Important announcement

Dear visitor,

Please note that this OpenCourseWare platform will be replaced at the end of 2026 by a new platform (under the same url ocw.tudelft.nl).

Courses and their contents that are currently available the platform will partly be migrated. URL’s for this content will change and content might be unavailable for some time. In addition, some courses will not be available anymore.

If you are linking to specific courses on this platform (for instance for your students), please take timely measures to avoid problems with access. Possible actions are:

  • Download the materials to your local platform (laptop, server)
  • For educators only (including TU Delft lecturers): Contact us at ocw@tudelft.nl and inform us what course you are using in what context (institute, program, period of use, number of students). We will research (in collaboration with the authors of the course) and decide if we will migrate the course, and if yes, can supply you with a new url.

Thank you.

Explore complex, multi-actor systems in which one factor influences all other factors. For instance, how innovative energy technologies merge into the existing energy system, or how new transport possibilities impact current processes. Armed with this information, learn to decide whether they should be further developed, consider possible negative results and weigh associated costs.

There are multiple ways to make decisions, but one way proven to be very useful is the analytical approach – a methodology for making the problem explicit and rationalising the different potential solutions. In short: analysis based support of decision making, design and implementation of solutions.

Creative Problem Solving and Decision Making as a course teaches you this method.

This course explores and evaluates tools and problem solving methods such as:

  • Actor analysis
  • Causal modeling
  • Goal trees and means-end diagrams
  • Problem diagrams
  • Uncertainty
  • Decision support
  • Score cards

This course introduces each technique and applies each technique to a case. Ultimately, the combination of these techniques provides a coherent analysis of the problem.

Open MOOC Award
This course has been awarded with the 2015 Open Education Award for Excellence in the category ‘Open MOOC’.

  • Analytically based support of decision-making, design and implementation of solutions.
  • How to apply tools like actor analysis, causal modeling, goal trees and means-end diagrams, problem diagrams, uncertainty, decision support and score cards.
Creative Commons License
Creative problem solving and decision making I by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/creative-problem-solving-and-decision-making/.
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