innovation as creative problem solving

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Creativity and innovation management: how to inspire original ideas.

Do you find it difficult to come up with new ideas? Or do you get caught in the same train of thought over and over again?

Perhaps the problem isn’t that you’re not creative 一 you may just be using the wrong methods to brainstorm and ideate.

Creativity and successful innovation tools can help you work through even the toughest of issues. By changing the way that you think about problem-solving, you can reinvent your framework and generate more solutions.

In this short guide, we’ll discuss what it means to practice creativity and innovation management 一 as well as methods that you can use to inspire original ideas for any obstacles that you might encounter.

If you want to learn even more and practice with others, consider taking our Creative and Design Thinking program. 

What is creativity and innovation management?

Put simply, creativity and innovation management is the act of balancing creativity and innovation in your workplace.

Fueling creative thinking can be a difficult endeavor, especially in a work environment. Creativity doesn’t always come naturally, and it’s not uncommon for staff to feel stuck at times, especially when there are approaching deadlines and additional stress factors. Solution ideation 一 another term for coming up with a new idea and solutions 一 and managing creativity can be difficult tasks.

That’s where innovation management comes in. Using tools designed to help foster creativity and encourage innovative ideas, the best innovation management techniques can help you solve  problems, including those that you’ve been putting off for ages.

A word about creativity and innovation: they may seem like similar concepts, but there is a significant difference between the two due to their focus. Creativity is typically centered around original thought and knowledge, which unleashes potential and is an integral part of idea generation. Innovation, on the other hand, is used to turn the creative idea that you come up with into a viable solution. Hand in hand, they are powerful ways to disrupt and adapt, and to create the next great idea, which is increasingly important in today’s ever-changing world. 

How do I brainstorm creative ideas?

If you’re looking to encourage new ideas from your team, try these methods to start:

• Rapid ideation: Everyone in a group writes down as many ideas as possible within a set time limit. Brainstormers won’t be able to self-censor as easily with the element of speed. None of these ideas have to be fleshed out or thought through 一 even scraps or fragments are fine. Generating the bad ideas can open the door for good ones. This can be done to get the juices flowing.
• Brainstorm using different mediums and settings: Some people find that they can brainstorm better when it’s on colorful sticky notes, and others find that they can get their ideas out better with a whiteboard and a handful of dry-erase markers. Encouraging the creative process collectively in different settings, using various tools. Brainstorm individually and with a group . Learn hands-on brainstorming techniques with Stanford’s Introduction to Design Thinking and Innovation at Work content and find out what works best for your team.
• Figure storming: Pick a famous person and try to guess how they would solve the problem that you’re facing. By doing so, you’ll be able to approach your problem from a different perspective.
• Starbursting: Identify who, what, when, where and why in regards to the problem. By understanding the problem inside and out, you’ll have a better time finding a solution for it.

How to create an innovation process

So your team has a bunch of new ideas, what’s next? There are a few steps that you can take to build a good problem-solving method and become a master of creativity . The following is an example of an innovation process step-by-step.

• Encounter a problem that needs to be resolved.
• Define the problem correctly.
• Choose a brainstorming activity to spark your creativity.
• Gather relevant material and work through it, considering different solutions and approaches that you can take to solve the problem.
• Discuss your idea with your teammates to gauge its viability.
• Walk away from the problem before returning to it.
• Start implementing your idea.

This is just one example of a creativity and innovation process. Practice it with your team to see what drives innovation for you. You can tweak the process, inserting different steps or designing a different process that works better. Design thinking , the experimental-based, solution-process , might work for you and your company. With time you’ll be able to start bringing your idea to fruition quickly and efficiently. 

Does innovation start with creativity?

Naturally, innovation cannot happen without creativity.

Only with creative ideas can one truly innovate and implement solutions that work. Coming up with creative innovation is a matter of actively finding this inspiration. Once you’re able to start coming up with creative solutions to your problem, many find that this skill quickly lends itself to leadership roles with ease.

Because of how linked entrepreneurship is with creativity and innovation management, a large number of people who practice design thinking go on to be entrepreneurs. Many students in our online Creativity and Design Program find that there’s a natural transition between it and the Leading People, Culture, and Innovation Program .

The Creativity and Design Thinking Program teaches you how to build a creative practice and grow your creativity via ideation, empathizing, prototyping and seeking inspiration. Logically, what follows is the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program, which teaches students how to lead using those innovations and collaborative teams. Students bring what they learn in those classes and implement them to drive those innovations as well.

The ability to think, create, and implement creative solutions takes practice. Sharpening the creative potential within your organizational innovation development can be led through implementation processes . Creativity can indeed spark innovation, and innovation can, in turn, motivate entrepreneurship.

Enroll today

You can learn more about concepts like creativity and innovation management by enrolling in our professional education programs. Both our Creativity and Design Thinking Program and our Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program can enhance the way you think about problems and execute meaningful solutions.

For more information about what online courses we have to offer, visit our website today.

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Creative Thinking: Innovative Solutions to Complex Challenges

Learn how to grow a culture of creativity to innovate competitive solutions.

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Overview: Creative Thinking Skills Course

The tech breakthrough that makes smartphones irrelevant, a new viral ad campaign, your company’s next big revenue generator — ideas like these could be sitting in your brain; all you need are the creative thinking skills and strategies to pull them out.

This interactive program focuses explicitly on the creative thinking skills you need to solve complex problems and design innovative solutions. Learn how to transform your thinking from the standard “why can’t we” to the powerful “how might we.” Crack the code on how to consistently leverage your team’s creative potential in order to drive innovation within your organization. Explore how to build a climate for innovation, remove barriers to creativity, cultivate courage, and create more agile, proactive, and inspired teams.

You will leave this program with new ideas about how to think more productively and how to introduce creative thinking skills into your organization. You can apply key takeaways immediately to implement a new leadership vision, inspire renewed enthusiasm, and enjoy the skills and tools to tackle challenges and seize opportunities.

Innovation experts Anne Manning and Susan Robertson bring to this highly-interactive and powerful program their decades of experience promoting corporate innovation, teaching the art of creative problem solving, and applying the principles of brain science to solve complex challenges.

Who Should Take Creative Thinking Skills Training?

This program is ideal for leaders with at least 3 years of management experience. It is designed for leaders who want to develop new strategies, frameworks, and tools for creative problem solving. Whether you are a team lead, project manager, sales director, or executive, you’ll learn powerful tools to lead your team and your organization to create innovative solutions to complex challenges.

Benefits of Creative Thinking Skills Training

The goal of this creative thinking program is to help you develop the strategic concepts and tactical skills to lead creative problem solving for your team and your organization. You will learn to:

• Retrain your brain to avoid negative cognitive biases and long-held beliefs and myths that sabotage creative problem solving and innovation
• Become a more nimble, proactive, and inspired thinker and leader
• Create the type of organizational culture that supports collaboration and nurtures rather than kills ideas
• Gain a practical toolkit for solving the “unsolvable” by incorporating creative thinking into day-to-day processes
• Understand cognitive preferences (yours and others’) to adapt the creative thinking process and drive your team’s success
• Develop techniques that promote effective brainstorming and enable you to reframe problems in a way that inspires innovative solutions

All participants will earn a Certificate of Completion from the Harvard Division of Continuing Education.

The curriculum in this highly interactive program utilizes research-based methodologies and techniques to build creative thinking skills and stimulate creative problem solving.

Through intensive group discussions and small-group exercises, you will focus on topics such as:

• The Creative Problem Solving process: a researched, learnable, repeatable process for uncovering new and useful ideas. This process includes a “how to” on clarifying, ideating, developing, and implementing new solutions to intractable problems
• The cognitive preferences that drive how we approach problems, and how to leverage those cognitive preferences for individual and team success
• How to develop—and implement— a methodology that overcomes barriers to innovative thinking and fosters the generation of new ideas, strategies, and techniques
• The role of language, including asking the right questions, in reframing problems, challenging assumptions, and driving successful creative problem solving
• Fostering a culture that values, nurtures, and rewards creative solutions

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Article contents

Creative thinking processes: managing innovative efforts.

• Michael D. Mumford , Michael D. Mumford The University of Oklahoma, Department of Psychology
• Robert Martin Robert Martin The University of Oklahoma, Department of Psychology
• , and  Samantha N. Elliott Samantha N. Elliott The University of Oklahoma, Department of Psychology
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190224851.013.172
• Published online: 26 March 2019

Creative thinking is the basis for innovation in firms. And the need for strategy-relevant innovations has generated a new concern with how people go about solving the kinds of problems that call for creative thought. Although many variables influence people’s ability to provide creative problem solutions, it is assumed the ways in which people work with or process knowledge provides the basis for successful creative problem-solving efforts. Additionally, there has been evidence bearing on the processing activities that contribute to creative problem solving. It is noted that at least eight distinct processing activities are involved in most incidents of creative problem solving: (1) problem definition, (2) information gathering, (3) concept selection, (4) conceptual combination, (5) idea generation, (6) idea evaluation, (7) implementation planning, and (8) adaptive monitoring. There are strategies people employ in effective execution of each of these processes, along with contextual variables that contribute to, or inhibit, effective process execution. Subsequently, there are key variables that operate in the workplace that contribute to, or inhibit, effective execution of these processing operations. These observations, of course, lead to implications for management of innovative efforts in firms.

• creative processes
• problem solving

Few would dispute the impact of innovations in products and services on day-to-day life in our world. Many of us live on our cell phones, a technology based on innovations in solid-state circuitry (Gertner, 2013 ) and design (Isaacson, 2012 ). We travel in cars and on airplanes, both technologies arising from the development of internal combustion engines (Ganesan, 2012 ). Many of the products we use on a day-to-day basis arrive from factories located around the world—products that arrive in shipping containers, yet another innovation (Donovan & Bonney, 2006 ). Not only is our world shaped by such technical innovations, innovations in the way work is done from goal setting to standard operating procedures shape how firms seek to manage the production process (Kanigel, 2005 ).

Traditionally, innovation was not seen as a central goal of firms. Rather, innovations were viewed as something firms exploit (Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002 ). More recent work, however, indicates the long-term survival of firms, and their financial success ultimately depends on the firms’ capability for sustained innovation (Cefis & Marsili, 2005 ). At times, these innovations may call for the development and fielding of fundamentally new technologies or new services. At other times, however, chains of smaller innovations in firms, products, and services may prove to be the key to business success (Gordon, 2016 ).

Of course, many factors shape the development and success of attempts to develop and field viable new products and services—considerations that range from technological readiness (Wise, 1992 ) to the cost of the new product or service to customers (Rodgers & Adhikarya, 1979 ). However, ultimately a firm’s ability to develop and deploy viable new products and services depends on the ability of workers, all workers, to conceive of viable new products and services. The formulation of new products and services, however, is held to depend on peoples’ ability to think creatively. Put more specifically, innovation, the fielding of new products and services, is held to require that someone, an individual or a team, must be able to produce an original, high-quality, elegant solution (Besemer & O’Quin, 1998 ; Christiaans, 2002 ) to complex, novel, ill-defined, or poorly structured problems (Mumford & Gustafson, 2007 ). In this context, originality refers to the novelty, unexpectedness, and cleverness of a creative problem solution, whereas high quality is marked by complete, coherent, useful solutions. Elegance refers to the refinement and flow of the solution (Dailey & Mumford, 2006 ; Scott, Lonergan, & Mumford, 2005 ; Vessey, Barrett, & Mumford, 2011 ).

Of course, many variables influence the success of people’s creative problem-solving efforts. Creative problem solving requires a substantial investment of resources, and so, motivational variables such as need for cognition (Watts, Steele, & Song, 2017 ) and creative self-efficacy (Tierney & Farmer, 2002 ) have been found to contribute to creative problem solving. People’s willingness to engage in novel ill-defined tasks is also of some importance resulting in variables such as curiosity (Hardy, Ness, & Mecca, 2017 ) and openness (Furnham, 1999 ) influencing the success of people’s creative problem solving. People’s perception of their environment (climate perceptions) has been found to condition their willingness to undertake creative tasks (Hunter, Bedell, & Mumford, 2007 ). The availability of requisite resources (Howell & Boies, 2004 ) and induction of requisite structure (Marta, Leritz, & Mumford, 2005 ) also contributes to the success of peoples’ creative problem-solving efforts.

Although many variables contribute to the success of peoples’ creative problem-solving efforts, as is the case in any other form of problem solving, people must work with knowledge to produce a creative problem solution (Mumford, McIntosh, & Mulhearn, 2018 ). If, however, people could rely solely on extant knowledge to solve creative problems, they would not be dealing with a novel, ill-defined problem—remember that it is novel, complex, ill-defined problems that call for creative thought. As a result, the ways in which people work with knowledge (their processing activities) have long been considered critical to understanding creative problem solving (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992 ; Guilford, 1950 ; Wallas, 1926 ; Parnes & Noller, 1972 ). In the present effort, we will examine what we know about the key cognitive processes contributing to creative problem solving and the contextual variables that influence effective execution of these processes—including contextual variables operating in firms pursuing creative work to allow fielding of innovative and new products and services.

As noted above, creative thinking processes reflect mental operations for working with extant knowledge to provide high-quality, original, and elegant solutions to novel, complex, ill-defined problems. Accordingly, any discussion of creative thinking processes must begin with an examination of the role of knowledge in creative problem solving. Knowledge is commonly held to be reflected in people’s experience given the well-validated proposition that experts possess deeper, richer, better-organized knowledge structures (Ericsson, 2009 ).

In fact, Vincent, Decker, and Mumford ( 2002 ) have provided rather compelling evidence that knowledge and expertise contribute to people’s performance in creative problem solving. In this study, 1,818 army officers ranging in grade from second lieutenant to full colonel, were asked to solve a novel, complex, ill-defined military problem calling for creative thought using a modified think-aloud protocol where probe questions were presented to elicit certain creative problem-solving processes. Judges appraised the effectiveness of process execution. Expertise was assessed by presenting officers with a set of some 70 leadership tasks. They were asked to categorize these tasks, and their mapping onto a standard model of military leadership was used to appraise expertise. As might be expected, colonels (the more experienced officers) evidenced far higher scores on the measure of expertise than lieutenants. More centrally, expertise was found to be strongly and positively related (r = .51) to effective execution of those creative thinking processes. In fact, this measure of expertise produced stronger relationships with effective process execution than a measure of intelligence.

Apparently, the greater knowledge posed by experts contributes to the effective execution of creative thinking processes. Knowledge, however, comes in many forms—systematic or conceptual, case-based or experiential, associational, spatial, auditory, etc. In discussions of complex problem solving, however, the three key types of knowledges people are commonly held to employ are conceptual, case-based, and associational knowledge (Shondrick, Dinh, & Lord, 2010 ). Conceptual (or schematic) knowledge is based on concepts and principles pulled from past experience (Phye, 1990 ), where concepts are organized into categories that have exemplars based on certain features or principles (Estes & Ward, 2002 ). Conversely, case-based (or episodic) knowledge is a type of knowledge stemming from past experiences that a person draws upon in order to act appropriately in related situations. Lastly, associational knowledge refers to linkages between stimuli and response event nodes (Estes, 1991 ), where the activation of one event node activates other related nodes (Boucher & Dienes, 2003 ).

Hunter, Bedell-Avers, and Mumford ( 2007 ) asked 247 undergraduates to provide solutions to a creative problem requiring people to formulate a plan for leading a new, experimental, secondary school. Problem solutions were reliably appraised by judges for quality, originality, and elegance. Prior to preparing their problem solutions, an instructional intervention was used to prompt the use of conceptual, case-based, or associative knowledge (or all combinations thereof) in problem solving. It was found that priming the use of conceptual or case-based knowledge resulted in the production of the most creative problem solutions. Associational knowledge proved of value only when associations were accompanied by concepts or cases. Thus, execution of creative thinking processes apparently depends on having expertise—expertise providing people with key concepts relevant to the problem and actual hands-on experience working with other relevant problems.

It is commonly held that conceptual and case-based knowledge are organized through people’s construction of mental models—models that illustrate key cause/outcome linkages of use in solving a certain class or type of problem drawn from a given domain (Goldvarg & Johnson-Laird, 2001 ). Indeed, experts typically are found to possess stronger, more accurate, and more elaborate mental models for understanding problems arising in a given domain (Andersen, Barker, & Chen, 2006 ). Mumford et al. ( 2012 ) examined how the availability of high-quality mental models for organizing knowledge contributed to the success of people’s creative problem-solving efforts.

In the Mumford et al. ( 2012 ) study, participants, some 450 in all, were asked to formulate a marketing plan for a new type of athletic footwear for extreme sports, or formulate a plan for leading a new experimental secondary school. In both cases, the resulting plans were appraised by judges for quality, originality, and elegance. Prior to starting work on these creative problem-solving tasks, participants were provided with instruction on how to illustrate their mental models for understanding various problems using structural equations framework. Participants were asked to illustrate their mental models for understanding either marketing or educational problems before starting work on the problem presented. The resulting model illustrations were appraised for various objective features (e.g., number of cause/goal linkages, number of mediations) and subjective features (e.g., coherence, novelty). It was found that people possessing better organized mental models for understanding problems arising in either of these domains provided creative problem solutions of greater quality, originality, and elegance.

Not only does having stronger mental models for understanding problems arising in a domain contribute to people’s creative problem solving, but how people work with the knowledge appears crucial. In a series of separate, unique investigations, Barrett et al. ( 2013 ), Hester et al. ( 2012 ), Robledo et al. ( 2012 ), and Peterson et al. ( 2013 ) provided participants with instructions for applying different approaches for working with the knowledge embodied in mental models. For example, when working with causes, think about causes that have significant effects, or think about causes that have direct effects. Again, judges appraised the quality, originality, and elegance of people’s solutions to problems calling for creative thought. It was found the ways in which people worked with available knowledge influenced their ability to provide high-quality, original, and elegant solutions to problems calling for creative thought.

Creative Processes

Model of processes.

The importance of the ways people work with knowledge in creative problem solving points to the importance of peoples’ creative thinking processes. Recognition of this point has led many scholars to propose various models describing the key processes underlying incidents of creative thought (e.g., Dewey, 1910 ; Silverman, 1985 ; Sternberg, 1988 ; Wallas, 1926 ). Mumford et al. ( 1991 ) reviewed the available models of creative problem-solving processes to formulate a general model of the key creative thinking processes. This model was based on five key assumptions. First, creative problem solving, as noted above, depends on knowledge or expertise. Second, if only extant knowledge could be used to solve a problem, creative problem solving would not occur. Third, new knowledge arises from the combination and reorganization of extant knowledge. Fourth, successful combination and reorganization efforts give rise to new, emergent features, which provide a basis for generating original ideas. Fifth, progressive, proactive, evaluation and refinement of viable ideas will, in turn, give rise to creative problem solutions.

Figure 1. Process model.

Based on these propositions, Mumford et al. ( 1991 ) argued that eight core processes are involved in most creative problem-solving efforts. It is held that creative problem solving begins with the definition of the problem. Once a problem has been defined, people will gather information related to the problem. With information gathering, relevant concepts, or cases, can be retrieved from available mental models. The concepts/cases people select to work with are then combined and reorganized, which allows new concepts to emerge. These new concepts then provide a basis for idea generation. The generated ideas are then evaluated and refined. People then plan how to implement this idea. And, subsequently, plan implementation is adaptatively monitored to permit exploitation of opportunities and management of restrictions emerging during idea implementation. Figure 1 provides an illustration of this eight-process model.

Implicit in the model presented in Figure 1 is a number of key assumptions. First, each process serves as an input to the subsequent processing activities. Second, each process involves multiple discrete mental operations—both generative and evaluative mental operations. Third, if the products resulting from process execution are held to be inadequate, people will generally cycle back to the immediately preceding process. Fourth, as implied above, process execution is held to be a conscious activity. Fifth, all processes must be “successfully” executed to result in production of a creative problem solution. It should be noted these assumptions imply creative processing is a resource intensive effort where success is not insured due to the number of interdependent processes that must be executed successfully.

Process Evidence

Over the years, a sizeable body of research has been conducted that provides evidence for the relevance of each of these processes to creative problem solving. This section considers a few illustrative studies examining the impact of each of these processes on peoples’ performance in creative problem solving. It is of note, however, that virtually all of these processes have been investigated in multiple studies—studies employing different methods and different types of creative problem-solving tasks.

Reiter-Palmon, Mumford, O’Connor-Boes, and Runco ( 1997 ) asked participants to solve six complex, novel, ill-defined problems drawn from the leadership, social relations, and academic domains. Judges appraised the resulting problem solutions for quality and originality. Prior to starting work on these problems, participants were presented with a set of broad problem statements (e.g., there are mice in my basement). For each problem statement, they were asked to provide as many restatements or redefinitions of the problem they could think of. Judges rated problem restatements for quality and originality. It was found that those who could redefine problems with quality and originality produced creative problem solutions of higher quality and originality (r = .30). In a more recent study, Arreola and Reiter-Palmon ( 2016 ) assessed problem definition through restatements of problems in peoples’ own words. And, again, viable problem definitions were found to be positively related to the quality and originality of creative problem solutions, with problem definition accounting for creative performance above and beyond divergent thinking ability.

In a study of conceptual combination, Mumford, Baughman, Maher, Costanza, and Supinski ( 1997 ) asked participants to develop a marketing survey, a television advertisement, and a magazine advertisement for a new product—the 3D holographic television (Redmond, Mumford, & Teach, 1993 ). Written solutions to these three problems were appraised by judges for quality and originality. Prior to preparing these problem solutions, participants were presented with a set of conceptual combination problems drawn from Mobley, Doares, and Mumford ( 1992 ). These problems presented three categories, or concepts, as defined by four category exemplars (e.g., owls, ostriches, robins, sparrows). Participants were asked to combine these categories to create a new category. They were to label their new category, describe key features, emergent new features of this category, and provide exemplars of this new category. Judges appraised the quality and originality of the category label, features, and exemplars. The quality and originality of the advertising campaigns produced were found to be strongly positively related (r = .35) to the quality and originality of solutions to the advertising problems. Again, conceptual combination produced stronger relationships than a measure of divergent thinking.

Mumford et al. ( 1991 ) model of the creative thinking process holds that conceptual combination provides a basis for idea generation. Finke, Ward, and Smith ( 1992 ) made a similar argument. Mumford et al. ( 1998 ) asked 1,818 army officers, ranging in grade from second lieutenant to full colonel, to provide solutions to a novel, complex, ill-defined military problem-solving task. Prior to working on this task, however, they were also asked to complete the Guilford ( 1950 ) consequences measure in which they were to generate as many potential consequences of unlikely events (e.g., what would happen if gravity was cut in half?) as they could think of. The ideas generated were appraised by judges for attributes such as realism, time frame, and use of principles (e.g., concepts and concept features). It was found not only that these attributes of idea generation were positively related to the quality and originality of solutions to this military leadership problem (r = .45) but that use of principles in idea generation produced the strongest relationships with the quality and originality of solutions to military leadership problems.

Marcy and Mumford ( 2007 ) conducted a study examining the impact of concept selection in creative problem solving. In this study, it was assumed that creative problem solutions were most likely to emerge when people employed appropriate causal concepts for understanding the problem at hand. Accordingly, participants were asked to complete a set of self-paced instructional modules where they were provided with approaches for selecting the type of causal concepts that should be employed in creative problem solving (e.g., think about causes that have significant effects, think about causes that have direct effects, think about causes you can control). Participants were asked to solve six creative problems drawn from the business and educational domains where judges appraised problem solutions for quality, originality, and elegance. It was found that use of viable causes in concept selection resulted in production of creative problem solutions with greater quality, higher originality, and higher elegance.

