Reading time: 15 minutes · Key authors: Treffinger & Isaksen · Mumford & Reiter-Palmon · Oppert et al. · Scott, Leritz & Mumford · Keywords: creativity problem solving · creative thinking · Creative Problem Solving · CPS · problem solving method · divergent convergent thinking · complex problems · innovation · lateral thinking
Almost every problem-solving method taught in schools, universities, and companies shares one assumption: that the problem is already correctly defined. That the thinker’s job is to find the right answer to a question someone else has already formulated with precision.
The problem is that most real problems don’t work that way.
The problems that actually matter — in business, in professional life, in education, in communities, in organizations — are what researchers call ill-structured problems: problems where there is no single correct definition, where available information is incomplete or contradictory, where no objective criterion exists to verify that a solution is the “right” one, and where any intervention generates unexpected consequences that change the problem itself.
Faced with this type of problem, conventional analytical techniques fail. Not because the people applying them lack intelligence, but because those techniques were designed for a different kind of problem entirely.
This article presents the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) framework — its theoretical foundation, its structure, the evidence on its effectiveness, and the concrete implications for any professional or educator who wants to transform the way they approach complex problems.
The Problem With How We Solve Problems
Before explaining CPS, it is worth understanding why conventional problem solving has structural limits.
Most traditional problem-solving approaches follow a linear logic: identify the problem → gather information → analyze options → choose the best → implement. This process is perfectly adequate for what Rittel and Webber (1973) called tame problems — problems that have a definable solution, clear success criteria, and a verifiable end state. The medical diagnosis of a bacterial infection is a tame problem. So is the multiplication table.
But the same authors identified another category: wicked problems. A wicked problem is one that has no definitive formulation, where each framing of the problem reveals new sub-problems, where there is no correct solution but only more or less adequate ones, and where each attempted solution has consequences that change the problem itself. Educational inequality is a wicked problem. Talent retention in an organization is too. Most real strategic challenges are.
Contemporary research confirms that the cognitive processes required to address these two types of problems are qualitatively different. Mumford et al. (1991), after reviewing multiple models of creative cognition, identified eight core processes involved in most episodes of creative problem solving: problem construction, information gathering, concept selection, conceptual combination and reorganization, idea generation, idea evaluation, implementation planning, and monitoring. The first of those processes — problem construction — is the most critical and the most consistently overlooked.
Why Defining the Problem Matters More Than Solving It
One of the most counterintuitive and best-documented findings in creativity and problem-solving research is that the quality of the solution depends fundamentally on the quality with which the problem is constructed before any attempt is made to solve it.
Murugavel and Reiter-Palmon (2018), in a study published in Frontiers in Psychology (PubMed Central, PMID 30455654), investigated the effect of problem construction on the creative processes and outcomes of work teams. Their abstract describes the central finding:
“Although research on the benefits of problem construction within the creative process is expanding, research on team problem construction is limited. This study investigates the cognitive process of problem construction and identification at the team level.”
The study’s results showed that teams that actively engaged in the process of constructing and defining the problem before generating ideas produced more original ideas than teams that began directly with solution generation. The implication is clear: investing time in properly defining the problem is not a trivial preparatory step — it is a cognitive intervention that qualitatively improves the originality of the solutions generated.
This conclusion is supported by decades of research on experts versus novices. Reviews by Mumford and colleagues consistently show that experts spend more time than novices structuring and formulating a problem before searching for solutions, and that the most successful scientists spend more time defining the problems they find interesting before beginning to investigate them. High-level creative ability does not reside in generating many ideas quickly: it resides in framing problems in ways that make it possible to generate truly original ideas.
What Is Creative Problem Solving (CPS)?
Creative Problem Solving (CPS) is a methodological framework developed over more than six decades specifically to address the kind of complex, open-ended, and ill-structured problems that conventional methods handle poorly.
Its origins trace back to 1953, when Alex Osborn — the originator of brainstorming — published Applied Imagination, in which he first articulated a systematic process for facilitating creative thinking oriented toward problem solving. Sidney Parnes extended and academically validated that work, and the model evolved over decades into what is now known as CPS Version 6.1™, developed by Donald Treffinger and Scott Isaksen at the Creative Learning Center.
