Ingenuity in Practice: A Guide for Clear Thinking

P. Kirkham, S.P. Mosey, M.R. Binks

This clear and concise book presents a straightforward process for anyone who wants to bring more innovative thinking to their work. My company is called Deliberate Innovation because I’m passionate that acts of ingenuity can be open to all who have access to a great process and this is such a process.

Businesses and individuals can benefit by understanding the nature of the journey problem solvers need to take from problem definition through creativity to delivery. In this book the steps are titled: Define – Discover – Determine, and the fractal way in which these phases are used is simultaneously powerful and accessible.

The examples, quotes and stories that populate the book make it a pleasant read for those only casually interested in the subject, but the rigour of the method shows through at all times.

If you’re thinking of buying the book then here’s a link:

Ingenuity in Practice: A Guide for Clear Thinking By P. Kirkham, S.P. Mosey, M.R. Binks

In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result – all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water.

Pretty soon, when any monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it. Now, turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Again, replace a third original monkey with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs. Why not?

Because that’s the way it’s always been around here…

If this sounds all too familiar perhaps we should talk?

Before the creative act of coming up with ideas, it’s important to be able to describe the problem or opportunity briefly, but comprehensively and in terms that are readily understood.

The statement of the problem is essential to a creative problem solving process partly because defining it helps you understand the problem better. It will also serve as the starting point(s) for ideas generation as well as to keep you on brief.

“A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.”  — John Dewey

No ideas yet please

Many of us are aware of the dangers of ‘jumping to solution’ but the expression is in danger of becoming a cliché that’s meaning has become obscured. I’m always amused to hear someone say: “I don’t want to jump to solution, BUT…” as they invariably go on to do just that!

It’s important to get the job of framing the problem done first and to suppress the urge to come up with solutions for the time being. This deliberate act is as important to innovation as the deliberate generation of original ideas.

The early parts of the innovation journey are cheap and the Problem Statement is no exception. Later money and resources can be used at an alarming rate when developing solutions for delivery so why not spend some time making sure you’ve explored properly early on.

For a great creative problem solving process developed at the University of Nottingham check out this book Ingenuity in Practice: A Guide for Clear Thinking

“It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.”    - Gilbert K. Chesterton

Check your problem statement by asking:

Has the analysis been done?

Just because this blog is usually about the creative process, please don’t imagine that methodical root cause analysis isn’t needed.

Why are you doing this?

Use the question “Why?” iteratively to get to the bottom of the real need for a solution. What is the real outcome you’re chasing?

Could the problem be broken down into more than one smaller issues?

They might interact with each other but could they be better dealt with by looking at them separately?

Have you got the scope right?

Too many restricting parameters will leave you only able to reinvent a version of what you already know isn’t working. Too few will leave you prone to go off-brief and create something irrelevant.

Could the problem be seen as an opportunity?

I use the words problem and opportunity interchangeably in this context and if your problem can be rephrased as an opportunity this might provoke different thinking.

What are the actual constraints?

Challenge each constraint especially the really obvious ones to make sure they’re real and not assumed. Can they be pushed or tightened? Have any constraints crept in there that could be avoided?

How many ways could the problem be reframed?

There is no need for one ‘perfect’ statement and having a selection will give you different places to start your creative thought process.

Is your problem really a solution masquerading as a problem?

This might seem like an odd question, but surprisingly frequently I am asked by people to help them look at a problem which has been so narrowly stated as to only allow one solution. In fact the only problem is how to deliver the solution someone else has come up with (even though it’s difficult to implement and doesn’t solve the issue!).

“The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.”      — Albert Einstein

What questions do you ask when working out a problem statement?  Has anything above prompted a query for you?  I’d love to hear about either so feel free to comment below.

Will Woodward

As we mark the anniversary of the mission that came so close to disaster, but still returned home safely, perhaps it is fitting that we take inspiration from the thinking and actions of the astronauts and mission controllers back in 1970. Here are some quotes from the NASA heroes that I find interesting.

“If I had just waited for some miracle I’d still be up there” - Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 Commander

With lives at stake it would be difficult to believe that anyone involved would do anything other than their utmost to solve the problem, but this statement is relevant to working in organisations of any type. Innovative people don’t wait for problems to be solved by good fortune, by someone else or just hope they’ll go away. You can see Jim Lovell talking about his experiences commanding Apollo 13 on this link:

“…as we worked our way through solving one crisis after another, our percentage of success increased”– Jim Lovell, Apollo 13 Commander

It is rare that any serious problems is resolved by one ‘silver bullet’ solution and far more common that a whole range of part-solutions are necessary, each getting you one stage closer to success. Realising that can be helpful, since once you accept that no one idea will actually solve the problem on its own it is easier to consider the value of the ideas you have.

“You can not operate in this room unless you believe that you are Superman, and whatever happens, you’re capable of solving the problem.”

“Failure is not a option”- Gene Kranz, NASA flight director

The keyword here for me is ‘believe’. It could perhaps be assumed that anyone selected to work in mission control would be highly competent, indeed probably the best in their field, but without a belief that they have it in their power to solve the problem they would not have been successful. This is what Gene Kranz demanded from his team and what today’s managers need to be just as insistent about.