In this model of creative processes, it is held that implementation planning is a key component of creative thought. Some support for this proposition has been provided by Marta, Leritz, and Mumford ( 2005 ). Teams were asked to work on a business “turn-around” task calling for creative thought. Written “turn-around” plans were appraised by judges for quality and originality. After working on this task, team members nominated their leader. Prior to starting work, all team members completed a measure of planning skills based on a series of business planning scenarios. It was found teams whose leaders evidenced strong planning skills produced “turn-around” plans of greater originality and better quality. Other work by Osburn and Mumford ( 2006 ), in a study of individual level creative problem solving, provides some support for this conclusion.

Of course, implementation planning depends on selecting an idea to be pursued. Gibson and Mumford ( 2013 ) examined how idea evaluation may contribute to creative problem solving. They asked undergraduates to formulate advertising campaigns for a new product. Judges appraised these advertising campaigns for quality, originality, and elegance. Prior to preparing these campaigns, however, participants were presented with a set of candidate ideas and asked to evaluate these ideas. Judges appraised these idea critiques with respect to number, depth, usefulness, range, complexity, isolation, risk sensitivity, operational relevance, and specificity. It was found that those who produced the most creative advertising campaigns were those who also produced a limited number of deep criticisms of potential ideas.

In yet another study of creative thinking processes, Mumford, Baughman, Supinski, and Maher ( 1996 ) examined the impact of information gathering on creative problem solving. In this study participants were asked to provide television advertisements, magazine advertisements, and a marketing survey for Redmond, Mumford, and Teach ( 1993 ) and its 3D holographic television task. These products of people’s creative-solving efforts were appraised by judges for quality and originality. Prior to starting work on this task, participants were asked to read through a set of “cards” bearing on the business management and the public policy problems. These “cards” presented different types of information—information bearing on key facts, anomalies, goals, restrictions, and diverse information. The time spent reading each card was recorded as a measure of the intensity of information gathering. And it was found the people producing the highest-quality and most original problem solutions spent more time encoding information bearing on key facts and anomalies (observations inconsistent with these facts). Apparently, information gathering not only contributes to creative problem solving, but the strategies employed in gathering information make a difference in process execution.

Processing Strategies

All these studies provide some evidence for the key processes included in Mumford et al. ( 1991 ) model of creative problem solving. Indeed, evidence was provided using different creative problem-solving tasks in diverse samples. The Mumford et al. ( 1996a ) study, however, points to another question bearing on this model. What strategies employed in process execution contribute to more effective process execution in incidents of creative problem solving?

A study by Mumford, Baughman, Threlfall, et al. ( 1996b ) examined the strategies contributing to performance in problem definition. Participants in this study were asked to work on the 3D television advertising task with solutions to these three problems both appraised by judges for quality and originality. Prior to starting work on this task, they were asked to work on a measure examining preferences for working with different types of material in problem definition. It was found that those people who produced highly original and high-quality problem solutions tended to define problems in terms of procedures and restrictions or constraints but not goals or information. Apparently, defining problems in terms of solution attributes inhibits creative thought.

Another series of studies by Barrett et al. ( 2013 ), Hester et al. ( 2012 ), Peterson et al. ( 2013 ), and Robledo et al. ( 2012 ) examined the kinds of concepts people may employ in creative problem solving. In all these studies participants were asked to solve either a marketing problem, a high-energy root beer campaign, or an educational problem calling for creative problem solving. And judges appraised the resulting problem solutions for quality, originality, and elegance. Prior to starting work on these problems, participants were instructed as to how to illustrate their mental models and provided with training in one of four approaches for concept selection: (1) causes (e.g., think about causes that operate synergistically), (2) constraints (e.g., think about resource constraints), (3) applications (e.g., how would your solution affect multiple key stakeholders), and (4) errors (e.g., think about whether potential errors are under your control). It was found that use of all four concept selection strategies contributed to creative problem solving, especially when people had stronger mental models for understanding the problem at hand. Although it is not clear if any one strategy was better than any other, it should be recognized that certain concept selection strategies such as error and applications strategies (i.e., strategies we often do not consider in discussions of creativity) did, in fact, contribute to creative problem solving.

A study of how people go about combining concepts has been conducted by Baughman and Mumford ( 1995 ). They asked participants to solve 12 category combination problems (e.g., owls, ostriches, robins, sparrows; ball, glove, net, racket) where judges rated the quality and originality of the exemplars provided to describe their new category. An instructional manipulation was used to encourage participants to (1) identify key features of each category, (2) map shared and non-shared features of the category, and (3) elaborate on emergent new features. It was found that feature mapping and elaboration contributed to production of more creative problem solutions. In follow-up studies, Mumford et al. ( 1997 ) found that metaphors and broader images may be employed to facilitate feature mapping, while Ward, Patterson, and Sifonis ( 2004 ) found that extensive elaboration on emergent features was critical to successful combination and reorganization efforts.

The ideas flowing from conceptual combination must be evaluated. Traditionally, idea evaluation has been viewed as solely an evaluative activity as opposed to an inherently generative activity. A study conducted by Lonergan, Scott, and Mumford ( 2004 ), however, indicates that use of generative, compensatory strategies is critical in creative problem solving. In this study, highly original or high-quality ideas for marketing the 3D holographic television were drawn from earlier work (Redmond et al., 1993 ). Participants were asked to assume the role of a manager evaluating these campaigns and were instructed to apply either operating efficiency or innovative standards in appraising ideas before preparing a final campaign, which would be appraised by judges for quality and originality. It was found the most creative campaigns were obtained when high-quality ideas were appraised with respect to innovation standards, and highly original ideas were appraised with respect to operating efficiency standards: presumably deep, focused appraisals (Gibson & Mumford, 2013 ). Thus, people employ a compensatory strategy in idea evaluation—a strategy accompanied by deep processing of key deficiencies.

Of course, idea evaluation also implies the need to forecast the implications of pursuing ideas. Similarly, Mumford, Shultz, and Van Doorn ( 2001 ) argued that forecasting is a key strategy underlying effective implementation planning. Byrne, Shipman, and Mumford ( 2010 ) and Shipman, Byrne, and Mumford ( 2010 ) examined the impact of forecasting on creative problem solving. In Byrne et al. ( 2010 ) participants were asked to formulate advertising campaigns for a new product, while in Shipman et al. ( 2010 ) they were asked to formulate plans for leading a new experimental secondary school. In both studies, written plans for addressing these problems were appraised by judges for quality, originality, and elegance. As participants worked on their plans, they received “e-mails” where they were asked to forecast the outcomes of their plans. The written answers to these e-mails were appraised for 29 forecasting attributes (e.g., number of positive outcomes forecast, number of obstacles forecast). A subsequent set of factorings yielded four dimensions—(1) forecasting extensiveness, (2) forecasting time frame, (3) forecasting resources, and (4) forecasting negative outcomes. Those who produced the most creative problem solutions forecasted more extensively and over a longer time frame—often spending more effort constructing back-up plans to cope with incidents of both failure and success (Giorgini & Mumford, 2013 ).

Model Evaluations

Apparently, Mumford et al. ( 1991 ) allowed us to draw some key conclusions about how creative people think—they define problems with respect to restrictions rather than goals, search for key facts and anomalies, employ flexible concept selection strategies, search for shared and non-shared elements of these concepts, elaborate on emergent new concepts, criticize and attempt to improve ideas based on their criticisms, and forecast extensively to arrive at actionable plans. Although these findings point to the value of this model, the structure of the model itself also points to more global structural propositions that may be tested.

For example, Mumford et al. ( 1997 ) examined the ability of these processes to predict creative performance. They asked participants to complete measures of four creative processes—problem definition, information gathering, concept selection, and conceptual combination. When appraisals of the quality and originality of creative problem solutions were regressed on these measures, it was found that each process made a unique contribution to predicting production of high-quality and original solutions. More centrally, the average multiple correlation obtained was .50—an especially impressive prediction when considering the reliability of the quality and originality appraisals registered in the mid-70s.

Another implication of this model is that the strategies employed during process execution will depend on the type of knowledge people are working with. Scott, Lonergan, and Mumford ( 2005 ) asked participants to formulate plans for leading a new experimental secondary school with these plans being appraised by judges for quality and originality. Prior to preparing these plans, however, they were presented with either concepts (e.g., team interaction) or multiple cases reflecting the same concepts. They found that the strategies employed in conceptual combination depended on the type of knowledge people were working with. Thus, if the concepts being worked with feature search and mapping, this contributed to the production of more creative problem solutions. However, if the cases being worked with include the analysis of case strengths and weakness, this contributed to production of more creative problem solutions.

Still another implication of this model is that errors made in execution of an earlier process (e.g., problem definition) will disrupt execution of later processing activities (e.g., information gathering). Friedrich and Mumford ( 2009 ) asked undergraduates to work on a marketing problem calling for creative thought where judges appraised marketing plans for quality, originality, and elegance. As participants worked through each process, new conflicting information was introduced to induce error in process execution. And the effectiveness of process execution was appraised both for the process where conflicting information was induced and subsequent processing activities where no conflicting information was induced. It was found not only that induction of conflicting information disrupted creative problem solving, a finding suggesting creative problem solving requires focused attention but that errors made in execution of earlier processes disrupted subsequent processing activities. Thus, the process flow through model holds—a point that also indicates creative processing is a risk-prone activity, due to the potential for error in executing any given process and may require multiple cycles of processing activity.

Although creative processing is difficult, the demands made by process execution may be offset by another phenomenon. Certain processes are particularly important to creative thought in certain domains—thus an error in a non-critical process may be of less concern. Mumford et al. ( 2010 ) asked doctoral students working in the biological, health, and social sciences to complete measures examining the effectiveness with which they executed each of these eight creative thinking processes: (1) problem definition, (2) information gathering, (3) concept selection, (4) conceptual combination, (5) idea generation, (6) idea evaluation, (7) implementation planning, and (8) adaptive monitoring. Biological scientists were especially skilled at information gathering and idea evaluation. Social scientists were especially skilled at conceptual combination and idea generation. Health scientists were especially skilled at problem definition and implementation planning. Not only do these findings suggest the processes generalize across domains of creative work (albeit with varying emphasis) but that the context in which creative work occurs may also be a noteworthy variable shaping effective executions of creative thinking processes.

Creative Thinking at Work

Earlier we noted that execution of creative thinking processes is based on knowledge. Knowledge, of course, depends in part on the availability of information bearing on the problem at hand. Accordingly, a variety of studies indicate that the intensity of scanning activities and information search is positively related to creativity and innovation (Anacona & Caldwell, 1992 ; Ford & Gioia, 2000 ; Koberg, Uhlenbruck, & Sarason, 1996 ; Souitaris, 2001 ). In this regard, however, it is important to ask what type of information should be sought in information gathering. Perhaps the most clear-cut conclusion here is that the information sought should be information relevant to the type of the creative problem at hand. Thus, scanning and information gathering is likely a tightly focused activity.

In this regard, however, the further point should be kept in mind. First, given the findings of Mumford et al. ( 1996a ), it seems reasonable to expect viable information gathering will focus on both key facts and anomalies with respect to these facts. Second, work contexts that encourage intense information search in professional contexts can be expected to encourage creative problem solving (Damanpour & Aravind, 2012 ). Third, because information often is obtained from social networks, one would expect creative people to establish and maintain a broader more diverse professional network with creative people evidencing loose network ties (Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003 )—perhaps because loose ties provide access to anomalies.

Access to information, access that may be created by the person or a firm (e.g., conference attendance, software) is not itself of value. Information is of value only if it can be understood in context. In other words, use of information in creative problem solving will depend on expertise—a point noted in our discussion of the Vincent, Decker, and Mumford ( 2002 ) study. Expertise however, develops rather slowly (Ericsson & Charness, 1994 ) with expertise being acquired over longer time frames as the complexity of work increases. Thus, it is not surprising that creative achievements in the sciences typically occur in peoples’ mid-40s (Simonton, 2006 ).

The impact of experience on execution of creative thinking processes has been demonstrated in Mumford et al. ( 2000 ). They contrasted more senior (e.g., colonels) and more junior (e.g., lieutenants) officers with respect to effective execution of the creative thinking processes described earlier. It was found more senior officers executed all eight creative thinking processes more effectively than junior officers when working on military problems calling for creative thought. Perhaps more critically, certain work assignments were found to contribute to the growth of these processing capabilities. More specifically, a background data measure was used to assess assignment history. Assignments that involved exposure to novel problems, complex problems, discretionary decision making, strategic planning, and boundary spanning all contributed to acquisition of stronger creative processing capabilities. Of course, these findings also suggest that firms establishing career development systems that provide people with exposure to multiple challenging creative tasks are more likely to ensure effective execution of relevant creative thinking processes.

Expertise, of course, makes work easier—less demanding. Earlier, however, we noted that execution of the various creative thinking processes is a demanding and resource intensive activity. One implication of the resource demands made by creative processing is that undue time pressure cannot be placed on those asked to do creative work, and those doing creative work must be given some autonomy to manage the stress induced by a demanding resource intensive activity (Baer & Oldham, 2006 ).

Another implication of this observation, however, is that motivation will prove crucial to creative work. The task engagement induced by high motivational levels helps ensure people have the resources needed to invest in creative processing activities. Indeed, a variety of studies have indicated that multiple motivational mechanisms, in fact, contribute to creative performance including achievement motivation (Feist & Gorman, 1998 ), creative self-efficacy (Tierney & Farmer, 2002 ), and perceived task significance (Oldham & Cummings, 1996 ). In fact, work environments where people are presented with significant professionally meaningful tasks seem to engender both creative achievements and intense execution of relevant creative thinking processes (Gertner, 2013 ).

Of course, many variables influence human motivation in one way or another. With respect to creative processing, however, motivational variables that encourage investment of resources in process execution per se are likely to prove especially noteworthy. Recently, Watts, Steele, and Song ( 2017 ) conducted a quasi-meta-analytic study of the impact of need for cognition on creative problem solving. Need for cognition is likely a key motivational variable influencing creative processing by encouraging people to value and invest resources in cognitively demanding activities. Drawing data from prior studies, for example, Partlow, Medeiros, and Mumford ( 2015 ) found that the need for cognition was positively related to performance on various creative problem-solving tasks and, presumably, execution of the creative thinking processes underlying task performance such as implementation planning (Osburn & Mumford, 2006 ).

Trait need for cognition, however, also can be framed in terms of state needs. In fact, prior research indicates work context variables inducing state need for cognition contribute to creative problem-solving performance and effective execution of the processes underlying creative problem solving. One key variable in this regard is exposure to an intellectually stimulating work environment (Sosik, Kahai, & Avolio, 1998 )—intellectual stimulation that may arise from the task, exchange with colleagues, or workplace design. State need for cognition, however, may also be induced by curiosity with respect to certain features of the problem at hand. Thus, Hardy, Ness, and Mecca ( 2017 ) asked participants to solve a marketing problem calling for creative thought where judges appraised problem solutions for quality and originality. Participants’ curiosity and information-seeking behavior were assessed. Information seeking was, apparently, based in curiosity with information acquired, in turn, contributing to creative processing and creative problem solving. The impact of curiosity on creative processing, however, explains why interest and autonomy in choice of work assignments often characterizes creative workplaces (Mumford & Hunter, 2005 ).

Curiosity, of course, is positively related to two other variables that have consistently proven to be related to creative problem solving and creative processing—openness and extraversion—noting that here extraversion is defined with respect to the five-factor model (Gill & Hodgkinson, 2007 ). For example, Vessey et al. ( 2011 ) found that extraversion was positively related to performance, in solving a marketing problem calling for creative thought while Partlow, Mederios, and Mumford ( 2015 ) found that openness was positively related to performance in solving an educational problem calling for creative thought. Although openness and extraversion are commonly conceived as characteristics of the person, it should also be recognized that work environments can be structured to allow expression of traits such as openness and extraversion. For example, encouraging debate with respect to key issues may, if appropriately managed, encourage people toward openness. Similarly, challenging people to think about competitors’ accomplishments may lead to extraversion. In fact, work context manipulations of the sort described above may prove particularly beneficial because the people attracted to jobs calling for creative problem solving tend to be open and extraverted.

Earlier we noted that in executing creative thinking processes, failure can be expected. This assertation was based on the observation that eight processes are involved in incidents of creative problem solving with multiple operations being called for in executing each process. As a result, failure is likely. And to complicate matters further, creative processing activities are a conscious, voluntary set of processes requiring a substantial investment of effort. Thus, people doing creative work are presented with a quandary: Why choose to invest in an effort that may fail?

These observations point to why a critical aspect of the work environment appears crucial to creativity. More specifically, people must have feelings of psychological safety and believe that failure will be tolerated. In fact, a study of organizational climate perceptions by Amabile et al. ( 1996 ) indicated that perceptions of support for creative efforts and perceptions of the environment’s tolerance of failure contributed to creative problem solving and, presumably, peoples’ willingness to invest resources in execution of creative thinking processes. In keeping with this observation Hunter et al. ( 2007 ) found that perceived support along with intellectual stimulation were strongly ( d ≥ .80) to both innovative achievement and creative problem solving in the workplace.

The Hunter et al. ( 2007 ) study, however, points to another feature of the work context that appears critical to the application of creative thinking processes: mission clarity. Mission clarity refers to the perception that the work environment provides a non-ambiguous, specified, and structured understanding of the key objectives of the work and the nature of the problems to be addressed. And, Hunter et al. ( 2007 ) found mission clarity to be positively related to both innovative achievement and creative problem solving.

The impact of mission clarity on creative thinking may strike many as disconcerting given the old notion that creative people should be free to explore. Mission clarity, however, implies that exploration will be self-limited or externally imposed. When one recognizes that creative problems are novel, complex, and ill-defined, however, it becomes apparent that mission clarity and imposition of structure may, in fact, be necessary to direct exploration along productive avenues (Mumford, Bedell-Avers, & Hunter, 2008 ).

The need to structure creative work is nicely illustrated in Marta, Leritz, and Mumford ( 2005 ). In this study, 55 teams were asked to formulate turn-around plans for a failing automotive firm. Team plans were appraised by judges for quality and originality. Following plan preparation, participants nominated team leaders. Leader consideration and initiating structure was assessed, and it was found that leader structuring behavior contributed to the production of problem solutions of both higher quality and originality. Of course, the need for structure does not imply overly close supervision, which generally inhibits creative thought (Barnow, 1976 ). Rather, a clear understanding of task objectives and problems likely to be encountered in executing this task must be available for people to structure ill-defined problems and to execute requisite creative thinking process (Keller, 2006 ).

Creative Thinking in Social Contexts

All work occurs in a distinctly social context involving creative problem solving. Accordingly, one may expect that social forces would also influence peoples’ willingness to invest resources in execution of the creative thinking process and their success in executing these processes. For example, information flow and information access in firms may influence the success of people’s processing and ultimately the success of their creative problem-solving efforts (Amabile & Conti, 1997 ). The layout and design of work spaces will, of course, influence information flow as well as the nature of social exchange among people as they work on creative problems. Access to and support from other teams—access and support, in part, conditioned by organizational structures—may influence creative processing as well as the feasibility of formulating cross-functional teams (Souitaris, 2001 ).

Although these, and a number of other contextual variables may influence the effectiveness of peoples’ creative processing, one variable that appears of special importance is leadership (Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002 ). For example, Barnow ( 1976 ) has shown that key leadership skills such as expertise and task structure contribute to the success of creative teams. More recently, Robledo, Peterson, and Mumford ( 2012 ) presented a model describing the key features that must be executed by those asked to lead creative teams. This model holds that leaders of creative efforts must (1) lead the work, defining fundamentals and themes to be pursued, planning how the work will be done, and helping team members resolve crises (e.g., Hemlin & Olsson, 2011 ); (2) lead the firm, championing the project to senior management, establishing requisite contacts in the firm, and educating firm members with respect to the impact of creative efforts (e.g., Howell & Boies, 2004 ); and (3) lead the group, recruiting team members, establishing an appropriate set of team processes and promoting a creative climate (e.g., Amabile et al., 1996 ).

Vessey et al. ( 2014 ) provided compelling support for this model. They content analyzed academic biographies available for 93 prominent scientific leaders who led various creative teams. Then they appraised the number of creative products produced by these teams and the impact of these products on both the field and the firm. Vessey and colleagues found not only that the leader’s skill in executing those three key functions contributed to the success of creative teams but also that the leader’s skill in executing these three functions was positively related to objective indices (e.g., H index) of their creative achievement.

Of course, leaders’ actions shape many social contextual variables that influence people’s creative processing activities. Clearly, leaders may encourage participation by team members (Zhou, Hirst, & Shipton, 2012 )—participation that may encourage investment of resources in process execution. Similarly, leaders may provide team members with access to experts and technology needed for their work—access needed to provide information and encourage investment of resources in process execution. As important as these and other leader actions may be, a key function of leaders is providing team members with shared mental models.

The impact of shared mental models on team performance has been demonstrated in many studies (e.g., Day, Gronn, & Salas, 2004 ). And there is reason to expect that the availability of shared mental models influences creative process execution. The availability of shared mental models promotes effective communication in teams—communication that provides the exchange of expertise and knowledge needed for process execution. More centrally, Mumford, Feldman, Hein, and Nagao ( 2001 ) have shown that the availability of shared mental models also contributes to effective execution of creative problem-solving processes when people are working in team settings.

In this study, teams of three to five individuals were asked to solve either a cognitive problem (i.e., endowment allocation) or a social problem (i.e., a poorly performing team member). Prior to starting work on these problems, participants were as asked to watch a video intended to induce a shared mental model for understanding the problem at hand. Team members were asked to generate ideas for solving the problem (an idea generation task) and to select their best idea (an idea evaluation task). The number of ideas produced and the appraised creativity of ideas selected served as the outcomes of concern. It was found the number of ideas generated and the creativity of the ideas provided was higher when team members evidenced a shared mental model—regardless of whether the training video tape was, or was not, congruent with the problem presented. Thus, the availability of shared mental models does apparently influence process execution.

The availability of shared mental models, however, may influence process execution in another way. De Dreu ( 2006 ) and Gilson and Shalley ( 2004 ) indicated that feedback from other team members—critical feedback—is beneficial to creative problem solving if the feedback provided is task based, not personal, and not of excessive intensity. In fact, the availability of shared mental models helps ensure the feedback provided by other team members will be task focused and of requisite depth to encourage effective process execution.

Some support for this observation has been provided in Gibson and Mumford ( 2013 ). They asked participants to formulate solutions to a marketing problem calling for creative thought. Judges appraised solutions provided for originality, quality, and elegance. Prior to preparing their problem solutions, however, participants were presented with a set of candidate ideas where they were asked to provide a written critique of these ideas. Judges appraised these critiques with respect to the number, depth, usefulness, range, complexity, isolation, risk sensitivity, relevance, and specificity. It was found the most creative problem solutions were produced by people who produced a limited number of deep criticisms of potential ideas. What should be recognized here, however, is that those who provided others with key deep criticisms of ideas will typically be those who possess a similar shared mental model of the problem at hand. Thus, the availability of shared mental models may allow productive, task relevant conflict—conflict that presumably contributes to team members’ capacity to execute requisite creative thinking processes.

Earlier, we noted that execution of the creative thinking processes is a demanding, resource-intensive activity. Put somewhat differently, this observation implies investment of requisite resources in execution of creative thinking processes will be based on an appraisal of whether process execution is likely to prove at all possible. Indeed, economic studies indicate that in domains, for example electrical systems (Wise, 1992 ), innovation comes in waves as the conditions arise that permit creative thought and encourage adequate investment in creative-thinking processes. At a more “local” level, however, it seems plausible to argue people will invest scarce cognitive resources in process execution and creative problem solving only when they believe they have the resources needed to solve the problem at hand. Indeed, it appears that people in creative efforts appraise available work resources (e.g., time), available social resources (e.g., other team members’ expertise), and fiscal/physical resources (e.g., equipment availability) before deciding to invest requisite cognitive resources in execution of creative thinking processes.