Treffinger and Isaksen (2013), in an article published in the International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity and accessed in full text from ERIC, define CPS with precision:
“CPS builds on both creative and critical thinking (in harmony with each other). The CPS Version 6.1™ framework incorporates guidelines and specific tools for generating ideas (‘creative’ thinking) and focusing ideas (‘critical’ thinking), and involves four components (Understanding the Challenge, Generating Ideas, Preparing for Action, and Planning Your Approach) and eight specific stages.”
CPS Version 6.1™ comprises four main components:
1. Understanding the Challenge: encompasses three stages — Constructing Opportunities, Exploring Data, and Framing Problems. This component, often the most underestimated, is dedicated to ensuring the team is working on the right problem, not merely the stated problem.
2. Generating Ideas: the stage of maximum expansion of possibilities, where many options are produced without prior judgment, using divergent thinking tools.
3. Preparing for Action: comprises Developing Solutions and Building Acceptance, where ideas are transformed into concrete plans and resistance to implementation is anticipated.
4. Planning Your Approach: the components of Appraising Tasks and Designing Process allow teams to adapt the CPS process to the specific characteristics of the problem and context.
What distinguishes CPS from other methods is its emphasis on the deliberate alternation between divergent thinking (generating many possibilities without filtering) and convergent thinking (selecting and refining). Treffinger and Isaksen are explicit: CPS is not merely an idea-generation technique. It is a complete process that integrates creativity and critical thinking “in harmony, not in opposition.”
The Evidence: CPS Works in Real-World Contexts
The relevant question for any professional or educator is whether CPS produces real, measurable results, or whether it is simply an appealing pedagogical methodology. The evidence accumulated over six decades is compelling.
Treffinger and Isaksen (2013) synthesize the empirical basis of the model:
“CPS tools are proven (having been used successfully for more than six decades and supported by extensive research), portable (readily learned and applied across a variety of situations by people of all ages), powerful (able to produce important changes in one’s life and work), practical (applicable to everyday problems as well as complex, long-term challenges), and positive (capable of being used constructively and collaboratively by groups as well as able to be applied individually).”
Scott, Leritz, and Mumford (2004), in the meta-analysis on the effectiveness of creativity training based on 70 prior studies — verified directly in earlier articles in this series — found that the best-designed training programs are precisely those that focus on the development of cognitive skills and the heuristics for applying them through realistic exercises appropriate to the domain. CPS satisfies exactly those criteria.
Oppert et al. (2022), in a mixed-methods study published in Frontiers in Psychology (DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.759226), investigated CPS in the real work context of engineers — a field that faces exactly the type of complex, ill-structured problems CPS was designed for. The study’s abstract states:
“The future of work is forcing the world to adjust to a new paradigm of working. New skills will be required to create and adopt new technology and working methods. Additionally, cognitive skills, particularly creative problem-solving, will be highly sought after.”
Their findings confirm that the problem construction process — the initial phase of CPS — is especially valuable in high-pressure work environments, where the default tendency is to jump into solving the problem as presented, without questioning it. Engineers who actively applied problem construction found richer formulations and generated more original solutions than those who proceeded directly to idea generation.
The Two Cognitive Operations CPS Trains
To understand why CPS produces better results than conventional approaches, it is necessary to understand the two central cognitive operations it trains explicitly.
Divergent Thinking: Quantity First
Divergent thinking is the ability to generate multiple possible responses to an open-ended problem. It is the cognitive operation that CPS activates during its exploration and idea-generation phases.
Research on divergent thinking shows that the creative quality of ideas increases significantly when the number of ideas generated is high. This phenomenon — known informally as the “Linus Pauling principle” (the Nobel laureate claimed that the best way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas) — has been experimentally verified. The most original ideas tend to appear later in the generation process, not at the beginning. This means that stopping generation too early, evaluating the first ideas as “good” or “bad,” systematically eliminates the most creative ideas before they can emerge.
