INTRODUCTION TO LOTUS BLOSSOM BRAINSTORMING A creative thinking technique that will help you expand your thinking in a similar fashion is Lotus Blossom, which was originally developed by Yasuo Matsumura of Clover Management Research in Chiba City, Japan. You start with a central subject and expand into themes and sub-themes, each with separate entry points. In Lotus Blossom, the petals around the core of the blossom will reveal a key component or theme. The lotus will be wider until the subject or opportunity is explored. When you should use it 1. When you want to generate creative ideas. 2. If you having to generate more ideas. 3. If you trapped in single mode of thinking. 4. To create seed idea to trigger further more good ideas.
How to use it
Describe the problem You need to start with a description of your problem you are facing, then write the central problem in the centre of the diagram or in the middle of a large working area.
Surround it with ideas Write each idea around the problem description. You can do six or eight themes, if you have more than eight, you can make additional diagram. To start create your ideas you can ask question like: what are my specific objective? What are the dimensions of my problems? If you are working by group, engage everyone. Perhaps they can give more ideas.
Unfold the lotus blossom Use the ideas written in the main box as the central theme for the lotus blossom petals. Repeat the previous steps of the process by surround the sub-theme with ideas. You can repeat the whole process until you get your objective. If you are working in a group of people, you can rotate them around the lotus to put their idea. This can lead to many ideas, but you do not have to fill in every space, if ideas run out, you can move on.
Seek practical answers to the problem Look around the many ideas you now have and seek to link some of these back to the original problem.
PROBLEM SOLVING
Describe the problem
HOW TO ORGANIZE UTHM PADDLERS ROWING TEAM EFFECTIVELY To be the successful team, the team must be organize effectively. By using this tool it will help to generate lot of ideas on how to organize or manage the team.
Surround it with ideas
For this example it consisted eight theme that surround the central problem, which is stated as diagram below:
You can write the ideas in the box orderly like this:
Unfold the lotus blossom
Now let’s continue to trigger more ideas to come out by making idea 1-8 as a subtheme or the lotus blossom petal just like diagram below. Repeat the previous steps of the process by surround the sub-theme with ideas. Rotate the whole process till you get somewhere or have reached you objective. If ideas run out, you can move on. You can add more box if eight boxes are not enough for you.
Seek practical answers to the problem Look around the many ideas you now have and seek to link some of these back to the original problem. CONCLUSION
This tool helps to solve the problem by generating more ideas when you run out of idea. From one idea it will trigger more idea so you don’t have to worry about how to generate the ideas. Suitable to use when you work in a group of people. Its take average time to complete because it trigger the ideas fast and a mass idea generation tool. Lotus blossom inventing alternative possibility and explaination and easy to use.
REFERENCE
http://www.creativethinking.net/DT06_LotusBlossomApproach.htm?Entry=Good
http://creatingminds.org/tools/lotus_blossom.htm