Although we know relatively little about how people appraise the potential for viable creative processing, we do know three things about peoples’ willingness to invest resources in creative processing. First, adequate physical/financial resources, albeit not a surfeit of resources, should be available (Nohari & Gulati, 1996 ). Second, the problems presented should be relevant to their domain of professional expertise and advancement of their professional careers (Mumford & Hunter, 2005 ). Third, social context—for example leaders and peers—should explicitly call for creative thought (Runco, Illies, & Eisenman, 2005 ). Put differently, if we do not ask for creativity under conditions where creative processing is possible, we are unlikely to see people attempt to execute creative thinking processes and produce creative problem solutions.

Conclusions

Clearly, since the 1980s we have begun to develop a far better understanding of the key cognitive processes contributing to creative problem solving. Broadly speaking, the Mumford et al. ( 1991 ) model holds that creative problem solving requires that people be able to execute eight key processes: (1) problem definition, (2) information gathering, (3) concept selection, (4) conceptual combination, (5) idea generation, (6) idea evaluation, (7) implementation planning, and (8) adaptive monitoring. Thus, within this model, creativity is not simply a matter of idea generation. Far more goes into creative problem solving than simply generating lots of ideas.

Indeed, the evidence gathered since the 1980s indicates that this model is, in fact, plausible and likely the best available model of the processing activities required for creative problem solving. More specifically, the evidence reviewed in the present effort indicates: (1) effective execution of each process contributes to performance on a variety of creative problem-solving tasks, (2) effective execution of each process makes a unique contribution to production of creative problem-solving performance, (3) effective execution of all these processes is strongly related to the originality, quality, and elegance of people solutions to creative problems, (4) these processes are applied (albeit with different emphasis) across a variety of performance domains, and (5) errors flow through such that mistakes made in executing earlier processing operations (e.g., problem definition) result in poorer performance in executing subsequent processing activities (e.g., information gathering).

Not only has prior research provided strong support for this model of the creative thinking process, key variables shaping effective process execution have been identified. For example, we have shown that expertise and the specific type of knowledge, conceptual or case-based, people employ in problem solving influences the effectiveness of process execution. Moreover, in our prior research we have begun to isolate the specific strategies that contribute to effective execution of each of these processes. For example, creative people define problems based on procedures and restrictions not goals; they search for key facts and anomalies, employ a variety of concepts in working with these facts and anomalies, search for shared and non-shared features of these concepts, generate ideas pragmatically, work with ideas in an active fashion to compensate for deficiencies, forecast the implications of their ideas in planning, and they execute backup plans adaptively.

These findings are noteworthy partly because they point to specific educational and training interventions that could be used to improve creative thinking. In fact, Scott, Leritz, and Mumford ( 2004 ), in a meta-analytic study of the effectiveness of creativity training, found that the most effective interventions for improving peoples’ creative problem solving were those that explicitly focused on these processes and acquisition of more viable strategies for process execution. Along somewhat different lines, managers may be encouraged to appraise creative teams or creative work vis-à-vis the effectiveness with which these processes are executed (Licuanan, Dailey, & Mumford, 2007 ). Along somewhat different lines, managers or firms might explicitly seek to create an environment that encourages effective execution of each of these processes under conditions where creative problem solving is an integral aspect of performance.

These and a number of other potentially viable interventions point to the need for a new wave of research examining creative problem-solving processes that recognize there is far more to creative problem solving than simple idea generation. For example, one might ask how should expertise be balanced in teams? How important is it to define problems in teams of professional fundamentals? Under what conditions do team members compensate for a person’s deficiencies in executing a certain creative thinking process?

The present effort, however, and our understanding of creative thinking processes point to another noteworthy implication of work along these lines. In the present effort we have tied various aspects of work context and the social context to effective execution of these processes. For example, we have provided an explanation why motivation is so important for creative work—motivation encourages people to invest resources in process execution. We have provided an explanation for why shared mental models are important for creative work—they provide a basis for formulating deep criticisms. Although other examples of this sort may be cited, these examples serve to make a key point. As Mumford, Hunter, and Byrne ( 2009 ) have pointed out, creative thinking processes provide the fundamental foundation for understanding creative problem solving and creative performance. By developing theories based on this fundamental well-validated proposition we may begin to develop a stronger and more robust understanding of creative work in firms.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Tristan McIntosh, Roni Reiter-Palmon, Robert Sternberg, and Mark Runco for their contributions the present effort. Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Michael D. Mumford, Department of Psychology, The University of Oklahoma 73019 or [email protected].

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• Friedrich, T. L. , & Mumford, M. D. (2009). The effects of conflicting information on creative thought: A source of performance improvements or decrements? Creativity Research Journal , 21 , 265–281.
• Furnham, A. (1999). Personality and creativity. Perceptual and Motor Skills , 88 , 407–408.
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• Hunter, S. T. , Bedell-Avers, K. E. , & Mumford, M. D. (2007). The typical leadership study: Assumptions, implications, and potential remedies. Leadership Quarterly , 18 , 435–446.
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• Mumford, M. D. , Hunter, S. T. , & Byrne, C. L. (2009). What is the fundamental? The role of cognition in creativity and innovation. Industrial and Organizational Psychology , 2 , 353–356.
• Mumford, M. D. , Marks, M. A. , Connelly, M. S. , Zaccaro, S. J. , & Reiter-Palmon, R. (2000). Development of leadership skills: Experience and timing. The Leadership Quarterly , 11 , 87–114.
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Creativity & problem-solving.

The Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) is conducting research and creating evidence-based approaches to problem-solving. Researchers at LISH are identifying the best way to approach a problem, starting with problem formulation, and experimenting with solvers on the best way to find solutions.

Key Questions

How does the nature of the problem to be solved impact the most optimal problem-solving approaches to be used?

How can problems be best formulated so that outsiders can help solve them, how does diversity in knowledge and skills impact problem-solving, can creativity be enhanced through teams and/or exposure to peers, these four research questions frame projects in this track, pushing the boundaries of medical imaging and computational biology through artificial intelligence and algorithm development, extensive crowdsourcing work with nasa and other federal agencies, and using data science to help create a history of the partition of british india. see below for more information on each of the individual projects in this research track., nasa tournament lab.

The NASA Tournament Lab was originally established in 2010 as a joint initiative between NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI), Harvard Business School, and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, to design and field challenges and contests... Read more about NASA Tournament Lab

Computational Biology Algorithms

Drivers of medical imaging diagnoses, integrating crowds into academic labs, advanced analytics challenges.

With the digital transformation in business and academia, the demand for advanced data analytics is increasing. LISH partners with foundations, government agencies, and research labs to access data analytics solutions through the crowd.... Read more about Advanced Analytics Challenges

Crowdsourcing for Social Good

Crowdsourcing memories from the 1947 partition of british india.

Working with the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University, this project aims to collect and analyze oral histories and memories of the 1947 Partition of British India with a focus on minority voices. Aspects of this project include gathering discrete historical data such as locations and descriptions of refugee camps; mapping geographical locations... Read more about Crowdsourcing Memories from the 1947 Partition of British India

Developing a Process to Foster Co-creation by Patients and Caretakers and our Research Communities

A joint project with Harvard Catalyst — Reactor , this initiative aims to pair patient- and caregiver-derived solutions with research labs at Boston-area medical schools to develop innovative tools to benefit the patients, their disease communities, and others with similar needs.... Read more about Developing a Process to Foster Co-creation by Patients and Caretakers and our Research Communities

City Challenges

LISH researchers are designing experiments wrapped around NYU GovLab’s City Challenges. The City Challenges program aims to use competitions and coaching to solve urban problems. See here for information on a prior challenge.

Related Publications

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has become a critical part of the modern economy. There are tens of millions of FOSS projects, many of which are built into software and products we use every day. However, it is difficult to fully understand the health, economic value, and security of FOSS because it is produced in a decentralized and distributed manner. This distributed development approach makes it unclear how much FOSS, and precisely what FOSS projects, are most widely used. This lack of understanding is a critical problem faced by those who want to help enhance the security of FOSS (e.g., companies, governments, individuals), yet do not know what projects to start with. This problem has garnered widespread attention with the Heartbleed and log4shell vulnerabilities that resulted in the susceptibility of hundreds of millions of devices to exploitation.

This report, Census II, is the second investigation into the widespread use of FOSS and aggregates data from over half a million observations of FOSS libraries used in production applications at thousands of companies, which aims to shed light on the most commonly used FOSS packages at the application library level. This effort builds on the Census I report that focused on the lower level critical operating system libraries and utilities, improving our understanding of the FOSS packages that software applications rely on. Such insights will help to identify critical FOSS packages to allow for resource prioritization to address security issues in this widely used software.

The Census II effort utilizes data from partner Software Composition Analysis (SCA) companies including Snyk, the Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center (CyRC), and FOSSA, which partnered with Harvard to advance the state of open source research. Our goal is to not only identify the most widely used FOSS, but to also provide an example of how the distributed nature of FOSS requires a multi-party effort to fully understand the value and security of the FOSS ecosystem. Only through data-sharing, coordination, and investment will the value of this critical component of the digital economy be preserved for generations to come.

In addition to the detailed results on FOSS usage provided in the report, we identified five high-level findings: 1) the need for a standardized naming schema for software components, 2) the complexities associated with package versions, 3) much of the most widely used FOSS is developed by only a handful of contributors, 4) the increasing importance of individual developer account security, and 5) the persistence of legacy software in the open source space.

Karim R. Lakhani, Anne-Laure Fayard, Manos Gkeredakis, and Jin Hyun Paik . 10/5/2020. “ OpenIDEO (B) ”. Publisher's Version Abstract In the midst of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic was unfolding, OpenIDEO - an online open innovation platform focused on design-driven solutions to social issues - rapidly launched a new challenge to improve access to health information, empower communities to stay safe during the COVID-19 crisis, and inspire global leaders to communicate effectively. OpenIDEO was particularly suited to challenges which required cross-system or sector-wide collaboration due to its focus on social impact and ecosystem design, but its leadership pondered how they could continue to improve virtual collaboration and to share their insights from nearly a decade of running online challenges. Conceived as an exercise of disruptive digital innovation, OpenIDEO successfully created a strong open innovation community, but how could they sustain - or even improve - their support to community members and increase the social impact of their online challenges in the coming years?

This paper presents NASA’s experience using a Center of Excellence (CoE) to scale and sustain an open innovation program as an effective problem-solving tool and includes strategic management recommendations for other organizations based on lessons learned.

This paper defines four phases of implementing an open innovation program: Learn, Pilot, Scale and Sustain. It provides guidance on the time required for each phase and recommendations for how to utilize a CoE to succeed. Recommendations are based upon the experience of NASA’s Human Health and Performance Directorate, and experience at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard running hundreds of challenges with research and development organizations.

Lessons learned include the importance of grounding innovation initiatives in the business strategy, assessing the portfolio of work to select problems most amenable to solving via crowdsourcing methodology, framing problems that external parties can solve, thinking strategically about early wins, selecting the right platforms, developing criteria for evaluation, and advancing a culture of innovation. Establishing a CoE provides an effective infrastructure to address both technical and cultural issues.

The NASA experience spanned more than seven years from initial learnings about open innovation concepts to the successful scaling and sustaining of an open innovation program; this paper provides recommendations on how to decrease this timeline to three years.

Tomohiro Ishibashi (Bashi), chief executive officer for B to S, and Julia Foote LeStage, chief innovation officer of Weathernews Inc., were addressing a panel at the HBS Digital Summit on creative uses of big data. They told the summit attendees about how the Sakura (cherry blossoms) Project, where the company asked users in Japan to report about how cherry blossoms were blooming near them day by day, had opened up opportunities for the company's consumer business in Japan. The project ultimately garnered positive publicity and became a foothold to building the company's crowdsourcing weather-forecasting service in Japan. It changed the face of weather forecasting in Japan. Bashi and LeStage wondered whether the experience could be applied to the U.S. market.

BACKGROUND: The association of differing genotypes with disease-related phenotypic traits offers great potential to both help identify new therapeutic targets and support stratification of patients who would gain the greatest benefit from specific drug classes. Development of low-cost genotyping and sequencing has made collecting large-scale genotyping data routine in population and therapeutic intervention studies. In addition, a range of new technologies is being used to capture numerous new and complex phenotypic descriptors. As a result, genotype and phenotype datasets have grown exponentially. Genome-wide association studies associate genotypes and phenotypes using methods such as logistic regression. As existing tools for association analysis limit the efficiency by which value can be extracted from increasing volumes of data, there is a pressing need for new software tools that can accelerate association analyses on large genotype-phenotype datasets.

RESULTS: Using open innovation (OI) and contest-based crowdsourcing, the logistic regression analysis in a leading, community-standard genetics software package (PLINK 1.07) was substantially accelerated. OI allowed us to do this in <6 months by providing rapid access to highly skilled programmers with specialized, difficult-to-find skill sets. Through a crowd-based contest a combination of computational, numeric, and algorithmic approaches was identified that accelerated the logistic regression in PLINK 1.07 by 18- to 45-fold. Combining contest-derived logistic regression code with coarse-grained parallelization, multithreading, and associated changes to data initialization code further developed through distributed innovation, we achieved an end-to-end speedup of 591-fold for a data set size of 6678 subjects by 645 863 variants, compared to PLINK 1.07's logistic regression. This represents a reduction in run time from 4.8 hours to 29 seconds. Accelerated logistic regression code developed in this project has been incorporated into the PLINK2 project.

CONCLUSIONS: Using iterative competition-based OI, we have developed a new, faster implementation of logistic regression for genome-wide association studies analysis. We present lessons learned and recommendations on running a successful OI process for bioinformatics.

Most United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent documents contain drawing pages which describe inventions graphically. By convention and by rule, these drawings contain figures and parts that are annotated with numbered labels but not with text. As a result, readers must scan the document to find the description of a given part label. To make progress toward automatic creation of ‘tool-tips’ and hyperlinks from part labels to their associated descriptions, the USPTO hosted a monthlong online competition in which participants developed algorithms to detect figures and diagram part labels. The challenge drew 232 teams of two, of which 70 teams (30 %) submitted solutions. An unusual feature was that each patent was represented by a 300-dpi page scan along with an HTML file containing patent text, allowing integration of text processing and graphics recognition in participant algorithms. The design and performance of the top-5 systems are presented along with a system developed after the competition, illustrating that the winning teams produced near state-of-the-art results under strict time and computation constraints. The first place system used the provided HTML text, obtaining a harmonic mean of recall and precision (F-measure) of 88.57 % for figure region detection, 78.81 % for figure regions with correctly recognized figure titles, and 70.98 % for part label detection and recognition. Data and source code for the top-5 systems are available through the online UCI Machine Learning Repository to support follow-on work by others in the document recognition community.

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Creative Problem Solving

What is creative problem solving.

Creative problem solving (CPS) is a process that design teams use to generate ideas and solutions in their work. Designers and design teams apply an approach where they clarify a problem to understand it, ideate to generate good solutions, develop the most promising one, and implement it to create a successful solution for their brand’s users.  

© Creative Education Foundation, Fair Use

Why is Creative Problem Solving in UX Design Important?

Creative thinking and problem solving are core parts of user experience (UX) design. Note: the abbreviation “CPS” can also refer to cyber-physical systems. Creative problem solving might sound somewhat generic or broad. However, it’s an ideation approach that’s extremely useful across many industries.  

Not strictly a UX design-related approach, creative problem solving has its roots in psychology and education. Alex Osborn—who founded the Creative Education Foundation and devised brainstorming techniques—produced this approach to creative thinking in the 1940s. Along with Sid Parnes, he developed the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process. It was a new, systematic approach to problem solving and creativity fostering.  

Osborn’s CPS Process.

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The main focus of the creative problem solving model is to improve creative thinking and generate novel solutions to problems. An important distinction exists between it and a UX design process such as design thinking. It’s that designers consider user needs in creative problem solving techniques, but they don’t necessarily have to make their users’ needs the primary focus. For example, a design team might trigger totally novel ideas from random stimuli—as opposed to working systematically from the initial stages of empathizing with their users. Even so, creative problem solving methods still tend to follow a process with structured stages. 

What are 4 Stages of Creative Problem Solving?

The model, adapted from Osborn’s original, typically features these steps:  

Clarify: Design teams first explore the area they want to find a solution within. They work to spot the challenge, problem or even goal they want to identify. They also start to collect data or information about it. It’s vital to understand the exact nature of the problem at this stage. So, design teams must build a clear picture of the issue they seek to tackle creatively. When they define the problem like this, they can start to question it with potential solutions.  

Ideate: Now that the team has a grasp of the problem that faces them, they can start to work to come up with potential solutions. They think divergently in brainstorming sessions and other ways to solve problems creatively, and approach the problem from as many angles as they can.  

Develop: Once the team has explored the potential solutions, they evaluate these and find the strongest and weakest qualities in each. Then, they commit to the one they decide is the best option for the problem at hand.  

Implement: Once the team has decided on the best fit for what they want to use, they discuss how to put this solution into action. They gauge its acceptability for stakeholders. Plus, they develop an accurate understanding of the activities and resources necessary to see it become a real, bankable solution.  

What Else does CPS Involve?

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

Two keys to the enterprise of creative problem solving are:  

Divergent Thinking

This is an ideation mode which designers leverage to widen their design space when they start to search for potential solutions. They generate as many new ideas as possible using various methods. For example, team members might use brainstorming or bad ideas to explore the vast area of possibilities. To think divergently means to go for:  

Quantity over quality: Teams generate ideas without fear of judgment (critically evaluating these ideas comes later). 

Novel ideas: Teams use disruptive and lateral thinking to break away from linear thinking and strive for truly original and extraordinary ideas.  

Choice creation: The freedom to explore the design space helps teams maximize their options, not only regarding potential solutions but also about how they understand the problem itself.  

Author and Human-Computer Interactivity Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains some techniques that are helpful for divergent thinking:  

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Convergent Thinking

This is the complementary half of the equation. In this ideation mode, designers analyze, filter, evaluate, clarify and modify the ideas they generated during divergent thinking. They use analytical, vertical and linear thinking to isolate novel and useful ideas, understand the design space possibilities and get nearer to potential solutions that will work best. The purpose with convergent thinking is to carefully and creatively:  

Look past logical norms (which people use in everyday critical thinking). 

Examine how an idea stands in relation to the problem.  

Understand the real dimensions of that problem.    

Professor Alan Dix explains convergent thinking in this video:  

What are the Benefits of Creative Problem Solving?

Design teams especially can benefit from this creative approach to problem solving because it:  

Empowers teams to arrive at a fine-grained definition of the problem they need to ideate over in a given situation.  

Gives a structured, learnable way to conduct problem-solving activities and direct them towards the most fruitful outcomes.  

Involves numerous techniques such as brainstorming and SCAMPER, so teams have more chances to explore the problem space more thoroughly.  

Can lead to large numbers of possible solutions thanks to a dedicated balance of divergent and convergent thinking.  

Values and nurtures designers and teams to create innovative design solutions in an accepting, respectful atmosphere.  

Is a collaborative approach that enables multiple participants to contribute—which makes for a positive environment with buy-in from those who participate.  

Enables teams to work out the most optimal solution available and examine all angles carefully before they put it into action.  

Is applicable in various contexts—such as business, arts and education—as well as in many areas of life in general.  

It’s especially crucial to see the value of creative problem solving in how it promotes out-of-the-box thinking as one of the valuable ingredients for teams to leverage.   

Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains how to think outside the box:  

How to Conduct Creative Problem Solving Best?

It’s important to point out that designers should consider—and stick to—some best practices when it comes to applying creative problem solving techniques. They should also adhere to some “house rules,” which the facilitator should define in no uncertain terms at the start of each session. So, designers and design teams should:  

Define the chief goal of the problem-solving activity: Everyone involved should be on the same page regarding their objective and what they want to achieve, why it’s essential to do it and how it aligns with the values of the brand. For example, SWOT analysis can help with this. Clarity is vital in this early stage.  Before team members can hope to work on ideating for potential solutions, they must recognize and clearly identify what the problem to tackle is.  

Have access to accurate information: A design team must be up to date with the realities that their brand faces, realities that their users and customers face, as well as what’s going on in the industry and facts about their competitors. A team must work to determine what the desired outcome is, as well as what the stakeholders’ needs and wants are. Another factor to consider in detail is what the benefits and risks of addressing a scenario or problem are—including the pros and cons that stakeholders and users would face if team members direct their attention on a particular area or problem.   

Suspend judgment: This is particularly important for two main reasons. For one, participants can challenge assumptions that might be blocking healthy ideation when they suggest ideas or elements of ideas that would otherwise seem of little value through a “traditional” lens. Second, if everyone’s free to suggest ideas without constraints, it promotes a calmer environment of acceptance—and so team members will be more likely to ideate better. Judgment will come later, in convergent thinking when the team works to tighten the net around the most effective solution. So, everyone should keep to positive language and encourage improvisational tactics—such as “yes…and”—so ideas can develop well.  

Balance divergent and convergent thinking: It’s important to know the difference between the two styles of thinking and when to practice them. This is why in a session like brainstorming, a facilitator must take control of proceedings and ensure the team engages in distinct divergent and convergent thinking sessions.  

Approach problems as questions: For example, “How Might We” questions can prompt team members to generate a great deal of ideas. That’s because they’re open-ended—as opposed to questions with “yes” or “no” answers. When a team frames a problem so freely, it permits them to explore far into the problem space so they can find the edges of the real matter at hand.  

UX Strategist and Consultant, William Hudson explains “How Might We” questions in this video:  

Use a variety of ideation methods: For example, in the divergent stage, teams can apply methods such as random metaphors or bad ideas to venture into a vast expanse of uncharted territory. With random metaphors, a team prompts innovation by drawing creative associations. With bad ideas, the point is to come up with ideas that are weird, wild and outrageous, as team members can then determine if valuable points exist in the idea—or a “bad” idea might even expose flaws in conventional ways of seeing problems and situations.  

Professor Alan Dix explains important points about bad ideas:  

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What Special Considerations Should Designers Have for CPS?

Creative problem solving isn’t the only process design teams consider when thinking of potential risks. Teams that involve themselves in ideation sessions can run into problems, especially if they aren’t aware of them. Here are the main areas to watch:  

Bias is natural and human. Unfortunately, it can get in the way of user research and prevent a team from being truly creative and innovative. What’s more, it can utterly hinder the iterative process that should drive creative ideas to the best destinations. Bias takes many forms. It can rear its head without a design team member even realizing it. So, it’s vital to remember this and check it. One team member may examine an angle of the problem at hand and unconsciously view it through a lens. Then, they might voice a suggestion without realizing how they might have framed it for team members to hear. Another risk is that other team members might, for example, apply confirmation bias and overlook important points about potential solutions because they’re not in line with what they’re looking for.  

Professor Alan Dix explains bias and fixation as obstacles in creative problem solving examples, and how to overcome them:  

Conventionalism

Even in the most hopeful ideation sessions, there’s the risk that some team members may slide back to conventional ways to address a problem. They might climb back inside “the box” and not even realize it. That’s why it’s important to mindfully explore new idea territories around the situation under scrutiny and not merely toy with the notion while clinging to a default “traditional” approach, just because it’s the way the brand or others have “always done things.”   

Dominant Personalities and Rank Pulling

As with any group discussion, it’s vital for the facilitator to ensure that everyone has the chance to contribute. Team members with “louder” personalities can dominate the discussions and keep quieter members from offering their thoughts. Plus, without a level playing field, it can be hard for more junior members to join in without feeling a sense of talking out of place or even a fear of reprisal for disagreeing with senior members.  