CPS trains the skill of deferred judgment — keeping evaluation suspended during the generation phase — as an explicit cognitive competency. This is not something most professionals do naturally. It requires deliberate practice.
Convergent Thinking: Quality After
Convergent thinking is the complementary operation: the ability to evaluate, select, and refine the ideas that have been generated, applying explicit criteria to identify the most promising ones and develop them into viable action plans.
The most frequent mistake in attempts to apply creativity to problem solving is treating these two modes of thinking as incompatible — as if creativity were only the free generation of ideas and critical thinking were its enemy. CPS operates from the opposite premise: divergence and convergence are complementary and necessary in every phase of the process.
Mumford and colleagues’ research on cognitive processes in creative problem solving shows that idea evaluation — when done correctly, with explicit criteria applied to a sufficiently large set of generated options — is one of the processes that most contributes to the final quality of solutions. Not evaluating ideas is just as problematic as evaluating them too early.
CPS in Practice: The Four Mistakes Teams Make
Most teams that attempt to solve complex problems make four predictable mistakes that CPS is specifically designed to correct.
Mistake 1 — Solving the stated problem without questioning it
The problem as presented in a meeting, briefing, or report is almost never the real problem. It is an interpretation of the problem, frequently shaped by the assumptions of whoever formulated it. CPS requires spending time in the Framing Problems phase before generating any solution, asking questions such as “In what sense might this be a problem of X?” or “What do we actually need to achieve?” This reframing typically reveals opportunities and constraints that the original statement did not contain.
Mistake 2 — Evaluating ideas as they are generated
In most work meetings, ideas are evaluated the moment they are proposed. Someone says “what if we did X?” and immediately someone else responds “that wouldn’t work because…” This pattern — premature evaluation — is the primary killer of creativity in group settings. It generates self-censorship, reduces the diversity of ideas, and systematically eliminates the riskiest and most original proposals before they can be explored. CPS deliberately structures separate divergence and convergence sessions to break this pattern.
Mistake 3 — Generating too few ideas before evaluating
Related to the previous mistake: most teams stop generating ideas once they have “enough” options to evaluate — typically three or four. Research shows that this threshold is arbitrary and counterproductive. The probability that the most original solution is among the first four ideas generated is low. CPS uses specific tools (structured brainstorming, SCAMPER, analogical thinking) to extend the generation phase beyond the team’s natural comfort threshold.
Mistake 4 — Not planning implementation
Many creative processes produce brilliant ideas that are never implemented. The most frequent cause is not a lack of resources: it is insufficient work in the Building Acceptance phase — anticipating resistance, identifying the people whose support is necessary, and designing the communication of change. CPS dedicates an entire component to this phase, recognizing that acceptance of creative solutions is as challenging as their generation.
Why CPS Matters in Today’s Work Context
The relevance of CPS for the contemporary professional is not merely theoretical. There is convergent evidence that creative problem solving is becoming a critical labor market competency.
Oppert et al. (2022) note in their abstract that the future of work paradigm requires new skills to create and adopt new technologies and working methods, and that cognitive skills — particularly creative problem solving — will be “highly sought after.” This assertion is supported by multiple labor market analyses: the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 identifies creative thinking as the most valued skill in the global labor market, above specific technical and digital skills.
The reason is structural. As routine, analytical, and well-defined tasks are automated by artificial intelligence systems, the problems that remain for humans are precisely the most complex, ambiguous, and ill-structured ones. Exactly the ones CPS was designed to address.
This does not mean CPS is the answer to every challenge of contemporary work. It means that the ability to construct problems correctly, generate multiple possibilities without premature censorship, and transform original ideas into implementable plans is a competency that will increasingly distinguish those who can solve complex problems from those who cannot.
How to Start Applying CPS in Your Work
CPS does not require a certification or a weeks-long training program to begin generating value. There are three concrete practices any professional can start immediately.
Practice 1 — Reframe before solving
The next time you face a problem at work, before searching for solutions, spend ten minutes writing five to ten alternative formulations of the same problem. Start each one with “How might we…?” You will find that some reformulations reveal aspects of the problem that the original framing did not capture, and that some of them open completely different solution possibilities.
