Dr. Bruce Litchfield is an Assistant Dean in the College of Engineering and a Professor specializing in creative thinking. As a Professor and a social entrepreneur himself, Dr. Litchfield’s workshop focused on tangible tools to come up with creative ideas and helped students further understand the problems their businesses can solve.

Dr. Litchfield took our students through the creative process which he defined as “having ideas and bringing them to be.” Dr. Litchfield took some time to help our startups better understand the problems they are solving through a variety of techniques including the problem tree, the lotus blossom and practices in empathy. We also had a quick lesson in the value of collaboration when teams paired up to combine their ideas to create a new idea for a venture. For example Muscle Metrics (modern gym equipment) and The Mouve (event-finding app) brainstormed about an app that tells you when your friends are working out. Some good ideas came out of this exercise!

It was a high energy interactive workshop with someone who has literally written the book on creativity at the University of Illinois.

As the teams continue their journey of creating businesses, this workshop on creative thinking proved invaluable! We’re looking forward to using the techniques that was taught and create innovative ideas.