Another point is that ideation sessions naturally involve asking many questions, which can bring on two issues. First, some individuals may over-defend their ideas as they’re protective of them. Second, team members may feel self-conscious as they might think if they ask many questions that it makes them appear frivolous or unintelligent. So, it’s vital for facilitators to ensure that all team members can speak up and ask away, both in divergent thinking sessions when they can offer ideas and convergent thinking sessions when they analyze others’ ideas.  

Premature Commitment

Another potential risk to any creativity exercise is that once a team senses a solution is the “best” one, everyone can start to shut off and overlook the chance that an alternative may still arise. This could be a symptom of ideation fatigue or a false consensus that a proposed solution is infallible. So, it’s vital that team members keep open minds and try to catch potential issues with the best-looking solution as early as possible. The key is an understanding of the need for iteration—something that’s integral to the design thinking process, for example.   

Overall, creative problem solving can help give a design team the altitude—and attitude—they need to explore the problem and solution spaces thoroughly. Team members can leverage a range of techniques to trawl through the hordes of possibilities that exist for virtually any design scenario. As with any method or tool, though, it takes mindful application and awareness of potential hazards to wield it properly. The most effective creative problem-solving sessions will be ones that keep “creative,” “problem” and “solving” in sharp focus until what emerges for the target audience proves to be more than the sum of these parts.  

Learn More About Creative Problem Solving

Take our course, Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services . 

Watch our Master Class Harness Your Creativity To Design Better Products with Alan Dix, Professor, Author and Creativity Expert. 

Read our piece, 10 Simple Ideas to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing . 

Go to Exploring the Art of Innovation: Design Thinking vs. Creative Problem Solving by Marcino Waas for further details. 

Consult Creative Problem Solving by Harrison Stamell for more insights.  

Read The Osborn Parnes Creative Problem-Solving Process by Leigh Espy for additional information.  

See History of the creative problem-solving process by Jo North for more on the history of Creative Problem Solving. 

Questions about Creative Problem Solving

To start with, work to understand the user’s needs and pain points. Do your user research—interviews, surveys and observations are helpful, for instance. Analyze this data so you can spot patterns and insights. Define the problem clearly—and it needs to be extremely clear for the solution to be able to address it—and make sure it lines up with the users’ goals and your project’s objectives. 

You and your design team might hold a brainstorming session. It could be a variation such as brainwalking—where you move about the room ideating—or brainwriting, where you write down ideas. Alternatively, you could try generating weird and wonderful notions in a bad ideas ideation session. 

There’s a wealth of techniques you can use. In any case, engage stakeholders in brainstorming sessions to bring different perspectives on board the team’s trains of thought. What’s more, you can use tools like a Problem Statement Template to articulate the problem concisely. 

Take our course, Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services . 

Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains important points about bad ideas:  

Some things you might try are:  1. Change your environment: A new setting can stimulate fresh ideas. So, take a walk, visit a different room, or work outside. 

2. Try to break the problem down into smaller parts: Focus on just one piece at a time—that should make the task far less overwhelming. Use techniques like mind mapping so you can start to visualize connections and come up with ideas. 

3. Step away from work and indulge in activities that relax your mind: Is it listening to music for you? Or how about drawing? Or exercising? Whatever it is, if you break out of your routine and get into a relaxation groove, it can spark new thoughts and perspectives. 

4. Collaborate with others: Discuss the problem with colleagues, stakeholders, or—as long as you don’t divulge sensitive information or company secrets—friends. It can help you to get different viewpoints, and sometimes those new angles and fresh perspectives can help unlock a solution. 

5. Set aside dedicated time for creative thinking: Take time to get intense with creativity; prevent distractions and just immerse yourself in the problem as fully as you can with your team. Use techniques like brainstorming or the "Six Thinking Hats" to travel around the problem space and explore a wealth of angles. 

Remember, a persistent spirit and an open mind are key; so, keep experimenting with different approaches until you get that breakthrough. 

Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains important aspects of creativity and how to handle creative blocks: 

Read our piece, 10 Simple Ideas to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing . 

Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains the Six Thinking Hats ideation technique. 

Creative thinking is about coming up with new and innovative ideas by looking at problems from different angles—and imagining solutions that are truly fresh and unique. It takes an emphasis on divergent thinking to get “out there” and be original in the problem space. You can use techniques like brainstorming, mind mapping and free association to explore hordes of possibilities, many of which might be “hiding” in obscure corners of your—or someone on your team’s—imagination. 

Critical thinking is at the other end of the scale. It’s the convergent half of the divergent-convergent thinking approach. In that approach, once the ideation team have hauled in a good catch of ideas, it’s time for team members to analyze and evaluate these ideas to see how valid and effective each is. Everyone strives to consider the evidence, draw logical connections and eliminate any biases that could be creeping in to cloud judgments. Accuracy, sifting and refining are watchwords here. 

Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains divergent and convergent thinking: 

The tools you can use are in no short supply, and they’re readily available and inexpensive, too. Here are a few examples: 

Tools like mind maps are great ways to help you visualize ideas and make connections between them and elements within them. Try sketching out your thoughts and see how they relate to each other—you might discover unexpected gems, or germs of an idea that can splinter into something better, with more thought and development. 

The SCAMPER technique is another one you can try. It can help you catapult your mind into a new idea space as you Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse aspects of the problem you’re considering. 

The “5 Whys” technique is a good one to drill down to root causes with. Once you’ve spotted a problem, you can start working your way back to see what’s behind it. Then you do the same to work back to the cause of the cause. Keep going; usually five times will be enough to see what started the other problems as the root cause. 

Watch as the Father of UX Design, Don Norman explains the 5 Whys technique: 

Read all about SCAMPER in our topic definition of it. 

It’s natural for some things to get in the way of being creative in the face of a problem. It can be challenging enough to ideate creatively on your own, but it’s especially the case in group settings. Here are some common obstacles: 

1. Fear of failure or appearing “silly”: when people worry about making mistakes or sounding silly, they avoid taking risks and exploring new ideas. This fear stifles creativity. That’s why ideation sessions like bad ideas are so valuable—it turns this fear on its head. 

2. Rigid thinking: This can also raise itself as a high and thick barrier. If someone in an ideation session clings to established ways to approach problems (and potential solutions), it can hamper their ability to see different perspectives, let alone agree with them. They might even comment critically to dampen what might just be the brightest way forward. It takes an open mind and an awareness of one’s own bias to overcome this. 

3. Time pressure and resource scarcity: When a team has tight deadlines to work to, they may rush to the first workable solution and ignore a wide range of possibilities where the true best solution might be hiding. That’s why stakeholders and managers should give everyone enough time—as well as any needed tools, materials and support—to ideate and experiment. The best solution is in everybody’s interest, after all.  

It takes a few ingredients to get the environment just right for creative problem solving:  

Get in the mood for creativity: This could be a relaxing activity before you start your session, or a warm-up activity in the room. Then, later, encourage short breaks—they can rejuvenate the mind and help bring on fresh insights.  

Get the physical environment just right for creating problem solving: You and your team will want a comfortable and flexible workspace—preferably away from your workstations. Make sure the room is one where people can collaborate easily and also where they can work quietly. A meeting room is good as it will typically have room for whiteboards and comfortable space for group discussion. Note: you’ll also need sticky notes and other art supplies like markers. 

Make the atmosphere conducive for creative problem solving: Someone will need to play facilitator so everyone has some ground rules to work with. Encourage everyone to share ideas, that all ideas are valuable, and that egos and seniority have no place in the room. Of course, this may take some enforcement and repetition—especially as "louder" team members may try to dominate proceedings, anyway, and others may be self-conscious about sounding "ridiculous." 

Make sure you’ve got a diverse team: Diversity means different perspectives, which means richer and more innovative solutions can turn up. So, try to include individuals with different backgrounds, skills and viewpoints—sometimes, non-technical mindsets can spot ideas and points in a technical realm, which experienced programmers might miss, for instance. 

Watch our Master Class Harness Your Creativity To Design Better Products with Alan Dix, Professor, Author and Creativity Expert. 

Ideating alone? Watch as Professor Alan Dix gives valuable tips about how to nurture creativity: 

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Research plays a crucial role in any kind of creative problem solving, and in creative problem solving itself it’s about collecting information about the problem—and, by association, the users themselves. You and your team members need to have a well-defined grasp of what you’re facing before you can start reaching out into the wide expanses of the idea space.  

Research helps you lay down a foundation of knowledge and avoid reinventing the wheel. Also, if you study existing solutions and industry trends, you’ll be able to understand what has worked before and what hasn't.  

What’s more, research is what will validate the ideas that come out of your ideation efforts. From testing concepts and prototypes with real users, you’ll get precious input about your creative solutions so you can fine-tune them to be innovative and practical—and give users what they want in a way that’s fresh and successful. 

Watch as UX Strategist and Consultant, William Hudson explains important points about user research: 

First, it’s crucial for a facilitator to make sure the divergent stage of the creative problem solving is over and your team is on to the convergent stage. Only then should any analysis happen.  

If others are being critical of your creative solutions, listen carefully and stay open-minded. Look on it as a chance to improve, and don’t take it personally. Indeed, the session facilitator should moderate to make sure everyone understands the nature of constructive criticism.  

If something’s unclear, be sure to ask the team member to be more specific, so you can understand their points clearly. 

Then, reflect on what you’ve heard. Is it valid? Something you can improve or explain? For example, in a bad ideas session, there may be an aspect of your idea that you can develop among the “bad” parts surrounding it. 

So, if you can, clarify any misunderstandings and explain your thought process. Just stay positive and calm and explain things to your critic and other team member. The insights you’ve picked up may strengthen your solution and help to refine it. 

Last—but not least—make sure you hear multiple perspectives. When you hear from different team members, chances are you’ll get a balanced view. It can also help you spot common themes and actionable improvements you might make. 

Watch as Todd Zaki Warfel, Author, Speaker and Leadership Coach, explains how to present design ideas to clients, a valuable skill in light of discussing feedback from stakeholders. 

Lateral thinking is a technique where you approach problems from new and unexpected angles. It encourages you to put aside conventional step-by-step logic and get “out there” to explore creative and unorthodox solutions. Author, physician and commentator Edward de Bono developed lateral thinking as a way to help break free from traditional patterns of thought. 

In creative problem solving, you can use lateral thinking to come up with truly innovative ideas—ones that standard logical processes might overlook. It’s about bypassing these so you can challenge assumptions and explore alternatives that point you and your team to breakthrough solutions. 

You can use techniques like brainstorming to apply lateral thinking and access ideas that are truly “outside the box” and what your team, your brand and your target audience really need to work on. 

Professor Alan Dix explains lateral thinking in this video: 

1. Baer, J. (2012). Domain Specificity and The Limits of Creativity Theory . The Journal of Creative Behavior, 46(1), 16–29.   John Baer's influential paper challenged the notion of a domain-general theory of creativity and argued for the importance of considering domain-specific factors in creative problem solving. This work has been highly influential in shaping the understanding of creativity as a domain-specific phenomenon and has implications for the assessment and development of creativity in various domains. 

2. Runco, M. A., & Jaeger, G. J. (2012). The Standard Definition of Creativity . Creativity Research Journal, 24(1), 92–96.   Mark A. Runco and Gerard J. Jaeger's paper proposed a standard definition of creativity, which has been widely adopted in the field. They defined creativity as the production of original and effective ideas, products, or solutions that are appropriate to the task at hand. This definition has been influential in providing a common framework for creativity research and assessment. 

1. Fogler, H. S., LeBlanc, S. E., & Rizzo, B. (2014). Strategies for Creative Problem Solving (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. 

This book focuses on developing creative problem-solving strategies, particularly in engineering and technical contexts. It introduces various heuristic problem-solving techniques, optimization methods, and design thinking principles. The authors provide a systematic framework for approaching ill-defined problems, generating and implementing solutions, and evaluating the outcomes. With its practical exercises and real-world examples, this book has been influential in equipping professionals and students with the skills to tackle complex challenges creatively. 

2. De Bono, E. (1985). Six Thinking Hats . Little, Brown and Company.   

Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats introduces a powerful technique for parallel thinking and decision-making. The book outlines six different "hats" or perspectives that individuals can adopt to approach a problem or situation from various angles. This structured approach encourages creative problem-solving by separating different modes of thinking, such as emotional, logical, and creative perspectives. De Bono's work has been highly influential in promoting lateral thinking and providing a practical framework for group problem solving. 

3. Osborn, A. F. (1963). Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem-Solving (3rd ed.). Charles Scribner's Sons.  

Alex F. Osborn's Applied Imagination is a pioneering work that introduced the concept of brainstorming and other creative problem-solving techniques. Osborn emphasized how important it is to defer judgment and generate a large quantity of ideas before evaluating them. This book laid the groundwork for many subsequent developments in the field of creative problem-solving, and it’s been influential in promoting the use of structured ideation processes in various domains. 

Answer a Short Quiz to Earn a Gift

What is the first stage in the creative problem-solving process?

• Implementation
• Idea Generation
• Problem Identification

Which technique is commonly used during the idea generation stage of creative problem-solving?

• Brainstorming
• Prototyping

What is the main purpose of the evaluation stage in creative problem-solving?

• To generate as many ideas as possible
• To implement the solution
• To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of ideas

In the creative problem-solving process, what often follows after implementing a solution?

• Testing and Refinement

Which stage in the creative problem-solving process focuses on generating multiple possible solutions?

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Literature on Creative Problem Solving

Here’s the entire UX literature on Creative Problem Solving by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Creative Problem Solving

Take a deep dive into Creative Problem Solving with our course Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services .

The overall goal of this course is to help you design better products, services and experiences by helping you and your team develop innovative and useful solutions. You’ll learn a human-focused, creative design process.

We’re going to show you what creativity is as well as a wealth of ideation methods ―both for generating new ideas and for developing your ideas further. You’ll learn skills and step-by-step methods you can use throughout the entire creative process. We’ll supply you with lots of templates and guides so by the end of the course you’ll have lots of hands-on methods you can use for your and your team’s ideation sessions. You’re also going to learn how to plan and time-manage a creative process effectively.

Most of us need to be creative in our work regardless of if we design user interfaces, write content for a website, work out appropriate workflows for an organization or program new algorithms for system backend. However, we all get those times when the creative step, which we so desperately need, simply does not come. That can seem scary—but trust us when we say that anyone can learn how to be creative­ on demand . This course will teach you ways to break the impasse of the empty page. We'll teach you methods which will help you find novel and useful solutions to a particular problem, be it in interaction design, graphics, code or something completely different. It’s not a magic creativity machine, but when you learn to put yourself in this creative mental state, new and exciting things will happen.

In the “Build Your Portfolio: Ideation Project” , you’ll find a series of practical exercises which together form a complete ideation project so you can get your hands dirty right away. If you want to complete these optional exercises, you will get hands-on experience with the methods you learn and in the process you’ll create a case study for your portfolio which you can show your future employer or freelance customers.

Your instructor is Alan Dix . He’s a creativity expert, professor and co-author of the most popular and impactful textbook in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Alan has worked with creativity for the last 30+ years, and he’ll teach you his favorite techniques as well as show you how to make room for creativity in your everyday work and life.

You earn a verifiable and industry-trusted Course Certificate once you’ve completed the course. You can highlight it on your resume , your LinkedIn profile or your website .

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10 simple ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

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Table of Contents

What is creative problem-solving?

An introduction to creative problem-solving.

Creative problem-solving is an essential skill that goes beyond basic brainstorming . It entails a holistic approach to challenges, melding logical processes with imaginative techniques to conceive innovative solutions. As our world becomes increasingly complex and interconnected, the ability to think creatively and solve problems with fresh perspectives becomes invaluable for individuals, businesses, and communities alike.

Importance of divergent and convergent thinking

At the heart of creative problem-solving lies the balance between divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking encourages free-flowing, unrestricted ideation, leading to a plethora of potential solutions. Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is about narrowing down those options to find the most viable solution. This dual approach ensures both breadth and depth in the problem-solving process.

Emphasis on collaboration and diverse perspectives

No single perspective has a monopoly on insight. Collaborating with individuals from different backgrounds, experiences, and areas of expertise offers a richer tapestry of ideas. Embracing diverse perspectives not only broadens the pool of solutions but also ensures more holistic and well-rounded outcomes.

Nurturing a risk-taking and experimental mindset

The fear of failure can be the most significant barrier to any undertaking. It's essential to foster an environment where risk-taking and experimentation are celebrated. This involves viewing failures not as setbacks but as invaluable learning experiences that pave the way for eventual success.

The role of intuition and lateral thinking

Sometimes, the path to a solution is not linear. Lateral thinking and intuition allow for making connections between seemingly unrelated elements. These 'eureka' moments often lead to breakthrough solutions that conventional methods might overlook.

Stages of the creative problem-solving process

The creative problem-solving process is typically broken down into several stages. Each stage plays a crucial role in understanding, addressing, and resolving challenges in innovative ways.

Clarifying: Understanding the real problem or challenge

Before diving into solutions, one must first understand the problem at its core. This involves asking probing questions, gathering data, and viewing the challenge from various angles. A clear comprehension of the problem ensures that effort and resources are channeled correctly.

Ideating: Generating diverse and multiple solutions

Once the problem is clarified, the focus shifts to generating as many solutions as possible. This stage champions quantity over quality, as the aim is to explore the breadth of possibilities without immediately passing judgment.

Developing: Refining and honing promising solutions

With a list of potential solutions in hand, it's time to refine and develop the most promising ones. This involves evaluating each idea's feasibility, potential impact, and any associated risks, then enhancing or combining solutions to maximize effectiveness.

Implementing: Acting on the best solutions

Once a solution has been honed, it's time to put it into action. This involves planning, allocating resources, and monitoring the results to ensure the solution is effectively addressing the problem.

Techniques for creative problem-solving

Solving complex problems in a fresh way can be a daunting task to start on. Here are a few techniques that can help kickstart the process:

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a widely-used technique that involves generating as many ideas as possible within a set timeframe. Variants like brainwriting (where ideas are written down rather than spoken) and reverse brainstorming (thinking of ways to cause the problem) can offer fresh perspectives and ensure broader participation.

Mind mapping

Mind mapping is a visual tool that helps structure information, making connections between disparate pieces of data. It is particularly useful in organizing thoughts, visualizing relationships, and ensuring a comprehensive approach to a problem.

SCAMPER technique

SCAMPER stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse. This technique prompts individuals to look at existing products, services, or processes in new ways, leading to innovative solutions.

Benefits of creative problem-solving

Creative problem-solving offers numerous benefits, both at the individual and organizational levels. Some of the most prominent advantages include:

Finding novel solutions to old problems

Traditional problems that have resisted conventional solutions often succumb to creative approaches. By looking at challenges from fresh angles and blending different techniques, we can unlock novel solutions previously deemed impossible.

Enhanced adaptability in changing environments

In our rapidly evolving world, the ability to adapt is critical. Creative problem-solving equips individuals and organizations with the agility to pivot and adapt to changing circumstances, ensuring resilience and longevity.

Building collaborative and innovative teams

Teams that embrace creative problem-solving tend to be more collaborative and innovative. They value diversity of thought, are open to experimentation, and are more likely to challenge the status quo, leading to groundbreaking results.

Fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement

Creative problem-solving is not just about finding solutions; it's also about continuous learning and improvement. By encouraging an environment of curiosity and exploration, organizations can ensure that they are always at the cutting edge, ready to tackle future challenges head-on.

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Creative Thinking: Innovative Solutions to Complex Challenges

Learn how to grow a culture of creativity to innovate competitive solutions.

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Leverage your team's creativity to solve complex problems and innovate. Learn how to facilitate creative problem-solving, cultivate courage, inspire teams, and build a climate for innovation. 

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Susan Robertson

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High Performance. Innovation. Leadership.

What is Creative Problem Solving?

“Every problem is an opportunity in disguise.” — John Adams

Imagine if you come up with new ideas and solve problems better, faster, easier?

Imagine if you could easily leverage the thinking from multiple experts and different points of view?

That’s the promise and the premise of Creative Problem Solving.

As Einstein put it, “Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

Creative problem solving is a systematic approach that empowers individuals and teams to unleash their imagination , explore diverse perspectives, and generate innovative solutions to complex challenges.

Throughout my years at Microsoft, I’ve used variations of Creative Problem Solving to tackle big, audacious challenges and create new opportunities for innovation.

I this article, I walkthrough the original Creative Problem Solving process and variations so that you can more fully appreciate the power of the process and how it’s evolved over the years.

On This Page

Innovation is a Team Sport What is Creative Problem Solving? What is the Creative Problem Solving Process? Variations of Creative Problem Solving Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Criticisms of Creative Problem Solving Creative Problem Solving 21st Century FourSight Thinking Profiles Basadur’s Innovative Process Synetics SCAMPER Design Thinking

Innovation is a Team Sport

Recognizing that innovation is a team sport , I understood the importance of equipping myself and my teams with the right tools for the job.

By leveraging different problem-solving approaches, I have been able to navigate complex landscapes , think outside the box, and find unique solutions.

Creative Problem Solving has served as a valuable compass , guiding me to explore uncharted territories and unlock the potential for groundbreaking ideas.

With a diverse set of tools in my toolbox, I’ve been better prepared to navigate the dynamic world of innovation and contribute to the success and amplify impact for many teams and many orgs for many years.

By learning and teaching Creative Problem Solving we empower diverse teams to appreciate and embrace cognitive diversity to solve problems and create new opportunities with skill.

Creative problem solving is a mental process used to find original and effective solutions to problems.

It involves going beyond traditional methods and thinking outside the box to come up with new and innovative approaches.

Here are some key aspects of creative problem solving:

• Divergent Thinking : This involves exploring a wide range of possibilities and generating a large number of ideas, even if they seem unconventional at first.
• Convergent Thinking : Once you have a pool of ideas, you need to narrow them down and select the most promising ones. This requires critical thinking and evaluation skills.
• Process : There are various frameworks and techniques that can guide you through the creative problem-solving process. These can help you structure your thinking and increase your chances of finding innovative solutions.

Benefits of Creative Problem Solving:

• Finding New Solutions : It allows you to overcome challenges and achieve goals in ways that traditional methods might miss.
• Enhancing Innovation : It fosters a culture of innovation and helps organizations stay ahead of the curve.
• Improved Adaptability : It equips you to handle unexpected situations and adapt to changing circumstances.
• Boosts Confidence: Successfully solving problems with creative solutions can build confidence and motivation.

Here are some common techniques used in creative problem solving:

• Brainstorming : This is a classic technique where you generate as many ideas as possible in a short period of time.
• SCAMPER: This is a framework that prompts you to consider different ways to Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Magnify/Minify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, and Rearrange elements of the problem.
• Mind Mapping: This technique involves visually organizing your ideas and connections between them.
• Lateral Thinking: This approach challenges you to look at the problem from different angles and consider unconventional solutions.

Creative problem solving is a valuable skill for everyone, not just artists or designers.

You can apply it to all aspects of life, from personal challenges to professional endeavors.

What is the Creative Problem Solving Process?

The Creative Problem Solving (CPS) framework is a systematic approach for generating innovative solutions to complex problems.

It’s effectively a process framework.

It provides a structured process that helps individuals and teams think creatively, explore possibilities, and develop practical solutions.

The Creative Problem Solving process framework typically consists of the following stages:

• Clarify : In this stage, the problem or challenge is clearly defined, ensuring a shared understanding among participants. The key objectives, constraints, and desired outcomes are identified.
• Generate Ideas : During this stage, participants engage in divergent thinking to generate a wide range of ideas and potential solutions. The focus is on quantity and deferring judgment, encouraging free-flowing creativity.
• Develop Solutions : In this stage, the generated ideas are evaluated, refined, and developed into viable solutions. Participants explore the feasibility, practicality, and potential impact of each idea, considering the resources and constraints at hand.
• Implement : Once a solution or set of solutions is selected, an action plan is developed to guide the implementation process. This includes defining specific steps, assigning responsibilities, setting timelines, and identifying the necessary resources.
• Evaluate : After implementing the solution, the outcomes and results are evaluated to assess the effectiveness and impact. Lessons learned are captured to inform future problem-solving efforts and improve the process.

