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 sub-
theme 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