A Secret to Creative Problem Solving: Entrepreneur

Ever find yourself going over and over a problem in your business, only to hit a dead end or draw a blank?

Find an innovative solution with one simple technique: re-describe the problem.

"The whole idea behind creative problem solving is the assumption that you know something that will help solve this problem, but you're not thinking of it right now," explains Art Markman, cognitive psychologist and author of "Smart Thinking." Put another way, your memory hasn't found the right cue to retrieve the information you need.

Changing the description tells your mind that you're in a different situation, which unlocks a new set of memories. "The more different ways you describe the problem you're trying to solve, the more different things you know about that you will call to mind," says Markman.

Ask yourself two questions:

1. What type of problem is this?
Most of the time, we get stuck on a problem because our focus is too narrow. When you think specifically, you limit your memory and stifle creativity.

Instead, think more abstractly. Find the essence of the problem.

Take vacuum cleaner filters, for example. Vacuums used to have bags that were constantly getting clogged, so innovators focused on how to make a better filter.

James Dyson realized that the problem was actually about separation, or separating the dirt from the air, which doesn't always require a filter. "That freed him to try lots of different methods of separation," says Markman. Hence: the Dual Cyclone vacuum that led Dyson to fame and fortune.

2. Who else has faced this type of problem?

When you think about your problem abstractly, you realize that other people have solved the same type of problem in radically different ways. One of their solutions may hold the key to yours.

For example, Dyson realized sawmills use an industrial cyclone to separate sawdust from air and modified that technology to create the first filter-free vacuum.

"When you begin to realize that the problem you're trying to solve has been solved over and over again by people in other areas, you can look at the solutions they came up with to help you solve your own," Markman says.

You may not use one of their solutions exactly, but you free your memory to retrieve more information, making that elusive "aha" moment easier to reach.

By re-describing the problem, you're much more likely to find inspiration for a truly creative innovation.

What creative ways have you come up with in problem solving? via entrepreneur.com

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Hire Jim Woods to Speak to or Advise Your Organization

Innovation, Growth, & Hypercompetition Consultant/Speaker/Business Coach

 Website: InnoThink Group

Request a consultation: Office: +1 719.649.4118 or complete our form.  

 

Innothink Group is a strategic management, innovation and business coaching consultancy. 

Our Guarantee. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting nearly two thirds of our fees at risk subject to hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships with shared responsibility. See a few of our clients.   

We provide broad ranging advice covering innovation, commoditization, competitive advantage, business policy and strategy, as well as global strategy and implementation. 

 

A Lesson I Learned From My Granddaughter

One Saturday evening my granddaughter long since bathed and tucked into bed, tip toed into my arms as I sat in the recliner.

 

Silently she nursed a thumb. She wiggled until she found her "just right spot."

'What are you doing said I?" My heart racing with love. 

 

"Grandpa I want to snuggle."

I reclined even further. Drawing her closer.

 

Perhaps we over complicate life and business. That's how we keep customers from going to competitiors. By focusing on the things that matter most. Isn't it?  

 

Entrepreneurship is an Art not a Job « Steve Blank

Some men see things as they are and ask why.
Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
George Bernard Shaw

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development, Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it.

I’m beginning to suspect this assumption may be wrong.

Where Did We Go Wrong?
It’s not that the tools are wrong, I think the entrepreneurship management stack is correct and has made a major contribution to reducing startup failures. Where I think we have gone wrong is the belief that anyone can use these tools equally well.

Entrepreneurship is an Art not a Job
For the sake of this analogy, think of two types of artists: composers and performers (think music composer versus members of the orchestra, playwright versus actor etc.)

Founders fit the definition of a composer: they see something no one else does. And to help them create it from nothing, they surround themselves with world-class performers. This concept of creating something that few others see – and the reality distortion field necessary to recruit the team to build it – is at the heart of what startup founders do. It is a very different skill than science, engineering, or management.

 

Entrepreneurial employees are the talented performers who hear the siren song of a founder’s vision. Joining a startup while it is still searching for a business model, they too see the promise of what can be and join the founder to bring the vision to life.

Founders then put in play every skill which makes them unique – tenacity, passion, agility, rapid pivots, curiosity, learning and discovery, improvisation, ability to bring order out of chaos, resilience, leadership, a reality distortion field, and a relentless focus on execution – to lead the relentless process of refining their vision and making it a reality.

