How to Choose a Pet
Prepared for A Crash Course on Creativity Spring 2013
Team Gx2: Mannie Zeller & Susan Lieberman
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
2.5 Canada License.

Cosmo
1996 - 2013

When Cosmo left us …
… we were so sad - Cosmo had been a
dear friend to all of us and we missed
him very much. Our other cat, Millie, had
lost her companion.

A New Pet?
• At first, we mourned him. And
then, we started to think about
getting another pet.
• It didn’t have to be another cat
• We decided to …

Brainstorm!!!!!!!
And we were
fortunately joined
by a third excellent
brainstormer…

• We started to brainstorm the
question “How would you pick
the right pet for you?”
• But, this course taught us to
look carefully at framing of
questions
• Looking closer at the question,
we realized that what we were
actually brainstorming was
“What factors would you
consider when choosing a pet?”

~ 34 ideas

• But, then we stopped to get
our bearings and realized that
we had veered into
considering “How do you find
the right pet?”
• So, our brainstorming took a
different direction

~ 28 more ideas

~29 more ideas

• But our third excellent brainstormer then
pointed out an interesting fact
• The broader the question, the better the
brainstorming; the narrower the question,
the less effective the brainstorming
• At which point, we started to have some
fun brainstorming “How do you take care
of your pet if your pet is the planet Earth?”

Put a
shawl
around the
world for
comfort
The Earth
needs to
be
nourished
The
earth
needs a
protector
– yea for
the sun
The Earth
needs a
friend -
yea the
moon
The
world
should
sing
The
world
needs to
dance
The
world
needs
colour
The
world
needs
love
Let the
world
begin!
Give the
world a
parade
11 more items
Will the
earth purr?

• Or “If PET stands for
Peace on Earth
Through-out, how can
we have world PET?”

At the end of the
day, we realized that
even though we had
brainstormed more than
100 ideas, what we
really wanted was to
figure out how to select
a new cat to be our
special friend (and
Millie’s, too)

• So our final brainstorming
looked at a combination of
the questions
– “How should we find a new
cat to be Millie’s
companion?”
– “Where will we find a new
cat or kitten?
– “What kind of cat or kitten
should we get?”

And we decided to
do all the expected
things, like
research
breeds, track cat
ads, visit one or
more animal
shelters, and talk
with friends

But we
would also
“commune
with the
spirits” to
find
direction
And we
would
have
patience

Sources of Images
 Images and sounds in this
presentation not already cited are from
the following subscribed (s) or royalty-
free (r) sources
 Microsoft Office clips (s)
 www.iStock.com (s)
 www.Animation.com (s)
 Wikipedia Commons
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