Detail attracts strengths and flushes out real concerns. Then work it with PPCO: pluses, potentials, concerns phrased as questions — and an overcome for each concern that matters, taken one at a time. Samvinas tools: PPCO and its ALoU / LCO / PMI relatives, Elaboration, Evaluation Matrix.
6 · Plan for action
Diverge on actions: everything that might move the solution forward — steps to take, ways to make it easy to understand, ways to show its advantages, people whose acceptance it needs. Then converge on the key actions and pin them down: who does what by when. Samvinas tools: Backcasting, Sign Up, Stakeholder Map.
This six-step framing follows the Osborn–Parnes tradition of CPS — see the lineage note on the principles page. Back to the principles refresher · or the facilitator guide.