3 Innovative and Creative Problem-Solving Techniques

Now that we have a sense of how to get to the root of challenging or complex problems, the instinct is to jump to implementing solutions. Did you find yourself wanting to leap to the great ideas that likely came to mind as you were getting to the root of your problem? If so, that’s a completely natural reaction as often times there are time-bound pressures that we may need to respond to, and or the immediate solution we come up with is a viable option to solve the problem.

But is it the BEST option to solve the problem?

If you think this might be an unnecessary train of thought, consider the last time you purchased something from a store and then came to find a better model for the same price, or the same model for a better price, elsewhere. If you do not exhaust your options, this will happen all of the time!

The second key to innovation and solving problems creatively is to generate as many solutions as possible without judgement or evaluation. Brainstorming is an example of a tool that can be used to generate options, but it is not the only one available and as an innovator, you need to have multiple solution generation tools in your toolkit.

In this section you are going to look at a number of solution generating tools in the readings, videos, and slides provided below; you will then apply a selection of these tools to generate solutions to a complex problem. By the end of this section you will have demonstrated the ability to:

• Understand how people think about solving problems.
• Engage in the creative solution development process.
• Apply solution generation tools to a complex problem.
• Generate at least 20 potential solutions to a complex problem.

Read/watch:

• Read Unleashing Innovation Chapters 4, 5, & 6.
• Watch Oneill, E. The Psychology of Problem-Solving video.
• Watch Key, C. The Surprising Secret that Solves Your Problems Quickly video.
• Watch Wujec, T. Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast video.
• Review the Generating Solutions PPT resource.
• Read Frey, C. The future of creativity is relational article.
• Read the SynTAROTis Relational algorithms overview.

Assignment: 

Assignment 2: Generating Solutions