Throughout the Creative Problem Solving framework, various creativity techniques and tools can be employed to stimulate idea generation, such as brainstorming, mind mapping, SCAMPER (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse), and others.

These techniques help break through traditional thinking patterns and encourage novel approaches to problem-solving.

What are Variations of the Creative Problem Solving Process?

There are several variations of the Creative Problem Solving process, each emphasizing different steps or stages.

Here are five variations that are commonly referenced:

• Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving : This is one of the earliest and most widely used versions of Creative Problem Solving. It consists of six stages: Objective Finding, Fact Finding, Problem Finding, Idea Finding, Solution Finding, and Acceptance Finding. It follows a systematic approach to identify and solve problems creatively.
• Creative Problem Solving 21st Century : Creative Problem Solving 21st Century, developed by Roger Firestien, is an innovative approach that empowers individuals to identify and take action towards achieving their goals, wishes, or challenges by providing a structured process to generate ideas, develop solutions, and create a plan of action.
• FourSight Thinking Profiles : This model introduces four stages in the Creative Problem Solving process: Clarify, Ideate, Develop, and Implement. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the problem, generating a range of ideas, developing and evaluating those ideas, and finally implementing the best solution.
• Basadur’s Innovative Process : Basadur’s Innovative Process, developed by Min Basadur, is a systematic and iterative process that guides teams through eight steps to effectively identify, define, generate ideas, evaluate, and implement solutions, resulting in creative and innovative outcomes.
• Synectics : Synectics is a Creative Problem Solving variation that focuses on creating new connections and insights. It involves stages such as Problem Clarification, Idea Generation, Evaluation, and Action Planning. Synectics encourages thinking from diverse perspectives and applying analogical reasoning.
• SCAMPER : SCAMPER is an acronym representing different creative thinking techniques to stimulate idea generation. Each letter stands for a strategy: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Rearrange. SCAMPER is used as a tool within the Creative Problem Solving process to generate innovative ideas by applying these strategies.
• Design Thinking : While not strictly a variation of Creative Problem Solving, Design Thinking is a problem-solving approach that shares similarities with Creative Problem Solving. It typically includes stages such as Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Design Thinking focuses on understanding users’ needs, ideating and prototyping solutions, and iterating based on feedback.

These are just a few examples of variations within the Creative Problem Solving framework. Each variation provides a unique perspective on the problem-solving process, allowing individuals and teams to approach challenges in different ways.

Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving (CPS)

The original Creative Problem Solving (CPS) process, developed by Alex Osborn and Sidney Parnes, consists of the following steps:

• Objective Finding : In this step, the problem or challenge is clearly defined, and the objectives and goals are established. It involves understanding the problem from different perspectives, gathering relevant information, and identifying the desired outcomes.
• Fact Finding : The objective of this step is to gather information, data, and facts related to the problem. It involves conducting research, analyzing the current situation, and seeking a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing the problem.
• Problem Finding : In this step, the focus is on identifying the root causes and underlying issues contributing to the problem. It involves reframing the problem, exploring it from different angles, and asking probing questions to uncover insights and uncover potential areas for improvement.
• Idea Finding : This step involves generating a wide range of ideas and potential solutions. Participants engage in divergent thinking techniques, such as brainstorming, to produce as many ideas as possible without judgment or evaluation. The aim is to encourage creativity and explore novel possibilities.
• Solution Finding : After generating a pool of ideas, the next step is to evaluate and select the most promising solutions. This involves convergent thinking, where participants assess the feasibility, desirability, and viability of each idea. Criteria are established to assess and rank the solutions based on their potential effectiveness.
• Acceptance Finding : In this step, the selected solution is refined, developed, and adapted to fit the specific context and constraints. Strategies are identified to overcome potential obstacles and challenges. Participants work to gain acceptance and support for the chosen solution from stakeholders.
• Solution Implementation : Once the solution is finalized, an action plan is developed to guide its implementation. This includes defining specific steps, assigning responsibilities, setting timelines, and securing the necessary resources. The solution is put into action, and progress is monitored to ensure successful execution.
• Monitoring and Evaluation : The final step involves tracking the progress and evaluating the outcomes of the implemented solution. Lessons learned are captured, and feedback is gathered to inform future problem-solving efforts. This step helps refine the process and improve future problem-solving endeavors.

The CPS process is designed to be iterative and flexible, allowing for feedback loops and refinement at each stage. It encourages collaboration, open-mindedness, and the exploration of diverse perspectives to foster creative problem-solving and innovation.

Criticisms of the Original Creative Problem Solving Approach

While Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving is a widely used and effective problem-solving framework, it does have some criticisms, challenges, and limitations.

These include:

• Linear Process : CPS follows a structured and linear process, which may not fully capture the dynamic and non-linear nature of complex problems.
• Overemphasis on Rationality : CPS primarily focuses on logical and rational thinking, potentially overlooking the value of intuitive or emotional insights in the problem-solving process.
• Limited Cultural Diversity : The CPS framework may not adequately address the cultural and contextual differences that influence problem-solving approaches across diverse groups and regions.
• Time and Resource Intensive : Implementing the CPS process can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, requiring significant commitment and investment from participants and organizations.
• Lack of Flexibility : The structured nature of CPS may restrict the exploration of alternative problem-solving methods, limiting adaptability to different situations or contexts.
• Limited Emphasis on Collaboration : Although CPS encourages group participation, it may not fully leverage the collective intelligence and diverse perspectives of teams, potentially limiting the effectiveness of collaborative problem-solving.
• Potential Resistance to Change : Organizations or individuals accustomed to traditional problem-solving approaches may encounter resistance or difficulty in embracing the CPS methodology and its associated mindset shift.

Despite these criticisms and challenges, the CPS framework remains a valuable tool for systematic problem-solving.

Adapting and supplementing it with other methodologies and approaches can help overcome some of its limitations and enhance overall effectiveness.

Creative Problem Solving 21st Century

Roger Firestien is a master facilitator of the Creative Problem Solving process. He has been using it, studying it, researching it, and teaching it for 40 years.

According to him, the 21st century requires a new approach to problem-solving that is more creative and innovative.

He has developed a program that focuses on assisting facilitators of the Creative Problem Solving Process to smoothly and confidently transition from one stage to the next in the Creative Problem Solving process as well as learn how to talk less and accomplish more while facilitating Creative Problem Solving.

Creative Problem Solving empowers individuals to identify and take action towards achieving their goals, manifesting their aspirations, or addressing challenges they wish to overcome.

Unlike approaches that solely focus on problem-solving, CPS recognizes that the user’s objective may not necessarily be framed as a problem. Instead, CPS supports users in realizing their goals and desires, providing a versatile framework to guide them towards success.

Why Creative Problem Solving 21st Century?

Creative Problem Solving 21st Century addresses challenges with the original Creative Problem Solving method by adapting it to the demands of the modern era. Roger Firestien recognized that the 21st century requires a new approach to problem-solving that is more creative and innovative.

The Creative Problem Solving 21st Century program focuses on helping facilitators smoothly transition between different stages of the problem-solving process. It also teaches them how to be more efficient and productive in their facilitation by talking less and achieving more results.

Unlike approaches that solely focus on problem-solving, Creative Problem Solving 21st Century acknowledges that users may not always frame their objectives as problems. It recognizes that individuals have goals, wishes, and challenges they want to address or achieve. Creative Problem Solving provides a flexible framework to guide users towards success in realizing their aspirations.

Creative Problem Solving 21st Century builds upon the foundational work of pioneers such as Osborn, Parnes, Miller, and Firestien. It incorporates practical techniques like PPC (Pluses, Potentials, Concerns) and emphasizes the importance of creative leadership skills in driving change.

Stages of the Creative Problem Solving 21st Century

• Clarify the Problem
• Generate Ideas
• Develop Solutions
• Plan for Action

Steps of the Creative Problem Solving 21st Century

Here are stages and steps of the Creative Problem Solving 21st Century per Roger Firestien:

CLARIFY THE PROBLEM

Start here when you are looking to improve, create, or solve something. You want to explore the facts,  feelings and data around it. You want to find the best problem to solve.

IDENTIFY GOAL, WISH OR CHALLENGE Start with a goal, wish or challenge that begins with the phrase: “I wish…” or “It would be great if…”

Diverge : If you are not quite clear on a goal then create, invent, solve or improve.

Converge : Select the goal, wish or challenge on which you have Ownership, Motivation and a need for Imagination.

GATHER DATA

Diverge : What is a brief history of your goal, wish or challenge? What have you already thought of or tried? What might be your ideal goal?

Converge : Select the key data that reveals a new insight into the situation or that is important to consider throughout the remainder of the process.

Diverge : Generate many questions about your goal, wish or challenge. Phrase your questions beginning with: “How to…?” “How might…?” “What might be all the ways to…?” Try turning your key data into questions that redefine the goal, wish or challenge.

• Mark the “HITS” : New insight. Promising direction. Nails it! Feels good in your gut.
• Group the related “HITS” together.
• Restate the cluster . “How to…” “What might be all the…”

GENERATE IDEAS

Start here when you have a clearly defined problem and you need ideas to solve it. The best way to create great ideas is to generate LOTS of ideas. Defer judgment. Strive for quantity. Seek wild & unusual ideas. Build on other ideas.

Diverge : Come up with at least 40 ideas for solving your problem. Come up with 40 more. Keep going. Even as you see good ideas emerge, keep pushing for novelty. Stretch!

• Mark the “HITS”: Interesting, Intriguing, Useful, Solves the problem. Sparkles at you.
• Restate the cluster with a verb phrase.

DEVELOP SOLUTIONS

Start here when you want to turn promising ideas into workable solutions.

DEVELOP YOUR SOLUTION Review your clusters of ideas and blend them into a “story.” Imagine in detail what your solution would look like when it is implemented.

Begin your solution story with the phrase, “What I see myself doing is…”

PPCo EVALUATION

PPCo stands for Pluses, Potentials, Concerns and Overcome concerns

Review your solution story .

• List the PLUSES or specific strengths of your solution.
• List the POTENTIALS of your solution. What might be the result if you were to implement your idea?
• Finally, list your CONCERNS about the solution. Phrase your concerns beginning with “How to…”
• Diverge and generate ideas to OVERCOME your concerns one at a time until they have all been overcome
• Converge and select the best ideas to overcome your concerns. Use these ideas to improve your solution.

PLAN FOR ACTION

Start here when you have a solution and need buy-in from others. You want to create a detailed plan of action to follow.

Diverge : List all of the actions you might take to implement your solution.

• What might you do to make your solution easy to understand?
• What might you do to demonstrate the advantages of your solution?
• How might you gain acceptance of your solution?
• What steps might you take to put your solution into action?

Converge : Select the key actions to implement your solution. Create a plan, detailing who does what by when.

Credits for the Creative Problem Solving 21st Century

Creative Problem Solving – 21st Century is based on the work of: Osborn, A.F..(1953). Applied Imagination: Principles and procedures of Creative Problem Solving. New York: Scribner’s. Parnes, S.J, Noller, R.B & Biondi, A. (1977). Guide to Creative Action. New York: Scribner’s. Miller, B., Firestien, R., Vehar, J. Plain language Creative Problem-Solving Model, 1997. Puccio, G.J., Mance, M., Murdock, M.C. (2010) Creative Leadership: Skills that drive change. (Second Edition), Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. Miller, B., Vehar J., Firestien, R., Thurber, S. Nielsen, D. (2011) Creativity Unbound: An introduction to creative process. (Fifth Edition), Foursight, LLC., Evanston, IL. PPC (Pluses, Potentials & Concerns) was invented by Diane Foucar-Szocki, Bill Shepard & Roger Firestien in 1982

Where to Go for More on Creative Problem Solving 21st Century

Here are incredible free resources to ramp up on Creative Problem Solving 21st Century:

• PDF of Creative Problem Solving 21st Edition (RogerFirestien.com)
• PDF Worksheets for Creative Problem Solving (RogerFirestien.com)
• Video: Roger Firestien on 40 Years of Creative Problem Solving

Video Walkthroughs

• Video 1: Introduction to Creative Problem Solving
• Video 2: Identify your Goal/Wish/Challenge
• Video 3: Gather Data
• Video 4: Clarify the Problem: Creative Questions
• Video 5: Clarify the Problem: Why? What’s Stopping Me?
• Video 6: Selecting the Best Problem
• Video 7: How to do a Warm-up
• Video 8: Generate Ideas: Sticky Notes + Forced Connections
• Video 9: Generate Ideas: Brainwriting
• Video 10: Selecting the Best Ideas
• Video 11: Develop Solutions: PPCO
• Video 12: Generating Action Steps
• Video 13: Create Your Action Plan
• Video 14: CPS: The Whole Process

FourSight Thinking Profiles

The FourSight Thinking Skills Profile is an assessment tool designed to measure an individual’s thinking preferences and skills.

It focuses on four key thinking styles or stages that contribute to the creative problem-solving process.

The assessment helps individuals and teams understand their strengths and areas for development in each of these stages.

Why FourSight Thinking Profiles?

The FourSight method was necessary to address certain limitations or challenges that were identified in the original CPS method.

• Thinking Preferences : The FourSight model recognizes that individuals have different thinking preferences or cognitive styles. By understanding and leveraging these preferences, the FourSight method aims to optimize idea generation and problem-solving processes within teams and organizations.
• Overemphasis on Ideation : While ideation is a critical aspect of CPS, the original method sometimes focused too heavily on generating ideas without adequate attention to other stages, such as problem clarification, solution development, and implementation. FourSight offers a more balanced approach across all stages of the CPS process.
• Enhanced Problem Definition : FourSight places a particular emphasis on the Clarify stage, which involves defining the problem or challenge. This is an important step to ensure that the problem is well-understood and properly framed before proceeding to ideation and solution development.
• Research-Based Approach : The development of FourSight was influenced by extensive research on thinking styles and creativity. By incorporating these research insights into the CPS process, FourSight provides a more evidence-based and comprehensive approach to creative problem-solving.

Stages of FourSight Creative Problem Solving

FourSight Creative Problem Solving consists of four thinking stages, each associated with a specific thinking preference:

• Clarify : In this stage, the focus is on gaining a clear understanding of the problem or challenge. Participants define the problem statement, gather relevant information, and identify the key objectives and desired outcomes. This stage involves analytical thinking and careful examination of the problem’s context and scope.
• Ideate : The ideation stage involves generating a broad range of ideas and potential solutions. Participants engage in divergent thinking, allowing for a free flow of creativity and encouraging the exploration of unconventional possibilities. Various brainstorming techniques and creativity tools can be utilized to stimulate idea generation.
• Develop : Once a pool of ideas has been generated, the next stage is to develop and refine the selected ideas. Participants shift into a convergent thinking mode, evaluating and analyzing the feasibility, practicality, and potential impact of each idea. The emphasis is on refining and shaping the ideas into viable solutions.
• Implement : The final stage is focused on implementing the chosen solution. Participants develop an action plan, define specific steps and timelines, assign responsibilities, and identify the necessary resources. This stage requires practical thinking and attention to detail to ensure the successful execution of the solution.

Throughout the FourSight framework, it is recognized that individuals have different thinking preferences. Some individuals naturally excel in the Clarify stage, while others thrive in Ideate, Develop, or Implement.

By understanding these preferences, the FourSight framework encourages collaboration and diversity of thinking styles, ensuring a well-rounded approach to problem-solving and innovation.

The FourSight process can be iterative, allowing for feedback loops and revisiting previous stages as needed. It emphasizes the importance of open communication, respect for different perspectives, and leveraging the collective intelligence of a team to achieve optimal results.

4 Thinking Profiles in FourSight

In the FourSight model, there are four preferences that individuals can exhibit. These preferences reflect where individuals tend to focus their energy and time within the creative problem-solving process.

The four preferences in FourSight are:

• Clarifier : Individuals with a Clarifier preference excel in the first stage of the creative problem-solving process, which is about gaining clarity and understanding the problem. They are skilled at asking questions, gathering information, and analyzing data to define the problem accurately.
• Ideator : Individuals with an Ideator preference thrive in the second stage, which involves generating a wide range of ideas. They are imaginative thinkers who excel at brainstorming, thinking outside the box, and generating creative solutions. Ideators are known for their ability to explore multiple perspectives and come up with diverse ideas.
• Developer : Individuals with a Developer preference excel in the third stage of the process, which focuses on refining and developing ideas. They are skilled at evaluating ideas, analyzing their feasibility, and transforming them into actionable plans or solutions. Developers excel in taking promising ideas and shaping them into practical and effective strategies.
• Implementer : Individuals with an Implementer preference shine in the final stage of the process, which is about planning for action and executing the chosen solution. Implementers are skilled at organizing tasks, creating action plans, and ensuring successful implementation. They focus on turning ideas into tangible outcomes and are known for their ability to execute projects efficiently.

It’s important to note that while individuals may have a primary preference, everyone is capable of participating in all stages of the creative problem-solving process.

However, the FourSight model suggests that individuals tend to have a natural inclination or preference towards one or more of these stages. Understanding one’s preferences can help individuals leverage their strengths and work effectively in a team by appreciating the diversity of thinking preferences.

Right Hand vs. Left Hand

The FourSight model is a way to understand how people approach the creative process. It measures our preferences for different stages of creativity.

A good analogy for this is writing with your right or left hand. Think about writing with your right or left hand. Most of us have a dominant hand that we use for writing. It’s the hand we’re most comfortable with and it comes naturally to us. But it doesn’t mean we can’t write with our non-dominant hand. We can still do it, but it requires more effort and focus.

Similarly, in the creative process, we have preferred stages or parts that we enjoy and feel comfortable in. These are our peak preferences. However, it doesn’t mean we can’t work on the other stages. We can make a conscious effort to spend time and work on those stages, even if they don’t come as naturally to us.

Combinations of FourSight Profiles

Your FourSight profile is determined by four scores that represent your preferences in the creative process. Your profile reveals where you feel most energized and where you may struggle.

If you have a single peak in your profile, refer back to the description of that preference. If you have two or more peaks, continue reading to understand your tendencies when engaging in any kind of innovation.

Here are how the combinations show up, along with their labels:

2-Way Combinations

• High Clarifier & High Ideator = “Early Bird
• High Clarifier & High Developer = “Analyst”
• High Clarifier & High Implementer = “Accelerator”
• High Ideator & High Developer = “Theorist”
• High Ideator & High Implementer = “Driver”
• High Developer & High Implementer = “Finisher”

3-Way Combinations

• High Clarifier, Ideator & Developer = “Hare”
• High Clarifier, Ideator & Implementer = “Idea Broker”
• High Clarifier, Developer & Implementer = “Realist”
• High Ideator, Developer & Implementer = “Optimist”

4-Way Combination Nearly Equal for All Four Preferences = “Integrator”

Where to Go for More On FourSight

• FourSight Home
• FourSight Thinking Profile Interpretive Guide PDF
• FourSight Technical Manual PDF

Basadur’s Innovative Process

The Simplex Process, developed by management and creativity expert Min Basadur, gained recognition through his influential book “The Power of Innovation” published in 1995.

It consists of a sequence of eight steps organized into three distinct stages:

• Problem Formulation
• Solution Formulation
• Solution Implementation

You might hear Bsadur’s Innovative Process referred to by a few variations:

• Simplex Creative Problem Solving
• Basadur SIMPLEX Problem Solving Process
• Basadur System of innovation and creative problem solving
• Simplexity Thinking Process

What is Basadur’s Innovative Process

Here is how Basadur.com explains Basadur’s Innovation Process :

“The Basadur Innovation Process is an innovative thinking & creative problem solving process that separates innovation into clearly-defined steps, to take you from initial problem-finding right through to implementing the solutions you’ve created.

Its beauty is that it enables everyone to participate in an unbiased, open-minded way.

In the absence of negativity, people can think clearly and logically, building innovation confidence. A wide range of ideas can be proposed and the best ones selected, refined and executed in a spirit of openness and collaboration.

“That’s a great idea, but…”

How often have you heard this phrase? In most group decision-making processes, ideas are killed off before they’ve even got off the ground. With The Basadur Process on the other hand, judgment is deferred. Put simply, opinions on ideas don’t get in the way of ideas.”

3 Phases and 8 Steps of Basadur’s Innovative Process

The Basadur’s Innovative Process consists of three phases, subdivided into eight steps:

Phase 1: Problem Formulation

Problem Formulation : This phase focuses on understanding and defining the problem accurately. It involves the following steps:

• Step 1 : Problem Finding . Actively anticipate and seek out problems, opportunities, and possibilities. Maintain an open mind and view problems as opportunities for proactive resolution. Identify fuzzy situations and recognize that they can open new doors.
• Step 2 : Fact Finding . Gather relevant information and facts related to the fuzzy situation. Seek multiple viewpoints, challenge assumptions, listen to others, and focus on finding the truth rather than personal opinions. Utilize different lines of questioning to clarify the situation.
• Step 3 : Problem Definition . Define the problem accurately and objectively. View the problem from different angles and consider new perspectives. Uncover fresh challenges and recognize that the perceived problem might not be the real issue.

Phase 2: Solution Formulation

Solution Formulation . Once the problem is well-defined, this phase revolves around generating and evaluating potential solutions.  The steps involved are:

• Step 4 : Idea Finding . Generate ideas to solve the defined problem. Continuously seek more and better ideas, build upon half-formed ideas, and consider ideas from others. Fine-tune seemingly radical or impossible ideas to make them workable solutions.
• Step 5 : Evaluate & Select . Evaluate and select the most promising ideas to convert them into practical solutions. Consider multiple criteria in an unbiased manner, creatively improve imperfect solutions, and re-evaluate them.

Phase 3: Solution Implementation

Solution Implementation . In the final phase, the focus shifts to implementing and executing the selected solution effectively. The steps in this phase include:

• Step 6 : Plan Devise specific measures and create a concrete plan for implementing the chosen solution. Visualize the end result and motivate others to participate and support the plan.
• Step 7 : Acceptance Gain acceptance for the solutions and plans. Communicate the benefits of the solution to others, address potential concerns, and continuously revise and improve the solution to minimize resistance to change.
• Step 8 : Action Implement the solutions and put the plan into action. Avoid getting stuck in unimportant details, adapt the solutions to specific circumstances, and garner support for the change. Emphasize the need for follow-up to ensure lasting and permanent changes.

The SIMPLEX process recognizes that implementing a solution can reveal new problems, opportunities, and possibilities, leading back to Step 1 and initiating the iterative problem-solving and innovation cycle again.

Where to Go for More on Basadur’s Innovation Process

• Basadur’s Innovative Process Home
• Simplexity Thinking Explained
• Ambasadur Affiliate Program

Synectics is a problem-solving and creative thinking approach that emphasizes the power of collaboration, analogy, and metaphorical thinking. It was developed in the 1960s by George M. Prince and William J.J. Gordon.

Synectics is based on the belief that the most innovative ideas and solutions arise from the integration of diverse perspectives and the ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated concepts.

The Story of Synetics

Here is the story of Syentics according to SyneticsWorld.com:

“Back in the 1950s, our founders Bill Gordon, George Prince and their team studied thousands of hours of tape recorded innovation sessions to find the answer to

‘What is really going on between the people in the group to help them create and implement successfully?’

They called the answer the Synectics Creative-Problem-Solving Methodology, which has expanded into the Synecticsworld’s expertise on how people work creatively and collaboratively to create innovative solutions to some of the world’s most difficult challenges.

The unique Synecticsworld innovation process to the art of problem solving has taken us to many different destinations. We have worked on assignments in both the public and private sectors, in product and service innovation, business process improvement, cost reduction and the reinvention of business models and strategies.

It is our on-going goal to guide and inspire our clients to engage the Synectics innovation process to create innovative ideas, innovative solutions, and activate new, powerful, and innovative solutions.”

