Read the passage below:

Abdullah Alarifi, has completed his Master’s in Business. Abdullah’s is passionate about driving and racing car. Another hobby of Abdullah is body cooking international cuisine. His father has aArabian restaurant in Riyadh. His mother running a beauty salon, while brother has a car rental service. 

After MBA Abdullah is planning for his future. He wanted to earn money. He started thinking about how he can start his professional life. He doesn’t want to do any job. He want to do business but how and what business? 

Abdullah is confused about what kind of business should he start, traditional or e-commerce? Though his family is running a traditional business, Abdullah has heard and learnt lots about the e-Business and e-marketing. The question heneed to deal with whether he should join his father’s or brother’s business or he should do his own. He is also considering the financial aspects. Should he take from father? Or bank or other sources such as partnership, etc. 

Therefore, this is a question with no easy solution. Considering the above situation prepare a Decision Making and Problem Solving Worksheet answering the following question:

Step 1: Defining and Clarifying the Question 

Step 2: Develop mind mapping for the alternative 

Step 3: Generating Alternatives 

Step 4: Variables to consider 

Step 5: Weighing the considerations 

You may notice that the variables to consider are not of equal importance. Therefore, you need to weigh how important each variable is before you make your decision. In this activity, the following rating scale can be used:

5

Very important

4

Considerably important

3

Neither important nor unimportant

2

Not very important

1

Not important at all

Step 6: Weighing the alternatives

When weighing the various alternatives, how well each alternative fulfills the variables to consider can be expressed as scores. A different rating scale will be used to assess each alternative:

+2 very suitable 

+1 quite suitable 

0 neither suitable nor unsuitable

-1 not quite suitable 

-2 not suitable at all

Note: Positive numbers (+2 or +1) indicate that the alternative is able to fulfill the variables, whereas negative numbers (-2 or -1) denote the opposite. 

Step 7: Calculating a decision and Overall assessment

[Please answer in the next page]

Assignment Instructions for Part-I: 

• Log in to Saudi Digital Library (SDL) via University’s website

• On first page of SDL, choose “English Databases”

• From the list find and click on EBSCO database.

• In the search bar of EBSCO find the following article:

Title: “Better Brainstorming”

Author: Hal Gregersen

Date of Publication:March-April, 2018

Published: Harvard Business Review

Read the article titled as “Better Brainstorming” by Hal Gregersen, published in Harvard Business Review, and answer the following Questions: 

1. Summarize the article and explain the main issues discussed in the article. Discuss the three steps of ‘Question burst’ in brainstorming in relation with the text you learnt in the course.

Part-II- Critical Thinking Question

2. “Critical thinking is the opposite of creative thinking.” Do you agree? Provide examples of why you agree or disagree.

3. Suppose you are a member of a group asked to find ways to cut costs throughout your organization for the upcoming year. Sales have fallen sharply, and the company is in danger of going out of business. After gathering information, your group concludes that the company will save the most money by freezing pay for a year, despite a tradition of annual salary increases. How can you make sure this is a fair decision? How can you make sure that others in the organization will see it as a fair decision?