Creative Problem Solving Institute 2026

This Immersion is designed for experienced CPS practitioners ready to deepen their impact in organizations. Day 1, Tools Off the Beaten Path, explores underutilized convergent tools to strengthen decision-making and group alignment. Days 2-4, Leading Change with Agility, Versatility, and Creativity, focus on what teams create (product), the environments they work in (place), and the people and processes that shape collaboration. Through hands-on application and real-world challenges, participants will learn to diagnose team dynamics, recognize conditions that support creativity, and apply CPS as a unifying engine across ways of working. This is a practical, interactive experience for leading creative work that delivers results.

Days 2 - 4: Leading Change with Agility, Versatility, and Creativity - Michael Ackerbauer, PhD, and Christa Heydt-Hernandez
Every organization has a rhythm. Some teams find it and produce work they didn't know was possible. Others grind against each other and call it culture. The difference isn't luck — it's whether leaders can read the signals their teams are already sending and respond with the right move at the right time. This three-day immersion adapts a three-week graduate course into a hands-on practitioner experience. Across three 3.5-hour sessions, we'll work the creative systems that shape what gets built, where creativity can breathe, and how people actually collaborate when the work gets hard. Day 2 opens with the product of creativity: what we're here to make, how innovation actually happens in organizations, and why most change efforts stall before they start. Day 3 turns to place: the climate, culture, and psychological conditions that either invite creative work or quietly shut it down. Day 4 lands on the person and process: how cognitive preferences, emotional intelligence, and creative problem solving become the substrate underneath agile, design thinking, and every other framework you're already using. You'll leave able to:

• Diagnose where your team spends its collaborative energy, and where it doesn't
• Recognize the climate signals that predict creative outcomes before they appear in results
• Apply Creative Problem Solving as the integrative engine beneath your existing ways of working

Bring a challenge from your own context. We'll work it together.

Step into a high-energy, hands-on series designed to expand both your creative skillset and your facilitation toolbox. Through playful methods and real-time practice, participants will build practical tools while strengthening their ability to guide groups with confidence, presence, and flow. Experience what it means to learn by doing as you explore approaches that spark collaboration, deepen thinking, and elevate group outcomes.
Day 4 (Thur): Play, Connect, Create: Improv-Inspired Tools in Action
Bring energy, spontaneity, and connection into your creative facilitation and training. This experiential, interactive session explores how applied improvisation can be leveraged within creativity-based workshops, trainings, and group sessions to strengthen collaboration, trust, communication, and creative thinking. Improvisation is built on principles such as listening, accepting offers, co-creating, redefining risk and failure, and building on ideas through “yes, and.” These same principles are at the core of deliberate creative problem-solving. Through hands-on activities and shared experiences, participants will discover how improvisation techniques can help groups clarify situations, generate fresh ideas and connections, develop and refine concepts, and prepare teams for implementation.

Participants will actively play, explore, take risks, support one another, and experience how improv-based methods can create more engaged, open, and collaborative group dynamics. The session emphasizes practical application, helping facilitators understand not only how to use improvisation activities but also when and why to integrate them into facilitation and training environments.

Participants will:

• Acquire a selection of improvisation activities that can be adapted and applied with groups, teams, trainings, and workshops

• Learn how to use the principle of “yes, and” to build trust, encourage creative collaboration, and strengthen group interaction

• Explore how and when to integrate improvisation techniques into creative sessions to support idea generation, development, team connection, and implementation readiness
  

This week of programming explores the shared foundation of Creative Problem Solving (CPS), coaching skills, and affective skills: each shaping how people think, connect, and create change. You’ll begin the week with A Creative Coach’s Toolbox, building practical coaching tools that bring the CPS process to life in real conversations. The second half of the week focuses on The Head and Heart of Innovation: Affective Skills of CPS, where you'll deepen your awareness of the emotional and mental conditions that influence every stage of thinking. Together, these elements reveal a powerful truth: effective creativity and innovation isn’t just about process, but about how we show up within it. By the end of the week, you’ll be equipped to guide both the path of ideas and the human experience that fuels them.
 
Part 2 (Wednesday - Thursday): 
The Head and Heart of Innovation: Affective Skills of CPS - Jessica Andrews-Wilson and Kim Macuare
Whether you’re a pro at using the Creative Problem Solving process or this is the first time you’re hearing of it, this session will give you a chance to explore some of the CPS skills with a new lens! Put on your rose-colored glasses, tap into your biggest dreams, and join us to explore some of the emotions that influence our thinking and how that shows up as we clarify, ideate, develop, and implement!

This immersive week explores the dynamic power of polarities as a catalyst for creativity, collaboration, and innovation. We begin with Genius Teams: Polarities in Practice, a deep dive into polarities in practice, building a shared foundation and observing live facilitation to see how teams navigate real-time tensions and unlock high performance. As the week unfolds, participants will sharpen their ability to recognize and work with these dynamics in their own contexts. We close with Assumption: Friend AND Foe, using playful, perspective-shifting approaches to challenge thinking and expand what’s possible, using polarity thinking and humor for insight and exploration.

Part 2 (Thursday):  Assumption: Friend AND Foe - Liz Monroe Cook and Beth Slazak
This session explores how assumptions shape the way we define problems and influence what we see as possible. In Creative Problem Solving, assumptions can be helpful because they allow us to move quickly and draw on experience, but they can also limit thinking and reinforce blind spots. Using Polarity Thinking and humor, participants will learn how to surface and question assumptions, reframe false either/or thinking, and open up more flexible, creative possibilities. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for using “both/and” thinking and light, intentional humor to support deeper and more innovative problem solving.

Takeaways:

• Recognize hidden assumptions that shape how they define problems and make decisions. 
• Differentiate between helpful and limiting assumptions in creative problem solving. 
• Practice with play and whole picture thinking to enhance your creative problem solving experience.

In this immersion, you’ll apply the CPS process to the art of facilitation design to create experiences that truly deliver. We’ll begin by unpacking the factors that influence great design, including timing, flow, and session dynamics, so you can design with clarity and intention. You’ll also rethink how to select tools and activities.
The Lab comes to life as we move beyond choosing from existing tools to confidently creating what’s needed in the moment. Through rapid prototyping, you’ll co-create new activities and build a repeatable method for inventing, adapting, and refining tools on the fly.
Ideal for facilitators and trainers, this is a hands-on, design-intensive experience with meaningful, ready-to-use outcomes.