Why Synetics?

Synectics addresses challenges of the original Creative Problem Solving process by introducing a unique set of tools and techniques that foster creative thinking and overcome mental barriers.

Here’s how Synectics addresses some common challenges of the original Creative Problem Solving process:

• Breaking Mental Barriers : Synectics recognizes that individuals often have mental blocks and preconceived notions that limit their thinking. It tackles this challenge by encouraging the use of analogies, metaphors, and connections to break through these barriers. By exploring unrelated concepts and drawing parallels, participants can generate fresh perspectives and innovative solutions.
• Promoting Divergent Thinking : The original CPS process may sometimes struggle to foster a truly divergent thinking environment where participants feel comfortable expressing unconventional ideas. Synectics creates a safe and non-judgmental space for participants to freely explore and share their thoughts, regardless of how unusual or unconventional they may seem. This encourages a wider range of ideas and increases the potential for breakthrough solutions.
• Enhancing Collaboration : Synectics emphasizes the power of collaboration and the integration of diverse perspectives. It recognizes that innovation often emerges through the interaction of different viewpoints and experiences. By actively engaging participants in collaborative brainstorming sessions and encouraging them to build upon each other’s ideas, Synectics enhances teamwork and collective problem-solving.
• Stimulating Creative Connections : While the original CPS process focuses on logical problem-solving techniques, Synectics introduces the use of analogy and metaphorical thinking. By encouraging participants to find connections between seemingly unrelated concepts, Synectics stimulates creative thinking and opens up new possibilities. This approach helps overcome fixed thinking patterns and encourages participants to explore alternative perspectives and solutions.
• Encouraging Unconventional Solutions : Synectics acknowledges that unconventional ideas can lead to breakthrough solutions. It provides a framework that supports the exploration of unorthodox approaches and encourages participants to think beyond traditional boundaries. By challenging the status quo and embracing innovative thinking, Synectics enables the generation of unique and impactful solutions.

Synectics complements and expands upon the original CPS process by offering additional tools and techniques that specifically address challenges related to mental barriers, divergent thinking, collaboration, creative connections, and unconventional solutions.

It provides a structured approach to enhance creativity and problem-solving in a collaborative setting.

Synetic Sessions

In the Synectics process, individuals or teams engage in structured brainstorming sessions, often referred to as “synectic sessions.”

These sessions encourage participants to think beyond conventional boundaries and explore novel ways of approaching a problem or challenge.

The approach involves creating an open and non-judgmental environment where participants feel free to express their ideas and build upon each other’s contributions.

Synectics incorporates the use of analogies and metaphors to stimulate creative thinking. Participants are encouraged to make connections between unrelated concepts, draw parallels from different domains, and explore alternative perspectives.

This approach helps to break mental barriers, unlock new insights, and generate innovative ideas.

Steps of the Synetics Process

The Synectics process typically involves the following steps:

• Problem Identification : Clearly defining the problem or challenge that needs to be addressed.
• Idea Generation: Engaging in brainstorming sessions to generate a wide range of ideas, including both conventional and unconventional ones.
• Analogy and Metaphor Exploration : Encouraging participants to explore analogies, metaphors, and connections to stimulate new ways of thinking about the problem.
• Idea Development: Refining and developing the most promising ideas generated during the brainstorming process.
• Solution Evaluation : Assessing and evaluating the potential feasibility, effectiveness, and practicality of the developed ideas.
• Implementation Planning : Creating a detailed action plan to implement the chosen solution or ideas.

Synectics has been used in various fields, including business, design, education, and innovation. It is particularly effective when addressing complex problems that require a fresh perspective and the integration of diverse viewpoints.

Example of How Synetics Explores Analogies and Metaphors

Here’s an example of how Synectics utilizes analogy and metaphor exploration to stimulate new ways of thinking about a problem:

Let’s say a team is tasked with improving customer service in a retail store. During a Synectics session, participants may be encouraged to explore analogies and metaphors related to customer service. For example:

• Analogy : The participants might be asked to think of customer service in terms of a restaurant experience. They can draw parallels between the interactions between waitstaff and customers in a restaurant and the interactions between retail associates and shoppers. By exploring this analogy, participants may uncover insights and ideas for enhancing the customer experience in the retail store, such as personalized attention, prompt service, or creating a welcoming ambiance.
• Metaphor : Participants could be prompted to imagine customer service as a journey or a road trip. They can explore how different stages of the journey, such as initial contact, assistance during the shopping process, and follow-up after purchase, can be improved to create a seamless and satisfying experience. This metaphorical exploration may lead to ideas like providing clear signage, offering assistance at every step, or implementing effective post-purchase support.

Through analogy and metaphor exploration, Synectics encourages participants to think beyond the immediate context and draw inspiration from different domains .

By connecting disparate ideas and concepts , new perspectives and innovative solutions can emerge.

These analogies and metaphors serve as creative triggers that unlock fresh insights and generate ideas that may not have been considered within the confines of the original problem statement.

SCAMPER is a creative thinking technique that provides a set of prompts or questions to stimulate idea generation and innovation. It was developed by Bob Eberle and is widely used in problem-solving, product development, and brainstorming sessions.

SCAMPER provides a structured framework for creatively examining and challenging existing ideas, products, or processes.

Recognizing the value of Alex Osterman’s original checklist, Bob Eberle skillfully organized it into meaningful and repeatable categories. This thoughtful refinement by Eberle has made SCAMPER a practical and highly effective tool for expanding possibilities, breaking through creative blocks, and sparking new insights.

By systematically applying each prompt, individuals or teams can generate a wide range of possibilities and discover innovative solutions to problems or opportunities.

What Does SCAMPER Stand For?

Each letter in the word “SCAMPER” represents a different prompt to encourage creative thinking and exploration of ideas.

Here’s what each letter stands for:

• S – Substitute : Consider substituting a component, material, process, or element with something different to generate new ideas.
• C – Combine : Explore possibilities by combining or merging different elements, ideas, or features to create something unique.
• A – Adapt : Identify ways to adapt or modify existing ideas, products, or processes to fit new contexts or purposes.
• M – Modify : Examine how you can modify or change various attributes, characteristics, or aspects of an idea or solution to enhance its functionality or performance.
• P – Put to another use : Explore alternative uses or applications for an existing idea, object, or resource to uncover new possibilities.
• E – Eliminate : Consider what elements, features, or processes can be eliminated or removed to simplify or streamline an idea or solution.
• R – Reverse or Rearrange : Think about reversing or rearranging the order, sequence, or arrangement of components or processes to generate fresh perspectives and uncover innovative solutions.

Example of SCAMPER

Let’s take a simple and relatable challenge of improving the process of making breakfast sandwiches. We can use SCAMPER to generate ideas for enhancing this routine:

• S – Substitute : What can we substitute in the breakfast sandwich-making process? For example, we could substitute the traditional bread with a croissant or a tortilla wrap to add variety.
• C – Combine : How can we combine different ingredients or flavors to create unique breakfast sandwiches? We could combine eggs, bacon, and avocado to create a delicious and satisfying combination.
• A – Adapt: How can we adapt the breakfast sandwich-making process to fit different dietary preferences? We could offer options for gluten-free bread or create a vegan breakfast sandwich using plant-based ingredients.
• M – Modify : How can we modify the cooking method or preparation techniques for the breakfast sandwich? We could experiment with different cooking techniques like grilling or toasting the bread to add a crispy texture.
• P – Put to another use : How can we repurpose breakfast sandwich ingredients for other meals or snacks? We could use the same ingredients to create a breakfast burrito or use the bread to make croutons for a salad.
• E – Eliminate : What unnecessary steps or ingredients can we eliminate to simplify the breakfast sandwich-making process? We could eliminate the need for butter by using a non-stick pan or omit certain condiments to streamline the assembly process.
• R – Reverse or Rearrange : How can we reverse or rearrange the order of ingredients for a unique twist? We could reverse the order of ingredients by placing the cheese on the outside of the sandwich to create a crispy cheese crust.

These are just a few examples of how SCAMPER prompts can spark ideas for improving the breakfast sandwich-making process.

The key is to think creatively and explore possibilities within each prompt to generate innovative solutions to the challenge at hand.

Design Thinking

Design thinking provides a structured framework for creative problem-solving, with an emphasis on human needs and aspirations .

It’s an iterative process that allows for continuous learning , adaptation , and improvement based on user feedback and insights.

Here are some key ways to think about Design Thinking:

• Design thinking is an iterative and human-centered approach to problem-solving and innovation. It’s a methodology that draws inspiration from the design process to address complex challenges and create innovative solutions.
• Design thinking places a strong emphasis on understanding the needs and perspectives of the end-users or customers throughout the problem-solving journey.
• Design thinking is a collaborative and interdisciplinary process . It encourages diverse perspectives and cross-functional collaboration to foster innovation. It can be applied to a wide range of challenges, from product design and service delivery to organizational processes and social issues.

What is the Origin of Design Thinking

The origin of Design Thinking can be traced back to the work of various scholars and practitioners over several decades.

While it has evolved and been influenced by multiple sources, the following key influences are often associated with the development of Design Thinking:

• Herbert A. Simon : In the 1960s, Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon emphasized the importance of “satisficing” in decision-making and problem-solving. His work focused on the iterative nature of problem-solving and the need for designers to explore various alternatives before arriving at the optimal solution.
• Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber : In the 1970s, Rittel and Webber introduced the concept of “wicked problems,” which are complex and ill-defined challenges that do not have clear solutions. They highlighted the need for a collaborative and iterative approach to tackling these wicked problems, which aligns with the principles of Design Thinking.
• David Kelley and IDEO : Design firm IDEO, co-founded by David Kelley, played a significant role in popularizing Design Thinking. IDEO embraced an interdisciplinary and human-centered approach to design, focusing on empathy, rapid prototyping, and iteration. IDEO’s successful design projects and methodologies have influenced the development and adoption of Design Thinking across various industries.
• Stanford University : Stanford University’s d.school (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design) has been instrumental in advancing Design Thinking. The d.school has developed educational programs and frameworks that emphasize hands-on experiential learning, collaboration, and empathy in problem-solving. It has played a significant role in spreading the principles of Design Thinking globally.

While these influences have contributed to the emergence and development of Design Thinking, it’s important to note that Design Thinking is an evolving and multidisciplinary approach.

It continues to be shaped by practitioners, scholars, and organizations who contribute new ideas and insights to its principles and methodologies.

Key Principles of Design Thinking

Here are key principles of Design Thinking:

• Empathy : Design thinking begins with developing a deep understanding of the needs, emotions, and experiences of the people for whom you are designing solutions. Empathy involves active listening, observation, and engaging with users to gain insights and uncover unmet needs.
• Define the Problem : In this phase, the problem is defined and reframed based on the insights gained through empathy. The focus is on creating a clear problem statement that addresses the users’ needs and aspirations.
• Ideation : The ideation phase involves generating a wide range of ideas without judgment or criticism. It encourages divergent thinking, creativity, and the exploration of various possibilities to solve the defined problem.
• Prototyping : In this phase, ideas are translated into tangible prototypes or representations that can be tested and evaluated. Prototypes can be physical objects, mock-ups, or even digital simulations. The goal is to quickly and cost-effectively bring ideas to life for feedback and iteration.
• Testing and Iteration : Prototypes are tested with end-users to gather feedback, insights, and validation. The feedback received is used to refine and iterate the design, making improvements based on real-world observations and user input.
• Implementation : Once the design has been refined and validated through testing, it is implemented and brought to life. This phase involves planning for execution, scaling up, and integrating the solution into the intended context.

Where to Go for More on Design Thinking

There are numerous resources available to learn more about design thinking. Here are three highly regarded resources that can provide a solid foundation and deeper understanding of the subject:

• “Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work” (Book) – Nigel Cross: This book offers a comprehensive overview of design thinking, exploring its history, principles, and methodologies. Nigel Cross, a renowned design researcher, delves into the mindset and processes of designers, providing insights into their approaches to problem-solving and creativity.
• IDEO U : IDEO U is an online learning platform created by IDEO, a leading design and innovation firm. IDEO U offers a range of courses and resources focused on design thinking and innovation. Their courses provide practical guidance, case studies, and interactive exercises to deepen your understanding and application of design thinking principles.
• Stanford d.school Virtual Crash Course : The Stanford d.school offers a free Virtual Crash Course in design thinking. This online resource provides an introduction to the principles and process of design thinking through a series of videos and activities. It covers topics such as empathy, ideation, prototyping, and testing. The Virtual Crash Course is a great starting point for beginners and offers hands-on learning experiences.

These resources offer diverse perspectives and practical insights into design thinking, equipping learners with the knowledge and tools to apply design thinking principles to their own projects and challenges.

Additionally, exploring case studies and real-life examples of design thinking applications in various industries can further enhance your understanding of its effectiveness and potential impact.

Dr. John Martin on “Psychological” vs. “Procedural” Approach

Dr. John Martin of the Open University in the UK offers an insightful perspective on how various Creative Problem Solving and Brainstorming techniques differ.

In his notes for the Creative Management module of their MBA Course in 1997, he states:

“In practice, different schools of creativity training borrow from one another. The more elaborate forms of creative problem-solving, such as the Buffalo CPS method (basically brainstorming), incorporate quite a number of features found in Synectics.

However there is still a discernible split between the ‘psychological’ approaches such as Synectics that emphasize metaphor, imagery, emotion, energy etc. and ‘procedural’ approaches that concentrate on private listings, round robins etc.. Of course practitioners can combine these techniques, but there is often a discernible bias towards one or other end of the spectrum”

Brainstorming was the original Creative Problem-solving Technique, developed in the 1930s by Alex Osborn (the O of the advertising agency BBDO) and further developed by Professor Sidney Parnes of the Buffalo Institute.

The Osborn-Parnes model is the most widely practised form of brainstorming, though the word has become a generic term for any attempt to generate new ideas in an environment of suspending judgement. It may include elements of other techniques, such as de Bono’s Lateral Thinking.”

Creative Problem Solving vs. Brainstorming vs. Lateral Thinking

Creative Problem Solving, brainstorming, and lateral thinking are distinct approaches to generating ideas and solving problems. Here’s a summary of their differences:

Creative Problem Solving:

• Involves a systematic approach to problem-solving, typically following stages such as problem identification, idea generation, solution development, and implementation planning.
• Focuses on understanding the problem deeply, analyzing data, and generating a wide range of potential solutions.
• Encourages both convergent thinking (evaluating and selecting the best ideas) and divergent thinking (generating multiple ideas).
• Incorporates structured techniques and frameworks to guide the problem-solving process, such as the Osborn-Parnes model.

Brainstorming:

• A specific technique within Creative Problem Solving, developed by Alex Osborn, which aims to generate a large quantity of ideas in a short amount of time.
• Involves a group of individuals openly sharing ideas without judgment or criticism.
• Emphasizes quantity over quality, encouraging participants to build upon each other’s ideas and think creatively.
• Typically involves following guidelines, such as deferring judgment, encouraging wild ideas, and combining and improving upon suggestions.

Lateral Thinking (Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking):

• Introduced by Edward de Bono, lateral thinking is a deliberate and structured approach to thinking differently and generating innovative ideas.
• Involves deliberately challenging traditional thinking patterns and assumptions to arrive at unconventional solutions.
• Encourages the use of techniques like random stimulation, provocative statements, and deliberate provocation to shift perspectives and break fixed thought patterns.
• Focuses on generating out-of-the-box ideas that may not arise through traditional problem-solving methods.

While there can be overlaps and combinations of these approaches in practice, each approach has its distinct emphasis and techniques.

Creative Problem Solving provides a structured framework for problem-solving, brainstorming emphasizes idea generation within a group setting, and lateral thinking promotes thinking outside the box to arrive at unconventional solutions.

Creative Problem Solving Empowers You to Change Your World

The Creative Problem Solving process is a valuable framework that enables individuals and teams to approach complex problems with a structured and creative mindset.

By following the stages of clarifying the problem, generating ideas, developing solutions, implementing the chosen solution, and evaluating the outcomes, the process guides participants through a systematic and iterative journey of problem-solving.

Throughout this deep dive, we’ve explored the essence of Creative Problem Solving, its key stages, and variations. We’ve seen how different methodologies, such as Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving, FourSight Thinking Profiles, Basadur’s Innovative Process, Synectics, SCAMPER, and Design Thinking, offer unique perspectives and techniques to enhance the creative problem-solving experience.

By embracing these frameworks and techniques, individuals and teams can tap into their creative potential , break free from conventional thinking patterns, and unlock innovative solutions.

Creative Problem Solving empowers us to approach challenges with curiosity, open-mindedness, and a collaborative spirit , fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.

Remember, creative problem solving is a skill that can be developed and honed over time. By adopting a flexible and adaptable mindset , embracing diverse perspectives, and applying various creativity tools, we can navigate the complexities of problem-solving and uncover solutions that drive positive change.

Let’s enjoy our creative problem-solving journey by embracing the unknown and transforming challenges into opportunities for growth and innovation.

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The Importance of Creativity in Business

• 25 Jan 2022

When you think of creativity, job titles such as graphic designer or marketer may come to mind. Yet, creativity and innovation are important across all industries because business challenges require inventive solutions.

Here’s an overview of creativity’s importance in business, how it pairs with design thinking, and how to encourage it in the workplace.

Access your free e-book today.

Why Is Creativity Important?

Creativity serves several purposes. It not only combats stagnation but facilitates growth and innovation. Here's why creativity is important in business.

1. It Accompanies Innovation

For something to be innovative, there are two requirements: It must be novel and useful. While creativity is crucial to generate ideas that are both unique and original, they’re not always inherently useful. Innovative solutions can’t exist, however, without a component of creativity.

2. It Increases Productivity

Creativity gives you the space to work smarter instead of harder, which can increase productivity and combat stagnation in the workplace. Routine and structure are incredibly important but shouldn’t be implemented at the expense of improvement and growth. When a creative and innovative environment is established, a business’s productivity level can spike upward.

3. It Allows for Adaptability

Sometimes events—both internal and external—can disrupt an organization’s structure. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed how the present-day business world functions . In such instances, imaginative thinking and innovation are critical to maintaining business operations.

Creatively approaching challenges requires adaptability but doesn’t always necessitate significantly adjusting your business model. For example, you might develop a new product or service or slightly modify the structure of your operations to improve efficiency. Big problems don’t always require big solutions, so don’t reject an idea because it doesn’t match a problem’s scale.

Change is inevitable in the business world, and creative solutions are vital to adapting to it.

4. It’s Necessary for Growth

One of the main hindrances to a business’s growth is cognitive fixedness, or the idea that there’s only one way to interpret or approach a situation or challenge.

Cognitive fixedness is an easy trap to fall into, as it can be tempting to approach every situation similar to how you have in the past. But every situation is different.

If a business’s leaders don’t take the time to clearly understand the circumstances they face, encourage creative thinking, and act on findings, their company can stagnate—one of the biggest barriers to growth.

5. It’s an In-Demand Skill

Creativity and innovation are skills commonly sought after in top industries, including health care and manufacturing. This is largely because every industry has complex challenges that require creative solutions.

Learning skills such as design thinking and creative problem-solving can help job seekers set themselves apart when applying to roles.

Creativity and Design Thinking

While creativity is highly important in business, it’s an abstract process that works best with a concrete structure. This is where design thinking comes into play.

Design thinking —a concept gaining popularity in the business world—is a solutions-based process that ventures between the concrete and abstract. Creativity and innovation are key to the design thinking process.

In Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar’s course Design Thinking and Innovation , the process is broken down into four iterative stages:

• Clarify: In this stage, observation and empathy are critical. Observations can be either concrete and based on metrics and facts or abstract and gleaned from understanding and empathy. The goal during this stage is to gain an understanding of the situation and individuals impacted.
• Ideate: The ideation stage is abstract and involves creativity and idea generation. Creativity is a major focus, as the ideation phase provides the freedom to brainstorm and think through solutions.
• Develop: The development phase is a concrete stage that involves experimentation and trial and error. Critiquing and prototyping are important because the ideas generated from the ideation stage are formed into testable solutions.
• Implement: The fourth stage is solution implementation. This involves communicating the solution’s value and overcoming preexisting biases.

The value of design thinking is that it connects creativity and routine structure by encouraging using both the operational and innovation worlds. But what are these worlds, and how do they interact?

The Operational World

The operational world is the concrete, structured side of business. This world focuses on improving key metrics and achieving results. Those results are typically achieved through routine, structure, and decision-making.

The operational world has many analytical tools needed for the functional side of business, but not the innovative side. Furthermore, creativity and curiosity are typically valued less than in the innovation world. Employees who initiate unsuccessful, risky endeavors are more likely to be reprimanded than promoted.

The Innovation World

The innovation world requires curiosity, speculation, creativity, and experimentation. This world is important for a company’s growth and can bring about the aforementioned benefits of creativity in business.

This world focuses more on open-ended thinking and exploration rather than a company’s functional side. Although risky endeavors are encouraged, there’s little structure to ensure a business runs efficiently and successfully.

Connecting the Two Worlds

Although the operational world and innovation world are equally important to a business’s success, they’re separate . Business leaders must be ambidextrous when navigating between them and provide environments for each to flourish.

Creativity should be encouraged and innovation fostered, but never at the expense of a business’s functionality. The design thinking process is an excellent way to leverage both worlds and provides an environment for each to succeed.

Since the design thinking process moves between the concrete and abstract, it navigates the tension between operations and innovation. Remember: The operational world is the implementation of the innovative world, and innovation can often be inspired by observations from the operational world.

How to Encourage Creativity and Innovation

If you want to facilitate an innovative workplace, here are seven tips for encouraging creativity.

1. Don’t Be Afraid to Take Risks

Creativity often entails moving past your comfort zone. While you don't want to take risks that could potentially cripple your business, risk-taking is a necessary ingredient of innovation and growth. Therefore, providing an environment where it’s encouraged can be highly beneficial.

2. Don’t Punish Failure

Provide your team with the freedom to innovate without fear of reprisal if their ideas don’t work. Some of the best innovations in history were the product of many failures. View failure as an opportunity to learn and improve for the future rather than defeat.

3. Provide the Resources Necessary to Innovate

While it can be tempting to simply tell your team to innovate, creativity is more than just a state of mind. If your colleagues have the opportunity to be creative, you need to provide the resources to promote innovation. Whether that entails a financial investment, tools, or training materials, it’s in your best interest to invest in your team to produce innovative results.

4. Don’t Try to Measure Results Too Quickly

If an innovative idea doesn’t produce desirable results within a few months, you may consider discarding it entirely. Doing so could result in a lost opportunity because some ideas take longer to yield positive outcomes.

Patience is an important element of creativity, so don't try to measure results too quickly. Give your team the freedom to improve and experiment without the pressure of strict time constraints.

5. Maintain an Open Mind

One of the most important components of an environment that fosters creativity and innovation is keeping an open mind. Innovation requires constantly working against your biases. Continually ask questions, be open to the answers you receive, and don't require fully conceptualized ideas before proceeding with innovation.

6. Foster Collaboration

Collaborative environments are vital for innovation. When teams work together in pursuit of a common goal, innovation flourishes. To achieve this, ensure everyone has a voice. One way to do so is by hosting brainstorming sessions where each member contributes and shares ideas.

7. Encourage Diversity

Diversity fosters creativity and combats groupthink, as each individual brings a unique outlook to the table. Consider forming teams with members from different cultural backgrounds who haven’t previously worked together. Getting people to step outside their comfort zones is an effective way to encourage innovation.

Learning to Be Creative in Business

Creativity and innovation are immensely important skills whether you’re a job seeker, employer, or aspiring entrepreneur.

Want to learn more about design thinking? Start by finding fellow professionals willing to discuss and debate solutions using its framework. Take advantage of these interactions to consider how you can best leverage design thinking and devise different approaches to business challenges.

