Development Programme: Combinatorial Thinking. How to Find New Ideas and Solutions Where Conventional Approaches No Longer Work

• Status:New season starts on November 05th, 2026
• Duration:05 - 12 November
• Language: Ukrainian
• Time:05 and 12 November, 11:00 – 18:00
• Fee for EBA members:14000 UAH
• Early Registration for EBA members:12500 UAH till October 05th
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About the Programme

Modern business is increasingly facing challenges for which there are no ready-made instructions or proven algorithms. What worked yesterday may no longer be effective today. That is why one of the key competencies of today’s professionals is combinatorial thinking — the ability to combine ideas, knowledge, and experience from different fields, identify non-obvious connections, create new solutions, and recognize opportunities where others see only limitations.

EBA Management Development Centre team, together with Anna Kunakova, invite you to participate in the new Development Programme: Combinatorial Thinking. How to Find New Ideas and Solutions Where Conventional Approaches No Longer Work. Throughout the programme, you will gain hands-on experience with combinatorial thinking tools, explore your own thinking patterns and limitations, learn how to use team diversity as a resource, and receive a clear decision-making framework for solving complex real-life business challenges. This is a highly practical program.

Format:

• Two offline sessions: November 5 and November 12
• 11:00 – 18:00

Throughout the programme, you will:

• Understand how your thinking works and what prevents you from moving beyond familiar patterns.
• Learn how to transform ordinary ideas into unconventional solutions.
• Expand your own limitations through the practice of a growth mindset and working with cognitive biases.
• Learn how to use team diversity as a resource for generating better ideas.
• Master practical tools for decision-making under uncertainty and stress.
• Receive your own personal “toolkit” of combinatorial thinking techniques for real business challenges.

Target audience:

• Executives and managers looking for new approaches to solving complex challenges.
• HR professionals and People Managers who foster a culture of innovation.
• Marketing professionals and entrepreneurs working in conditions of uncertainty.
• Professionals across all industries who want to think more flexibly and effectively.

What makes this programme unique:

• Your own business cases become the learning material. Before the program begins, participants complete a questionnaire and share real challenges from their work. These cases become the foundation for practicing all the tools.
• A variety of learning methods. Each module combines mini-lectures, small group work, metaphorical tools (LEGO, associative cards), and analysis of real business cases.
• From understanding to action. The program is designed with increasing depth: from individual self-awareness — through team collaboration — to practical tools for finding and making real business decisions.
• Evidence-based methodology. All approaches are grounded in validated research in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, organizational theory, and positive psychotherapy.

Programme

Day 1. November 5

Block 1. How Thinking Works and How to Move Beyond Its Limits

Exploring yourself. We begin with the question: “How do I actually think?” — and immediately move into practice.

What knowledge and skills will you gain?

• Types of thinking and personal thinking patterns.
• How the brain works and why it becomes “stuck” in familiar solutions. The neuroscience approach and Daniel Kahneman’s theory: System 1 and System 2.
• Why your first idea is almost always ordinary — and what to do about it.
• Bionics as a method for transforming ideas: how nature solves business challenges.
• SCAMPER: a structured framework for generating new solutions using participants’ real business cases.
• Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking: the random word method for moving beyond conventional thinking.

Analysis of participants’ business cases.

Self-assessment.

Block 2. Biases, Limitations, and the Art of Growth

What stands between us and new ways of thinking. We go deeper by exploring internal limitations and learning how to transform them.

What knowledge and skills will you gain?

• Metaphors as a tool for moving beyond habitual ways of seeing situations.
• Fixed Mindset vs Growth Mindset: Carol Dweck’s theory and how it manifests itself in work and everyday life.
• Cognitive biases that block creative thinking: how to recognize and work with them.
• The “Not Yet” technique as a way to reframe internal limitations.
• Circles of Control, Influence, and Concern: where it is worth investing your energy in finding solutions and where it is time to let go.

Working with your inner critic.

Group work on business cases, individual self-exploration, and paired reflection.

Day 2. November 12

Block 1. Strengths, Synergy, and Facilitating Team Thinking

The third module explores how different thinking styles within a team become a competitive advantage. Team-level combinatorial thinking is not simply about “working well together.” It is the deliberate combination of different perspectives to achieve results that no individual could accomplish alone.

What knowledge and skills will you gain?

• Assessment of your own strengths and team roles.
• Principles of working in teams with diverse strengths: how differences become a resource.
• Convergent and divergent thinking.
• Facilitation methods: Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, Reverse Brainstorming, and other practical techniques.
• World Café: exchanging experience among participants as a source of new combinations.
• Participation in a facilitated group session followed by analysis of the tools used.

Block 2. Decision-Making Tools and Navigating Uncertainty

You will learn and practice:

• Exploring your own response to uncertainty and team strategies for overcoming it through LEGO Serious Play.
• Stress responses to uncertainty. The Kübler-Ross Change Curve applied to a real business case.
• The Cynefin Framework: how to distinguish different types of complexity and choose the appropriate approach for each.
• Pre-Mortem using Gary Klein’s method.
• The Disney Method and 2×2 Scenario Planning: from vision to strategic future scenarios.
• Retrospectives as a tool for the program’s final reflection.

LEGO Serious Play.

Working with participants’ business cases.

Upon successful completion of the programme, you will receive a certificate confirming successful completion.

Please note that the opinions and views expressed by the trainer (speaker) during the event are solely his/her personal position and intellectual property and do not in any way represent the official position of the European Business Association.

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