Practice 2 — Physically separate generation from evaluation
In your next group problem-solving session, establish an explicit rule: during the first 15 minutes, any idea proposed is written down without comments or evaluation. Only after the group has generated a sufficient number of ideas (at least 20 or 30, not 4 or 5) does the evaluation phase open, with explicit criteria. The effect on the quality and diversity of ideas is typically immediate and striking.
Practice 3 — Evaluate with criteria, not with intuition
When the time comes to evaluate the ideas generated, resist the temptation to choose the ones that “feel right.” CPS offers convergent evaluation tools such as the Evaluation Matrix, which weighs each idea against explicit criteria defined by the team (cost, implementation time, expected impact, technical feasibility, etc.). This process does not eliminate intuition — it captures it and makes it visible to the team.
CPS as a Learning Method
One of the least discussed contributions of CPS is its value as a learning methodology, not merely as a problem-solving tool. Treffinger and Isaksen (2013) are explicit on this point:
“Engagement in creativity and CPS is demanding, but also rewarding. After a period of extended work on a creative project, or in a problem-solving group, it is very common for people to say: ‘I’m exhausted; I would never have believed thinking could be such hard work— but it was worth it!'”
This phenomenon — the productive exhaustion that follows a well-facilitated CPS session — is itself a signal that something qualitatively different occurred. People who have worked through a rigorous CPS process have not merely generated solutions to the problem they addressed: they have trained cognitive capacities. They have practiced problem construction. They have exercised divergent thinking. They have learned to evaluate ideas with criteria rather than with bias.
This makes CPS a particularly valuable tool in educational contexts, where the goal is not just to solve the problem at hand but to develop in students the capacity to approach problems that do not yet exist.
Conclusion: The Problem Is the Method
The difference between people who solve problems creatively and those who do not rarely lies in intelligence or talent. It lies in method.
Professionals who approach the complex problems of their work with the same linear logic that worked for well-defined school problems will inevitably produce conventional solutions to unconventional problems. Not because they are incapable of more, but because they never learned to do what CPS teaches: construct the problem before solving it, generate possibilities before evaluating them, and transform ideas into plans before celebrating them.
The evidence accumulated over more than six decades of research and practice — from the studies of Parnes and Noller to the meta-analysis of Scott, Leritz, and Mumford (2004), and from Murugavel and Reiter-Palmon’s (2018) research on problem construction to Oppert et al.’s (2022) study on engineers in the future of work — converges on a simple conclusion: CPS works, it can be taught, and it produces measurable differences in the quality and originality of solutions to complex problems.
The question is not whether it is worth learning to use it. The question is when to start.
References
Isaksen, S. G., Dorval, K. B., & Treffinger, D. J. (2011). Creative approaches to problem solving: A framework for change (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.
Murugavel, V. R., & Reiter-Palmon, R. (2018). The effect of problem construction on team process and creativity. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2098. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02098
Mumford, M. D., Mobley, M. I., Uhlman, C. E., Reiter-Palmon, R., & Doares, L. M. (1991). Process analytic models of creative capacities. Creativity Research Journal, 4(2), 91–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419109534380
Oppert, M. L., Dollard, M. F., Murugavel, V. R., Reiter-Palmon, R., Reardon, A., Cropley, D. H., & O’Keeffe, V. (2022). A mixed-methods study of creative problem solving and psychosocial safety climate: Preparing engineers for the future of work. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 759226. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.759226
Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730
Scott, G., Leritz, L. E., & Mumford, M. D. (2004). The effectiveness of creativity training: A quantitative review. Creativity Research Journal, 16(4), 361–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400410409534549
Treffinger, D. J., & Isaksen, S. G. (2013). Teaching and applying creative problem solving: Implications for at-risk students. International Journal for Talent Development and Creativity, 1(1), 87–97. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1301380.pdf
Treffinger, D. J., & Isaksen, S. G. (2005). Creative problem solving: The history, development, and implications for gifted education and talent development. Gifted Child Quarterly, 49(4), 342–353. https://doi.org/10.1177/001698620504900407