This exposure to real-world scenarios is crucial to deciding whether learning about design thinking is right for you. Another option is to take an online course to learn about design thinking with like-minded peers.

If you’re ready to take your innovation skills to the next level, explore our online course Design Thinking and Innovation , one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

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Daring Leadership Institute: a groundbreaking partnership that amplifies Brené Brown's empirically based, courage-building curriculum with BetterUp’s human transformation platform.

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How to improve your creative skills and supercharge your resume

Creative skills are the key to unlocking innovation and problem-solving excellence. 

In the whirlwind of everyday professional challenges, we’ve all encountered moments when fresh ideas feel elusive. If you’ve found yourself struggling to inspire your team or spinning out during a brainstorming session , it may be a sign you need to develop your creative skills. Plus, creative problem-solving looks excellent on a resume .

As a leader or team member, your ability to think outside the box can ignite a spark of ingenuity that propels your team to new heights. Fan the flames of growth and learn how to improve your creative thinking (and highlight your new skills in your next job application).

What are creative skills? 

Creative skills are crucial in today's rapidly changing world, enabling innovative problem-solving and adaptability across various fields.

They drive innovation, provide competitive advantages in business, and foster personal growth. In an increasingly complex global landscape, creative thinking is essential for addressing challenges and seizing new opportunities.

Are creative skills important?

Creative skills are crucial in today's rapidly changing world, enabling innovative problem-solving and adaptability across various fields. They drive innovation, provide competitive advantages in business, and foster personal growth. In an increasingly complex global landscape, creative thinking is essential for addressing challenges and seizing new opportunities.

15 creative skills examples

When you look at creativity as a set of particular abilities, it becomes easier to develop and perfect. These creative skill examples can help you thrive inside and outside of the workplace:

1. Open-mindedness

When you’re open-minded, you can readily adapt to new information and look for fresh problem-solving approaches. You’re receptive to the opinions and ideas of others because you view them as constructive rather than criticizing . This openness also encourages you to freely share your creative ideas without fearing judgement.

2. Curiosity

You might find that you tap into creative potential the most when you’re challenging convention and posing new ways of thinking. Analyzing processes and asking yourself how you can improve them is an exciting way to make more efficient systems.

Whether you’re new to a job or have worked at the company for years, you may wonder why procedures are what they are — lean into this curiosity to develop new and better ways to work. 

3. Ability to brainstorm

There are numerous ways to solve a problem, and brainstorming helps to get them onto paper so you can weigh their pros and cons. This way of lateral thinking encourages you to view solutions as multifaceted rather than a single, straightforward answer.

4. Experimentation

Creative people experiment with various ways of solving a problem before deciding on the best way to take action. Emulate this mindset in your projects and tasks. For instance, if you work in web design, you might try several page layouts before deciding on a final visual identity for your client.

5. Networking

Speaking with people from different professional backgrounds is an excellent way to stimulate creative thinking and develop new perspectives. When you network with professionals with diverse skill sets and experiences, they might influence you to look at the world differently or suggest an innovative way to tackle a problem.

6. Observation

It’s important to know when to take the backseat and listen in. Observing how others tackle complex issues might inspire you to make changes within your team. Always keep an eye out for opportunities to learn from more experienced peers and innovative colleagues.

7. Organization

Although some individuals claim to thrive in clutter, k eeping your work organized creates an environment where you can work freely without distraction. This involves keeping your workspace tidy, creating clear to-do lists, and using visual maps to express your plans and processes.

8. Communication

Proper communication empowers you to share valuable insight and ideas with your teammates. You need strong verbal and written skills to pitch and describe your thoughts and actively listen to others’ feedback and advice.

9. Analysis

Before you can dream up a creative approach to an obstacle, you must fully understand the problem at hand. Without proper analysis , your solution may contain flaws, or you could miss important details of your problem. Practice sifting through every detail of the issue and pinpointing the causes. 

10. Problem-solving

No matter your industry, problem-solving is always a valuable skill. Consider how to tackle a problem without asking the advice of others to see what creative solutions arise. This way, you can see what inventive ideas you can come up with before external opinions influence you.

11. Imagination

The ability to visualize concepts not present in reality. Thinking beyond the conventional, imagination fuels original thoughts and ideas.

12. Innovation

Introducing new ideas, methods, or products is at the heart of innovation. This capacity involves both improving existing processes and creating entirely novel solutions.

13. Adaptability

Being flexible and open to change is crucial for creative thinking. Adaptability allows individuals to adjust seamlessly to new conditions and challenges.

14. Collaboration

Sharing ideas and integrating different viewpoints are key to effective teamwork. Collaboration involves working with others to achieve common goals.

15. Storytelling

Engaging narratives captivate audiences across various mediums. Storytelling is essential in almost any industry to connect with others.

How to improve creative skills at work

Although some of your coworkers may seem to have a natural talent for creativity and creative thinking, it’s a skill anyone can develop and improve. Here are seven ways to advance your innovative problem-solving:

Reading is an effective way to exercise your mind, increase your vocabulary, and expose yourself to new ways of thinking. Whether your book is on a problem you’re facing at work or a new and exciting subject, reading is an excellent opportunity to learn. That’s right: simply cracking open a book can help you grow . 

Keep a notepad nearby and write down thoughts and ideas as they arise. Writing helps you to process information, and you can revisit your musing whenever you need to get your creative juices flowing. If you’ve never tried journaling before, it’s an excellent way to process your thoughts and feelings in a safe and private space. 

3. Exercise

Exercising improves your sleep and ability to cope with stress, making it easier to stay alert and contribute fresh ideas at work. 

4. Listen to music

Music can affect your mood and place you in the mindset to solve problems. If you’re struggling with creative writing or creating a visual piece of work, listening to music could push you toward expressing yourself more meaningfully. 

5. Ask for feedback

Collaboration and teamwork are key when developing creative solutions in the workplace. You can ask teammates or superiors for feedback on your ideas to gain insight into potential flaws in your reasoning and streamline your solutions.

6. Find a mentor or coach

Having an experienced person to bounce ideas off is a catalyst for creativity. A mentor or coach who’s dealt with similar obstacles can provide insight into what worked and what didn’t, saving you valuable brainstorming time. 

7. Change your approach

If you’ve been approaching your tasks the same way, adjusting your processes may bring a fresh perspective and stimulate change. Ask yourself why you tackle work from a similar angle each time and consider more creative ways to conduct your day-to-day operations.

4 creative skills examples for your resume 

Employers want to add creative people to their teams because solving problems takes a lot of ingenuity. Use these four examples and bullet points for inspiration when listing creative thinking skills on your resume.

On a graphic designer’s resume:

• Collaborated on rebranding [company’s] visual identity and social media content strategy
• Developed unique and innovative branding material for [company A] , [company B] , and [company C]

On a copywriter’s resume:

• Revised [company’s] website and blog content to be more engaging, exciting, and SEO-focused
• Contributed original and innovative articles on [topic] to [publication A] and [publication B]

On a public relations specialist’s resume:

• Increased [company’s] brand awareness by planning [event] to launch [product]
• Collaborated with [brand] on [product’s] creative marketing strategy to reach a wider audience

On a teacher’s resume:

• Developed a novel approach to teaching [subject or class] to students with various learning styles and needs
• Introduced [extracurricular] , the first of its kind in [the school board] , to engage students in [activity]

Sharpen your creativity 

Critical and creative thinking broaden your perspective and allow you to devise unique solutions to everyday problems. You can develop your creative skills by changing your environment, learning from others, and adjusting your approach to work. 

Regardless of how you choose to spark creativity at work, don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone and confidently contribute your ideas. You never know — you might just come up with the next big company innovation.

If you're looking for support or an accountability partner , a dedicated BetterUp Coach can help. They'll work with you to build out a personalized path to develop creativity in your day-to-day.

Understand Yourself Better:

Big 5 Personality Test

Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

The significance of written communication in the workplace

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Invention and Innovation as Creative Problem-Solving Activities

• Reference work entry
• First Online: 24 October 2020
• pp 1458–1471
• Cite this reference work entry

• Frank Beckenbach 2 &
• Maria Daskalakis 2  

26 Accesses

Creativity ; Novelty creation

Background: Microeconomics of Novelty Creation and Problem Solving

Obviously, invention and innovation can be hardly analyzed from the usual cost/benefit perspective of economics. These processes are conjectural by their very nature:

Because ex ante results of the search endeavor cannot reasonably be anticipated (or even expected)

Because there is no guarantee for the social acceptance of a possible result

Because there is the risk that an accepted result cannot be used as a source of (additional) private yield (Nelson 1959a , b , 1982 )

Due to these intricacies, invention and innovation have previously been either considered as coming “out of the blue” (Kirzner 1979 ; Vromen 2001 ) or have been simply postulated as an outcome of mesopatterns in terms of paradigms, routines, and institutions (Dosi 1988 ; Lundvall 1992 ).

Notwithstanding these caveats and provisos, various attempts to conceptualize the novelty creating process from a microeconomic...

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Beckenbach, F., Daskalakis, M. (2020). Invention and Innovation as Creative Problem-Solving Activities. In: Carayannis, E.G. (eds) Encyclopedia of Creativity, Invention, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15347-6_370

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More From Forbes

Transforming leaders through creative problem solving.

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Creativity expert Steven White trains leaders in innovative thinking.

Innovative thinking is critical for organizations to thrive, yet research shows that 95% of innovation attempts fail at large companies . Creative facilitator Steven White provides insights on how leaders can shift mindsets and develop skills to foster innovation that works. His clients include consulting leader Accenture and U.S. Special Operations, which includes military special forces Navy SEALS, Delta Force and Green Berets.

White explains that most corporate leaders feel ill-equipped to spearhead innovation. The key is approaching creativity as a skill that can be developed rather than a fixed talent within a select few. He takes the mystery out of creative thinking by breaking it down into an approach that anyone can learn, taking clients along a path that builds a mindset, tool set and, finally, skill set.

“When you identify the skills needed, rather than the idea of elusive talent, leaders can break down those skills and train their teams. It takes the mystery out of creativity,” said White.

Design consultant and graphic novelist Steven White

Here are three strategies that help leaders foster more creativity that will drive

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innovation:

Shift into a new mindset

“First we embrace the mindset that everyone is creative, then we learn the tools that help bring it out until it becomes an innate skill that we use without thinking,” said White. A creative mindset involves an openness to questioning assumptions and biases that limit fresh thinking. White begins with an assessment tool like Foursight to help leaders become more self-aware.

“Learning self-awareness is like Jedi training where you go through different exercises and stimulus that show you how limited your view has been, and then you learn how to get past your cognitive biases, how to develop empathy and how to be a better leader,” he said.

Focus on skills, not “talent”

Look at creativity as coming from a set of teachable skills versus talent alone. White trains teams on six key creative thinking skills that pave the way for successful innovation:

· Imagination

· Visual thinking

· Iteration

· Collaboration

· Questioning

These six factors are vital for human-centered design, the approach that considers how people will behave. In essence, White takes a people-first approach when his clients might have started with a focus on technology or another business capability.

One of the ways to open up creativity is to “get out of your own head and draw,” said White. He describes how kindergarteners are confident in their drawing skills, yet adults are so fearful of not being perfect that we let those skills languish.

“You can draw 90% of anything with a simple triangle, circle and square, he said. “once we warm up with simple drawings, people feel more confident that ability doesn’t really matter.”

Become a master facilitator

“Ideas are like baby sea turtles on the beach. They’re running for the sea, and large organizations are birds and other predators,” said White. The job of a good facilitator, in that case, is to protect those tiny ideas and help them reach the sea where they can thrive and grow.

“There’s a difference between running a meeting and facilitating,” said White. Facilitation expertise is critical for leaders driving innovation. Unlike merely directing meetings, creative facilitation uses methods and frameworks to extract best thinking with a structure that levels the playing field where ideas take center stage. Too often, a senior member of the team dominates the discussion and squashes fresh thinking from other team members.

White recommends techniques such as rapid ideation sprints were individuals brainstorm solo with a stack of Post-Its before any ideas are shared. This allows introverts and junior level team members to get thoughts together without the influence of the stronger personalities.

At its core, White’s approach breaks down the mysteries of creativity and innovation into small actionable steps that demonstrate these skills are within everyone’s reach. At a session hosted by Creative Mornings , White showed up looking not unlike a Jedi knight, sharing his journey growing up in a military family that moved a lot to a successful career in advertising, to his current career as a consultant, facilitator and graphic novelist.

Creativity and innovation, although essential skills for business, are not only for businesses. White describes working with a team from U.S. special forces doing a journey mapping exercise based on his creativity training. During a break, this team used the techniques to map out how a pre-teenager might become radicalized as a suicide bomber, paving the way to help young people change course.

“They were charting those key stages of development and seeing how can we intervene to prevent death and make the world safer?” said White.

No matter your organizations innovation challenge, embracing a creative mindset, building skills that foster innovation and becoming a master facilitator will help leaders drive better results for a stronger future.https://www.sevenstudiollc.com/

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Creative Thinking Definition

Creative thinking examples, why is creative thinking important, how to include creative thinking skills in a job application, how to build creativity, what is creative thinking definition and examples.

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Table of Contents

Creative thinking is the ability to come up with unique, original solutions. Also known as creative problem-solving, creative thinking is a valuable and marketable soft skill in a wide variety of careers. Here’s what you need to know about creative thinking at work and how to use it to land a job. 

Creative thinking is all about developing innovative solutions to problems. Creative thinkers brainstorm not only a large number of ideas but also a variety and range of them. In the workplace, creative thinking is highly valuable because employers look to hire innovative employees who can help them solve the company’s problems.

So, what does creative thinking in the workplace look like? First, a creative person brainstorms their ideas, then they’ll experiment with them. They look at ideas from multiple perspectives and examine how their solutions fit into the scope of what they’re working on. Creative thinkers aren’t afraid to take risks and try new ideas. In fact, this ability to develop, test, and implement original solutions makes them a valuable asset to just about any workplace. 

Creative thinking in the workplace might look like:

• Holding an interactive brainstorm to gather initial thoughts on a project
• Evaluating a current process and offering suggestions on how to improve it
• Researching other ways to market a product and leading experiments on new marketing channels
• Developing an innovative way to reach out to prospective clients
• Identifying a unique opportunity to promote the company brand and developing a strategy to do so
• Discovering a new way to measure a product initiative’s success and using learnings to iterate on the next version

Finding patterns in a company’s revenue growth and using data trends to strategize a new sales plan  

Creative thinking includes the process of innovative problem-solving — from analyzing the facts to brainstorming to working with others. Creative thinking examples include analytical skills, innovation, and collaboration.

Analytical Skills

Analytical skills are problem-solving skills that help you sort through facts, data, and information to develop rational solutions. These skills aid you in the first part of the creative thinking process as you brainstorm and start to generate ideas. 

Analytical skills include:

• Data analysis
• Forecasting
• Interpreting
• Communication

Innovation is the ability to come up with something new; however, you don’t need to develop the first flying car to be an innovative thinker. “Something new” at work might mean a method you haven’t tried before or experimenting with an unfamiliar process. Innovators in the workplace aren’t afraid to step away from tradition and explore something original, even if it might fail. 

Innovation skills include:

• Risk-taking
• Brainstorming
• Critical thinking

Collaboration

Creative thinking doesn’t have to happen alone; you might have your most creative ideas when bouncing your work off others. Collaboration skills ensure you consider multiple perspectives and ways of thinking when you develop and refine ideas.

Collaboration skills include:

• Written and verbal communication
• Active listening
• Inclusivity

A soft skill like creative thinking will always be valuable to employers, whether you’re looking for a marketing job or trying to land a career in finance . Employers need employees who can develop and experiment with new ideas to help them solve complex problems. 

“Many employers seek candidates that are analytical and outside-the-box thinkers which are iterations of creative thinking skills,” says Alejandra Garcia, manager, alumni college and career success at Code2College and Forage content development partner. “Thus, creative thinking, creative problem solving, innovative thinking, and analytical skills are all valuable in the current workplace — these skills are especially important in our ever-changing workplaces with new emerging technologies.”

The data supports this idea, too. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs report , creative thinking is the second most important skill for workers in 2023, preceded only by analytical skills. Other top skills include soft skills like resilience, flexibility and agility, motivation and self-awareness, and curiosity and lifelong learning .

“The ability to navigate new challenges quickly can benefit any workplace!” Laura Fontenot, resume writing expert, ACRW, and CPRW, says. “The current world of work is fast-paced, technically driven, and constantly changing. Being intuitive, creative, driven, and a problem solver are key.”

If creative thinking is one of the top soft skills employers look for, how do you show you have it in a job application? The key is to prove these skills through examples of how you’ve used them rather than just naming them.

On a Resume

While creative thinking is a skill employers might look for, you don’t necessarily need to write “creative thinking” on your resume to show you have this skill. Instead, it’s better to demonstrate how you’ve used creative thinking skills to drive results.

“Think of your best mental strengths,” says Fontenot. “Are you a great problem solver? Do you understand how to phrase things differently? Can you learn a new skill quickly? Those questions can help you find great words for the resume . Consider adding things like problem-solving, intuition, collaboration, fast learner, organized, or communication.”

Log in to view and download a customizable resume template with examples of how to include creative thinking skills:

On Your Professional Profiles

You can show these skills outside of your resume in creative ways — including on your LinkedIn profile and website (if you have one!).

“Early professionals can make creative thinking a part of their professional brand by explicitly adding creative thinking or creative problem solving to their list of skills on their resumes and LinkedIn profiles — this will help with ATS optimizations,” Garcia advises. 

Yet beyond just listing this skill, Garcia adds that you can provide real proof of your creativity online, too.

“Consider adding projects or an online portfolio website link to your resume and LinkedIn where you can showcase projects you’ve worked on that demonstrate their problem-solving skills.”

In the Interview

In the interview , make sure you can describe your workflow and process for these projects or any other situation when you’ve used creative thinking. Elaborate how you brainstormed ideas, what range of ideas you had, how you tested and experimented, and how you decided on a final solution. 

It’s best to use the STAR method to structure your answers. This will ensure you clearly explain the situation and the results you brought by using your creative thinking skills.

>>MORE: Prepare to speak about your soft skills by practicing answers to commonly asked behavioral interview questions .

1. Put Yourself in a Box

Creative thinking is about “thinking outside the box,” but putting limitations on your problem-solving can help you think more freely and innovatively. For example, if someone tells you to make dinner, you may struggle to come up with a meal you don’t always cook. Yet if they ask you to make a hot dinner with three specific ingredients and two spices, you’ll more likely come up with something original. 

Putting yourself inside a box can help expand your thinking, whether that’s by telling yourself you need to include three charts in your presentation or giving yourself a strict word count for an article.

2. Switch up Your Routine

Routine can be a great productivity booster, but it also can get in the way of your creativity. So, switch up your routine for one project, day, or even an hour. This can be something as small as where you’re physically sitting when you do your work or something as big as your process for approaching projects. Challenging yourself to do something different will help you find creative ways to adapt to your new environment.

3. Challenge What’s Currently Working

Think about how you might expand or improve upon a current process. What would you do if you had more resources, whether that’s time, money, or another expert? What would you do if you had fewer resources? If this project was taking place at a different time of year? If the target audience was different? Imagining these different potential scenarios will force you to problem-solve and adjust for various (very possible!) circumstances. 

4. Find Inspiration

Creative thinking doesn’t happen in a bubble. It’s vital to ask for others’ opinions and ideas. Creative thinkers consider multiple perspectives and are curious about how others think. Ask your colleague about their work processes, whether it’s how they research for a client deliverable or how they approach meeting an external buyer. 

5. Ask for Feedback

The best way to improve a skill is to get feedback from others on how you’re using it — and you don’t need to set up a formal feedback session to do so. Instead, ask questions when you’re working with others about your work. Keep these questions open-ended and lead with curiosity instead of looking for a specific answer. What did they think of how you led the brainstorm? What would they have done differently? What strikes them about the final product? Keep an open mind and remember not to take the feedback personally. It’s an opportunity to grow, and growing those skills might just help you land your next job!

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Creative Problem Solving: from complex challenge to innovative solution

Dr. Hannah Rose

Even if you usually excel at finding solutions, there will be times when it seems that there’s no obvious answer to a problem. It could be that you’re facing a unique challenge that you’ve never needed to overcome before. You could feel overwhelmed because of a new context in which everything seems to be foreign, or you may feel like you’re lacking the skills or tools to navigate the situation. When facing a difficult dilemma, Creative Problem Solving offers a structured method to help you find an innovative and effective solution.

The history of Creative Problem Solving

The technique of Creative Problem Solving was first formulated by Alex Osborn in the 1940’s. It was not the first time Osborn came up with a formula to support creative thinking. As a prolific creative theorist, Osborn also coined the term brainstorming to define the proactive process of generating new ideas.

With brainstorming, Osborn suggested that it’s better to bring every idea you have to the table, including the wildest ones, because with just a little modification, the outrageous ideas may later become the most plausible solutions. In his own words: “It is easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one.”

Osborn worked closely with Sid Parnes, who was at the time the world’s leading expert on creativity and innovation. Together, they developed the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process. To this day, this process remains an effective way to generate solutions that break free from the status quo.

The Creative Problem Solving process, sometimes referred to as CPS, is a proven way to approach a challenge more imaginatively. By redefining problems or opportunities, it becomes possible to move in a completely new and more innovative direction.

Dr Donald Treffinger described Creative Problem Solving as an effective way to review problems, formulate opportunities, and generate varied and novel options leading to a new solution or course of action. As such, Treffinger argued that creative problem solving provides a “powerful set of tools for productive thinking”.

Creative Problem Solving can also enhance collective learning at the organisational level. Dr David Vernon and colleagues found that Creative Problem Solving can support the design of more effective training programmes.

From its invention by two creative theorists to its application at all levels of creative thinking — from personal to organisation creativity — Creative Problem Solving is an enduring method to generate innovative solutions to complex challenges.

The four principles of Creative Problem Solving

You can use Creative Problem Solving on your own or as part of a team. However, when adopted by multiple team members, it can lead to an even greater output of useful, original solutions. So, how do you put it into practice? First, you need to understand the four guiding principles behind Creative Problem Solving.

The first principle is to look at problems and reframe them into questions. While problem statements tend to not generate many responses, open questions can lead to a wealth of insights, perspectives, and helpful information — which in turn make it easier to feel inspired and to come up with potential solutions. Instead of saying “this is the problem”, ask yourself: “Why are we facing this problem? What’s currently preventing us from solving this problem? What could be some potential solutions?”

The second principle is to balance divergent and convergent thinking. During divergent thinking , all options are entertained. Throw all ideas into the ring, regardless of how far-fetched they might be. This is sometimes referred to as non-judgmental, non-rational divergent thinking. It’s based on the willingness to consider all new ideas. Convergent thinking, in contrast, is the thinking mode used to narrow down all of the possible ideas into a sensible shortlist. Balancing divergent and convergent thinking creates a steady state of creativity in which new ideas can be assessed and appraised to search for unique solutions.

Tangential to the second principle, the third principle for creative problem solving is to defer judgement. By judging solutions too early, you will risk shutting down idea generation. Take your time during the divergent thinking phase to give your mind the freedom to dream ambitious ideas. Only when engaged in convergent thinking should you start judging the ideas you generated in terms of potential, appropriateness, and feasibility.

Finally, Creative Problem Solving requires you to say “yes, and” rather than “no, but” in order to encourage generative discussions. You will only stifle your creativity by automatically saying no to ideas that seem illogical or unfeasible. Using positive language allows you to explore possibilities, leaving space for the seeds of ideas to grow into applicable solutions.

How to practice Creative Problem Solving

Now that you know the principles underlying Creative Problem Solving, you’re ready to start implementing the practical method devised by its inventors. And the good news is that you’ll only need to follow three simple steps.