For many one big obstacle to creativity is self belief. Some say ‘I’m not the creative type’ and that may be one of a few small things they need to change to be able access some more of their innate ingenuity.

Who says that the first reasonable sounding idea you’ve had is going to be the best that you could have? Perhaps you could come up with a solution which is even better, more efficient or better still turns what was a problem into an advantage!

The thing about having just one solution to choose from is that, if during the process of delivery it becomes difficult to implement or turns out not to be as good a fix as you first thought, there is nowhere to turn. Having gone part way toward implementation it can be really difficult to drag yourself back to the creative process. In fact there can be a tendency to try desperately to bash the solution that you have into a shape that works, despite its emerging unsuitability!

If you can have a few ideas that might work before you progress (at least 3-5 ideally) and for the first few steps of the journey progress some or all of them, then the research and development that you do will tell you more about the ecosystem and context that the solutions have to exist in. This way you’ll have a better chance of not only picking a great solution from your selection, but also you’ll have options if that solution becomes unviable later.

“You are just as likely, or more likely, to find that elusive competitive advantage in purchasing or HR, as you are in an official engineering or marketing department.”  (extract from video below)Tom Peters

This means that the real potential of the organisation and its people can only be reached if everyone has access to innovation tools, is well supported, coached and feels encouraged into entrepreneurial thinking.  At the heart of innovation is an attitude of not being satisfied with the status quo – could things be better, faster, cheaper, more profitable, sell more, help more people or provide better customer experience?

As organisations become larger or older processes and procedures can take on an almost sacred property, driven perhaps by an assumption that they have been that way for a long time for good reason. Here, as elsewhere, it is the duty of every manager to ensure that their team not only understand the need for fresh thinking, but also has the right training and support to challenge the way things are done – or have been done until now!

When people tell me that they have had poor experiences in brainstorms in general they say one of a few things: That is was disorganised, dominated by someone, or just a list of the same old ideas. (Add your own experiences in the comments at the bottom of this page).

Of course there are many professional individuals who know exactly how to facilitate a brilliant Brainstorm, but they are badly outnumbered by those who ‘picked it up as they went along’.   To be a great brainstormer or brainstorm facilitator you do not need to know that term was first coined by Alex Osborn in his book “Applied Imagination” in 1953, or even that as he worked up the concept throughout the 30’s he had previously called it a ‘Think Up’.  However you do need to know four rules and insist on compliance to them:

No criticism of ideas

Most people know that in a brainstorm there are meant to be rules.  This the best known and in some cases well used, but it often needs to be enforced better.  No criticism means none whatsoever, not even a rolling of eyes!

Have large quantities of ideas

This one’s pretty well known too, but do all of the ideas get captured effectively or are some lost before they make it to the flip-chart?  Whoever has the pen must resist the temptation to filter out the impractical, impossible and foolish.

Encourage wild and exaggerated ideas

In some cases this is hinted at with instructions like ‘no idea’s a bad idea’ and similar phrasing, but to get best value from the conversation it needs to be much stronger.  The purpose is to help the conversation take a different route.   If only sensible ideas come out then only well trodden roads can be taken and they lead to all the solutions that you could have listed without the aid of a brainstorm – a great way to waste people’s time!

Build on each others’ ideas

This one of Osborne’s rules is the most often ignored, perhaps because it is the most unfamiliar to those used to criticism as a default mode.  It’s just as important as the others to having truly creative ideas, because if the brainstorm is just a list of thoughts captured as a single word with no conversation, then the results will be poor.

Daft ideas spark new thinking when explored – The key to this is that everyone must contribute to growing the idea, in particular the silly suggestions.   That is how progress is made down roads that could not have been taken from within the accepted thinking and towards creative solutions.   Sometimes hard work, as it can be counter-intuitive to spend even the briefest time adding to thinking that might feel useless!

So brainstorming is rubbish when it is practised badly, but it needn’t be if the whole group can stick to 4 simple rules.  If Osborn were still with us he might be pleased by the ubiquity of the term he coined, but I suspect he would be appalled at the watered-down way in which his tool is understood.  It is however perhaps a testament to the power of brainstorming that it remains fundamental for many who are misusing it – and still getting results!

Will Woodward

You might call it a blog, but by the strictest definitions it probably isn’t, since we’re not logging anything and it’s not a journal!  The helpful software certainly thinks it’s a blog, but it’s more likely to turn out to be a series of articles related to Deliberate Innovation.  Our intention is to provoke, inspire, inform, engage and start a conversation.

What you’ll see here is a selection of musings, observations, suggestions and tales of our experiences helping people and organisations with creativity, progressing ideas, collaboration, and engagement to get results.

Many of the tools and techniques we use are really straightforward, so you’ll get to hear about some of them too and if you try something out that you about read here perhaps you’ll drop us a line and tell us how it went?

We’ll share interesting stuff that we see elsewhere too, by including cuttings from other people, with a link so you can find out more.  If this was a blog perhaps we’d call that re-blogging?

I think that’s enough introduction, so read on!

PS – You can get a notification when there’s a new note by subscribing below:

You can also follow us on Twitter @willwoodward.