CATÓLICA-LISBON

“Creativity is one of the key factors that drive civilization forward.”

Beth Hennessey & Teresa Amabile

“As more artificial intelligence-powered tools get integrated into the workplace, employers will prioritize hiring workers with ‘soft skills’ like creativity and adaptability”

Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO, Matt Garman

How can individuals, teams, and organizations generate great business ideas (e.g., ideas for new products or services within existing businesses, or entirely new ventures)? In other words, how can you build ideas that will make your customers (even more) satisfied?

New business ideas drive organizational success and long-term survival, especially in an era marked by constant external shocks. Creating ideas for new products, services, or businesses is not only one of the most fascinating activities in Management, but also essential in such a context. Creative problem solving — the decision-making process focused on generating innovative and relevant ideas — plays a central role in this activity.

The Creative Problem Solving: The Business Idea Machine (CPS) program is designed to develop, in a comprehensive, unique, and step-by-step way, solid skills in applying creative problem solving to the formulation of new products, services, or businesses. CPS is both a rigorous and practical program.

It is rigorous (i.e., science-based) because it is grounded in theories, models, frameworks, and concepts from leading scientific research in areas such as creativity, management, cognitive science, and neuroscience (not from the internet or “pop” books).
It is practical (i.e., action-oriented) because it offers participants the opportunity to immediately apply the concepts taught through the discussion of international case studies created specifically for the program, and through the weekly group development of an exciting idea/project for a new product, service, or business.

In short, this program enables a deep understanding of creative problem solving as a true “business idea machine,” gradually transforming emerging facts (in the economy and society) into high-potential ideas.

The Program Director and faculty member is passionate about launching new projects. Over the past decades, he has launched dozens of successful executive education programs at CATÓLICA-LISBON, and also founded the Master in Management and the Executive Masters in Management at the School. He has been included in recent years on the list of the world’s most influential scientists and has recently published in the Academy of Management Review (the most prestigious scientific journal in Management theory) a groundbreaking theory on how executives generate high-quality ideas in times of unprecedented change.

Special Features

Given that managers (as human beings) operate under conditions of bounded rationality, one of the program’s core strengths is its emphasis not only on what should be done in the creative problem solving process, but also on how it should be done — that is, taking into account in detail the cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes that determine the quality of the outcomes.

Moreover, participants will form small groups that, using the concepts, theoretical perspectives, and models discussed in class, will progressively (week by week, step by step) develop a new product, service, or business idea. At the end of the program, these groups will formally present their projects.