• Generating – Formulate questions. The first step is to understand what the problem is. By turning the problem into a set of questions, you can explore the issue properly and fully grasp the situation, obstacles, and opportunities. This is also the time to gather facts and the opinions of others, if relevant to the problem at hand.
• Conceptualising – Explore ideas. The second step is when you can express your creativity through divergent thinking. Brainstorm new, wild and off-the-wall ideas to generate new concepts that could be the key to solving your dilemma. This can be done on your own, or as part of a brainstorming session with your team.
• Optimising – Develop solutions. Now is the time to switch to convergent thinking. Reflect on the ideas you came up with in step two to decide which ones could be successful. As part of optimising, you will need to decide which options might best fit your needs and logistical constraints, how you can make your concepts stronger, and finally decide which idea to move forwards with.
• Implementing – Formulate a plan. Figuring out how you’ll turn the selected idea into reality is the final step after deciding which of your ideas offers the best solution. Identify what you’ll need to get started, and, if appropriate, let others know of your plans. Communication is particularly important for innovative ideas that require buy-in from others, especially if you think you might initially be met with resistance. You may also need to consider whether you’ll need additional resources to ensure the success of complex solutions, and request the required support in good time.

Creative Problem Solving is a great way to generate unique ideas when there appears to be no obvious solution to a problem. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by a seemingly impossible challenge, this structured approach will help you generate solutions that you might otherwise not have considered. By practising Creative Problem Solving, some of the most improbable ideas could lead to the discovery of the perfect solution.

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How to Manage Breakthrough Innovation

A conversation with Alphabet’s Astro Teller on taking big bets on new ideas and tolerating the fear of failure.

• Apple Podcasts

How do you guide a team working on innovative projects—when there is no existing playbook?

Astro Teller says he uses a vetted approach to decision-making for the innovative projects that he and his teams undertake at X, Alphabet’s R&D engine.

Teller is the Captain of Moonshots at X, which he helped launch at Google in 2010. His mission there is to invent and launch new technologies that address serious problems in the world. But those technologies must also create the foundations for substantial new businesses for Google’s parent company, Alphabet. They’ve worked on a pill that detects cancer, cars that drive themselves, and mega-kites that work as turbines to collect wind energy, to name just a few examples.

In this episode, Teller offers key lessons for managing the process that delivers breakthrough innovations. You’ll learn how he decides to keep investing in a project, and how he knows when it’s time to pull the plug. You’ll also learn how he assembles teams and what qualities he looks for in potential new hires.

Key episode topics include: leadership, innovation, technology and analytics, leadership and managing people, experimentation, creativity, breakthrough, Alphabet, Google.

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: X’s Astro Teller on Managing Moonshot Innovation
• Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast .
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

Astro Teller says there IS a vetted approach to creativity and decision-making for innovative projects that he and his teams use at X, Alphabet’s R&D engine.

Teller is the captain of moonshots at X, which he helped launch at Google in 2010. His mission there is to invent and launch new technologies that address serious problems in the world and create the foundations for large, new businesses for Google’s parent company, Alphabet. They’ve worked on a pill that detects cancer, cars that drive themselves, and mega-kites that collect wind energy.

In this episode, Teller shares key lessons for managing the process of developing breakthrough innovations.

You’ll learn how he decides to keep investing in a project, and how he knows when it’s time to pull the plug. You’ll also learn what qualities he looks for when he hires for innovation projects and assembles teams, and why humility is so essential.

  This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in March 2023. Here it is.

ALISON BEARD: Taking big swings isn’t always easy in business, especially when you don’t know what will pay off – or how long it will take. Today’s guest has a high tolerance for that kind of uncertainty – exploring big problems, experimenting with solutions, failing, trying again, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not.

Astro Teller is Captain of Moonshots at X, Alphabet’s dedicated innovation factory. He helped launch it after cofounding a number of other companies, teaching at Stanford University, and studying computer science there and at Carnegie Mellon. His teams at X work on everything from getting remote populations online, to monitoring ocean health, and to using machine learning to improve supply chains.

I spoke with Teller during a live virtual conference – HBR at 100: Future of Business – where audience members were also able to submit questions. Here’s our conversation.

ASTRO TELLER: Thanks for having me.

ALISON BEARD: First I have to ask about your name. It seems like kismet that someone called Astro would become the head of a moonshot factory. So how did that happen?

ASTRO TELLER: I agree, it seems like fate, but it was a typo at Stanford. I didn’t want to leave any blanks on my application to Stanford. I don’t have a middle name, so I felt like an idiot that I wrote my last name, comma, first name. I had to leave a blank because I don’t have a middle name. Almost nobody called me Astro in high school. It was a not friendly nickname from the soccer team. Basically they thought my flat top looked like a patch of AstroTurf, so I wrote in Astro. And then I think there was a type-in error because I didn’t have a middle name, and so someone typed in Astro as my legal name, and just stuck.

ALISON BEARD: And the rest is history. So, you co-founded X within Google, and the mission is to solve real problems and have a real impact, not create gadgets or technology for its own sake. So, how do you identify the problems that you want to work on?

ASTRO TELLER: So, as you were just saying, X’s mission is to invent and launch breakthrough technologies that can help tackle a huge problem with the world and create the foundations for large sustainable businesses for Alphabet. As a result, our remit is very wide. It needs to be something that can really help the world, something that can be good for Alphabet, but there’s no specific industry that it’s in. We’ve sort of caught different waves over time. The wave that I would say X is in right now, we’re largely focused on sustainability, but it used to be robotics more, mobility.

And in any particular area, really we say, what is an idea that sounds like science fiction but would be really important if it turned out to be true? And how cheaply can we ask the question: is this just a bad idea or is it once in a generation opportunity?

And we look at thousands of these things every decade. That’s our job is to sort of have a very wide funnel and then to filter very aggressively. So, at the wide part of the funnel, we’ll look at almost anything as long as it has those basic characteristics: that it could be a breakthrough technology, it could help the world tackle a really serious problem, and build a foundation for a large sustainable business for Alphabet.

ALISON BEARD: And so how does that filtering work? How do you narrow down with so many good ideas?

ASTRO TELLER: At the beginning, we’ll try anything that has those characteristics. And on day one, we don’t need anything except that it has those characteristics. It’s a hypothesis to test. But afterwards, what we’re saying is for every dollar that we put into this machine, we don’t care if the answer is yes or no. The answer is no for almost everything that we look at. The question is how cheaply, how wisely can we get to the answer? Is this a great idea or one of the bad ones? And again, most of them are bad ones.

And so, we’re always looking for evidence. How can de-risk this? How can we learn, turn uncertainty into risk? Because we don’t even mind risk. But what we’re buying down, especially in the first couple of years of this thing is, what is this really? What does it want to be when it grows up? What are the hard parts actually about this thing? And that how can we get it into the world very early on so that we start to learn even faster about the ways in which it might not work, so that we can kill it and get onto the next idea?

ALISON BEARD: Related to that, I’ve read about a project management concept that you call monkeys and pillars to help you make those decisions. So, tell this audience about it.

ASTRO TELLER: So, I was on a conversation very much like this one. It was about seven years ago, and up until then I had said we have to work on the hardest parts of the problem first. And that made sense to me, but for whatever reason, it hadn’t really taken at X. And so, the interviewer, like you are now, asked, “What do you mean by that?”

And so, I gave this hyperbolic statement, which was, let’s say that you’re trying to train a monkey to stand on the top of a 10-foot pedestal and recite Shakespeare. Which should you do first, train the monkey or build the pedestal? And so, this has become a joke inside X, but because it’s easy for people to remember.

In that extreme case, it should be obvious to all of us that if you build the pedestal, you could be like, “Hey, look boss, I built a pedestal.” And the boss would be like, “Hey, good job, Astro.” But you haven’t actually made any progress. There was no chance that you couldn’t make the pedestal. All of the risk was on training the monkey. So clearly what we should do first is try to train the monkey because if we can’t, the pedestal is a total waste of time, and if we can, we can always build the pedestal afterwards. So, something about that hyperbolic statement has become a meme inside X, and people actually put little icons of monkeys next to the parts of their effort, which they believe are the really critical parts to push on to understand whether or not this could actually be a really once in a generation opportunity.

ALISON BEARD: Okay. So, let’s assume that people are doing a good job of beginning to train the monkey. You have some positive results, you have some negative results. How are you deciding when a project needs further investment, you’re green lighting it to keep going, or that something should be killed?

ASTRO TELLER: It depends, I have to be honest with you, there isn’t a single answer, but let me give you some of the kinds of things that we look for. If a team says, “We know what the right thing to do is. Just leave us alone so we can build it.” And that’s so the wrong answer when it comes to moonshots, that we might stop it just because they said that, and we will definitely stop it as soon as they turn out to be wrong, which they inevitably will. A team that shows up saying, “We’re going to audaciously try thing after thing,” but say from the first moment, “We’re probably wrong,” they have a better chance of turning the loop faster, so we’re going to bet on them longer.

Sometimes projects are inherently slow in their learning loops because of what they’re trying to do. And when that happens, all things being equal, it seems like less of a good bet than a project that has somehow figured out how to get into the real world and learn something every single week. Our experience is the faster you’re learning, the more likely you are to be successful, kind of independent of how things are going this month, even this quarter. So, it’s really a measure of learning per dollar that we’re getting. The ones where the learning per dollar is high, we tend to keep betting on, and the ones where the learning is low, even if the progress looks good, we tend to slow down or just stop.

ALISON BEARD: I like that, learning per dollar, it’s a new metric. So, we’re going to dig into some of the specific projects that you’re working on in a little bit, but more generally, what sort of time horizons are you looking at when you are thinking about a successful spinoff or that a project has been completed in X’s term, and is ready to move on to the next thing?

ASTRO TELLER: Ten years is sort of what we say here at X, and that allows for us to play the long game and there’s a lot of incremental value that can be produced, and a lot of incremental goodness for the world that you can go after when you play the long game. 10 years though, I mean, I would say on average things that ultimately graduate from X to become other bets, our most recent other bet for example was minerals in the computational agriculture space. It’s our moonshot for agriculture. It was here for about six years before it graduated. So, by saying 10 years, we don’t necessarily mean that it will be at X for 10 years. We mean that certainly within 10 years, the thing that we are starting from a cold start should be pretty interesting and important within 10 years.

ALISON BEARD: So, I’d love to just better understand your place within Google and Alphabet because I think other large corporations – or even smaller ones – can learn from it. How do you have an incubation factory within your own company? So how does your funding work? How much interaction do you have with the rest of the company, and then how do you do that spinoff process?

ASTRO TELLER: We’re not the only source of innovation at Alphabet of course, but we are an innovation engine for Alphabet. So, our job is to help Alphabet, Google’s parent, have new problems and hopefully find new solutions to those problems. Over time, some of the ones that we created earlier on like Google Brain, Verily, the life science business for Alphabet, Waymo, the self-driving cars, Wing, the drones for package delivery. More recently, Intrinsic, an attempt on our part to democratize how the manufacturing process works and the automation of robotics in manufacturing.

As I was mentioning, we’ve just recently spun out this new effort in and made it a company in Alphabet, Other Bet as we call it, in the agriculture space. In each of these cases, these are still nascent businesses, and what we would hope over time is that at least some of these become large, important, good for the world and valuable to Alphabet. So we care very much what’s happening at Google, but we’re like a little sister to Google on the side, trying to make things that will ultimately be important to Alphabet and help Alphabet to continue to grow and do good things for the world.

ALISON BEARD: So, let’s talk about talent. What kind of people are you looking for to help you with these moonshots, and is there enough of it around?

ASTRO TELLER: I think that there’s an incredible amount of it latent inside people, but finding people who have unleashed themselves is pretty hard. We think about this a lot, and we actually spend a lot of time and energy, even once we’ve hired people, helping them to unleash themselves. So really a lot of our interviewing process is about trying to decide if people are ready to unleash themselves rather than that they’re sort of done or perfect in any way.

The top four things that we look for: fearlessness, which tends to map to audacity and creativity and things like that. Humility, because audacity, fearlessness is critical so that you will try really out there things, but then you need humility to be able to say right after you start trying it, “You know what? This probably isn’t going to work. Let’s use evidence, verify that it isn’t one of the really great ones so we can throw it away and get onto the next one.” Teamwork, because innovation is fundamentally a team sport. And then a growth mindset. If we’re trying to build learning machines inside of a moonshot factory, if each of the teams is supposed to be a learning machine, then we need each of the humans here at X to be a learning machine.

ALISON BEARD: You have what I imagine are very brilliant, creative, probably a little quirky people. How do you decide who will work well together in those teams that you’re talking about, and do they require a different style of management?

ASTRO TELLER: The style of management is somewhat different. I would say that the difference probably is even bigger at the sort of X level. We don’t have org charts the way you would think of normal businesses working. There’s a lot of fluidity inside of X. Because if you were to come to X and start, I don’t know, flying car company or whatever it is you were trying to start here at X, you’re going to turn out to be wrong. Almost everybody is almost all the time. So then your thing stops, and then you’re going to find a new thing to be a part of. And so that fluidity kind of ruins the sort of hierarchy and politics that often goes on inside of groups.

So, I think of myself as a culture engineer, and a lot of the way that X is wired is if you ask people to do a bunch of really basic things like play the long game, show up with a lot of audacity, but also a lot of humility. If you’re asking them to practice running these experiments and then being intellectually honest about the experiments after they’ve run them, this is all really simple stuff. It’s easy to say. And just like a diet, actually practicing the diet is super hard. Everything I’ve described, even at X, ferociously hard to do.

And so, everything at X is wired around trying to make you not feel stupid about actually showing up humble and open-minded, with a growth mindset. Why are you going to kill your project if you think that your bonus or your ability to get promoted or the next thing that you’re going to get to do is going to be harmed by that intellectual honesty? Which is why there isn’t a lot of intellectual honesty floating around. And so we are like back at basics all the time, saying what do we need to do to send the hundreds and hundreds of signals necessary so that everyone at X naturally does the things we’re actually asking them to do, and that they tend not to do at most other businesses?

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, so I mean, if you’re struggling with it, you can only imagine what it feels like at more traditional organizations that want to be more X-like. So, what advice do you give leaders of other organizations, particularly outside the tech sector, about how to develop the kind of culture you’re talking about?

ASTRO TELLER: I think it really comes down to, A, how serious are you about the thing that you want? And then, if you’re really serious about it, then you have to commit to the practice of actually making people feel good about doing it. So, here’s my one-hour innovation lecture in 60 seconds. Choice A, choice B. Choice A, you can give a million dollars of value to your business this year guaranteed, or choice B, you can give a billion dollars of value to your business this year, but it’s not guaranteed. It’s one chance in 100. A, million guaranteed. B, billion, one chance in 100.

I’ve done this all over the world and I say, “Who’s choosing choice A?” Nobody raises their hand. “Who’s choosing choice B?” Everybody, big smile on their face, raises their hand. And I say, “Okay, now leave your hand up if in your wildest dreams, on their best days, your manager, your CEO, your board of directors supports you choosing choice B, even kind of a little bit.” And every hand in the room goes down and then I say, “You don’t need a lecture on innovation. You need a new manager.” This is the problem, is everyone asks for innovation, but they’re not actually willing to support the innovation because innovation is mostly about making mess. And you can try to do it efficiently, that’s what we try to do, but you can’t make the mess go away and almost nobody is actually tolerant of the mess.

ALISON BEARD: So how do you get leaders, managers to be more tolerant of the mess?

ASTRO TELLER: How badly do you want a factor 10 increase in value? The reason everyone raised their hand for choice B is because it has 10 times the expected utility of choice A, and that’s what innovation is. It is literally worth that much more. So I guess you have to decide whether you know want your 10% improvements or your 10X improvements. If you want the 10X improvements, you have to take a really long time horizon.

You have to have a portfolio because you will only get the payoff, the expected utility payoff over long periods of time, over a wide range of things. And then you have to be able to help everyone there be in it to sort of do the card counting. We’re not going to be gamblers of innovation, we’re actually going to be card counters of innovation, following a process and trusting that that process over very long periods of time will get us that 10X that we’re looking for.

ALISON BEARD: Before we get to audience questions, I want to ask you rapid fire about some specific projects that you’re excited about, because everyone wants to know what the next X moonshot is. So, Chorus.

ASTRO TELLER: People have been trying for 30 years to track all the physical things in the world so that we can improve the logistics supply chains, and it looks like we might have a way to do that that is much less hardware intensive, and that would be transformative for the world of logistics and supply chains.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, particularly coming out of the COVID-19 crisis. So, Taara…

ASTRO TELLER Yeah. We have a way of shooting a laser up to 20 kilometers. It’s eye safe, so you could just go up like this and it still wouldn’t hurt you, and it moves information at 20 gigabits per second. So, you have to have line of sight between these two things, but you can just strap them to two poles as long as they can see each other. If a bird flies in between, then you lose one 1000th of a second of data, and it’s less than 1% of the cost of trenching fiber. We’ve been rolling them out for the last two years in Africa and India. We’re really excited about that one.

ALISON BEARD: Very cool. Okay: Tidal.

ASTRO TELLER: Ocean health. Fundamentally, humanity gets several trillion dollars a year of value from the oceans, and we’re killing the oceans faster than we’re killing our land or our air. We have to stop. And because humanity needs the oceans and derives so much value there, we have to somehow get more value from the oceans while regenerating the oceans. And that’s not going to happen unless we take automation to the ocean so that we can understand it and so that the value that we’re producing in and with the oceans is healthy for the oceans. Now, we’re starting in aquaculture, but we have a lot of other ideas about the maritime industry, about blue carbon, et cetera.

ALISON BEARD: Okay, last one before we go to audience questions. Tapestry.

ASTRO TELLER: That’s X’s moonshot for the electric grid. If you want to be able to plan, build and operate a clean, resilient electric grid, you have to start by understanding your grid. And the grid worldwide is the most complex machine that humanity has ever made. It is literally the case that it is so complex that there isn’t currently a digital map of where every wire is and where every transformer is, even for the people who are running the grid. So, when someone asks, “Hey, can I put this new solar field onto the grid?” The reason that they’re waiting in a five to 10 year line waiting to be added to the grid is because the grid operators, who are responsible for keeping the grid safe, don’t know what will happen if they plug that solar field onto the grid. So, we are trying to make the digital tools, the virtualization of the grid that will allow grid operators around the world to actually understand their system, play what if games, and ultimately operate their grid much faster in a sort of 21st century way.

ALISON BEARD: We do have a lot of questions from the audience. I’m going to try to get to as many as we can. Lizette from Cape Town is asking whether the monkey and pedestal approach can apply to other less ambitious projects as well. Should you always start with the most difficult part first?

ASTRO TELLER: Only if money is precious to you. I don’t know what to say. Look, if you know you can succeed, if you’re making a 10% improvement on something that already exists, then everything’s the pedestal. There isn’t a monkey. So maybe the order doesn’t matter very much and do whatever will get you the bonus first. I don’t know. But if what you’re doing has a lot of risk in it, if it’s a moonshot, if it’s a 10X opportunity, not a 10% opportunity, you’re probably going to be wrong and you’re going to have to stop entirely or pivot dramatically.

The faster you find out that you’re on the wrong track, the thing is, learning is not driven by success. You learn nothing when you succeed, except maybe to do that again. You learn exclusively when you fail. You have a model of the world and you find out you were wrong. And so failure is learning. They’re identical. So you should chase that if you want to go fast.

ALISON BEARD: Okay, so more talent questions. Lots of people are wondering how to really unleash talent in the way that you do at X. Gabby from New York City says, how do you help your employees do that? Juan asks, how can managers encourage people and teams to unleash themselves in more traditional organizations?

ASTRO TELLER: I want to be fair. Unleashing yourself in a traditional organization is hard if the organization, in being traditional, doesn’t totally want you to be unleashed. I wear rollerblades all day every day at the office. They’re on my feet right now. And I do that, it’s fun. But I also do that to remind people I don’t take myself seriously. I don’t take anyone else here seriously. We’re having fun together because fun and humor are the wellspring from which creativity comes.

If you can’t embrace silliness, if you can’t acknowledge that we’re all a work in progress and that most of why we waste time at work is fear, and we can’t get past fear until we can understand why we’re afraid and get really vulnerable with each other. It’s all just going to be like suit and ties and wasting time. I don’t know what to say. So I guess if you are a manager and you really want people to be unleashed, you need to first put down all your armor, take off all your masks, and then you need to start rewarding people when they do it.

ALISON BEARD:  Okay, so this is related again, if people aren’t necessarily unleashing themselves yet. Sandeep from Cincinnati, Ohio is asking how do you train them? He says, I’m curious to know what training looks like at X.

ASTRO TELLER: There’s a lot of different parts of that. There isn’t a single answer, but for example, we have a program here called Thrive where we take people who we think are ready through a nine, 10 month process. It costs us a lot. We can’t do it for everybody, but we do it for a non-trivial fraction of the people here. And it is about helping them to understand better what’s holding them back, their limiting beliefs, the ways in which their fear shows up in controlling them and stifling their creativity, their audacity, their humility, sometimes. A hundred percent of us have things to get over, and it does take support for people to learn that. But I think really, I mean, there’s a lot of training. I can give you other examples, but if you want it and you don’t actually do it yourself and reward it, I don’t think you’re going to get it no matter what training you give to people.

ALISON BEARD: Terrific. So, Yusuf from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is trying to get at this idea of tackling these incredibly challenging problems that others have failed at, that you might fail at as you’re experimenting. So, what is your advice to companies when they’re in a situation where they need to make a decision on an idea to invest or not, knowing that people have failed before and that failure is quite a possibility?

ASTRO TELLER: Well, I’m going to answer the question under the assumption that this is a company that’s placing lots of bet, and this isn’t a small startup that where that’s their only bet. But assuming that this is a more sizable company, it’s placing lots of bets. And so it’s trying to decide, should I place a bet here? What I would say is, number one, good chance you’re wrong. That does not mean don’t do it, but just start with that in mind. Then number two, go learn why those other ones didn’t, and make sure that you at least make a new interesting mistake when you fail, instead of making the same mistake somebody else already made. What a waste that would be. I also think there’s a lot of benefit to failing more than once in the same area. When I look at the things that we ultimately make successful here at X, there’s so much moonshot compost that goes into them. Because when a project ends, the people stay, the code stays, the patents stay, the learning stays.

So, in ocean health, in agriculture, that’s not the first time we tried. That was like the 10th time we tried. And so, we actually have these sort of reverse org charts of this moonshot compost and all of these different ideas and people and how they ultimately culminated in something which looks like a really good idea and in a super exciting business. But that’s because we kept failing and keeping all of those learnings. So, if you’re only willing to fail once and learn once, and then you’re just going to run off to another space, I think it’s harder.

ALISON BEARD: So, I have to end by asking about generative AI. Your first novel, which you wrote when you were in your twenties, was about Edgar who is sentient AI. He basically becomes HAL and starts talking back to his creator. So, what do you think of the recent developments? How close are we to that Edgar sentient AI character?

ASTRO TELLER: Let me answer like this. I think that computers have been levers for our minds for a long time, and robots increasingly are becoming levers for our bodies, doing physical work for us in lots of different situations. And I see a lot of ongoing opportunity just here at X to use artificial intelligence and machine learning as raw materials that go into trying to make the world better. And in the same way that if we were 100 ago, and electricity was relatively new on the scene, everyone would be excited about electricity. And rightly so, but electricity isn’t the end of the story. Electricity is the beginning of the story. If we can now put more intelligence into things that we’re making, great, then we can find better and better ways to solve huge problems in the world. That’s how it feels at X.

HANNAH BATES: That was Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X, in conversation with Alison Beard on HBR IdeaCast .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

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This episode was produced by Mary Dooe, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Rob Eckhardt, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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