Identifying Conceptual Blocks to Creative Problem Solving Via the Newspaper Industry

This exercise is designed to give late undergraduate students studying management the opportunity to see how difficult the process of generating creative and viable solutions to complex problems can be by introducing a problem that seems familiar and less complex at first glance. More specifically, this exercise helps students experience how problem identification can be a more exacting process than anticipated, how problem identification affects the chosen solution, and how specific and commonly occurring conceptual blocks impede the creative problem-solving process by researching and attempting to solve problems associated with the decline in the newspaper industry.