Both founders and entrepreneurial employees prefer to build something from the ground up rather than join an existing company. Like jazz musicians or improv actors, they prefer to operate in a chaotic environment with multiple unknowns. They sense the general direction they’re headed in, OK with uncertainty and surprises, using the tools at hand, along with their instinct to achieve their vision. These types of people are rare, unique and crazy. They’re artists.

Tools Do Not Make The Artist
When page-layout programs came out with the Macintosh in 1984, everyone thought it was going to be the end of graphic artists and designers. “Now everyone can do design,” was the mantra. Users quickly learned how hard it was do design well (yes. it is an art) and again hired professionals. The same thing happened with the first bit-mapped word processors. We didn’t get more or better authors. Instead we ended up with poorly written documents that looked like ransom notes. Today’s equivalent is Apple’s “Garageband”. Not everyone who uses composition tools can actually write music that anyone wants to listen to.

“Well If it’s Not the Tools Then it Must Be…”
The argument goes, “Well if it’s not tools then it must be…” But examples from teaching other creative arts are not promising. Music composition has been around since the dawn of civilization yet even today the argument of what “makes” a great composer is still unsettled. Is it the process (the compositional strategies used in the compositional process?) Is it the person (achievement, musical aptitude, informal musical experiences, formal musical experiences, music self-esteem, academic grades, IQ, and gender?)  Is it the environment (parents, teachers, friends, siblings, school, society, or cultural values?) Or is it constant practice (apprenticeship, 10,000 hours of practice?)

It may be we can increase the number of founders and entrepreneurial employees, with better tools, more money, and greater education. But it’s more likely that until we truly understand how to teach creativity, their numbers are limited.

Lessons Learned

• Founders fit the definition of an artist: they see – and create– something that no one else does
• To help them move their vision to reality, they surround themselves with world-class performers
• Founders and entrepreneurial employees prefer operating in a chaotic environment with multiple unknowns
• These type of people are rare, unique and crazy
• Not everyone is an artist

via steveblank.com

Hire Jim Woods to Speak to Your Organization

Innovation, Growth, & Hypercompetition Consultant/Speaker/Business Coach

 Website: InnoThink Group

Request a consultation: Office: +1 719.649.4118 or complete our form.  

 

Innothink Group is a strategic management, innovation and business coaching consultancy. 

Our Guarantee. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting nearly two thirds of our fees at risk subject to hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships with shared responsibility. See a few of our clients.   

We provide broad ranging advice covering innovation, commoditization, competitive advantage, business policy and strategy, as well as global strategy and implementation. 

Concept To Company in 54 Hours: What Will You Do Next Weekend?

Imagine that you have 54 hours and full access to a host of new potential co-founders, designers, developers, marketers and product managers to do one thing – and one thing only – launch your next big idea. 

Now envision bringing your minimum viable product (MVP) to market by crowdsourcing innovation and executing non-stop.

Startup Weekend is making this coveted scenario a reality by bringing a “No Talk. Allenables founders to focus on building out the framework of an innovative business over the course of one weekend. Each event brings like-minded entrepreneurs together to build and develop a commercial case around their products.

Concept to Company

This past weekend a bustling and eager crowd of veteran and aspiring entrepreneurs attended one of the 468 events held to-date, Triangle Startup Weekend, hosted at NC State University in Raleigh, NC. The local organization, led by Arik Abel the VP of Digital Services at French West Vaughan, raised over $20,000 and sold over 300 tickets to the ‘standing-room only’ event.

Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees shared their best ideas to inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday, select teams focused on customer validation, business models and execution of their products. On Sunday afternoon teams demoed their prototypes and received feedback from a panel of experts.

Ideas were the currency of the weekend. Several startups instantly became crowd favorites. From PhotoSlam, a photo-sharing app that lets you challenge your friends to interactive photo challenges to Soul Exchange — an online “soul marketplace” for friends, investors (and enemies) to invest in your soul and track its value based on your (good and bad) deeds.

Startup Weekend Ideas to Watch

Every Startup Weekend attendee walked away from the event with an invaluable experience, while a select few walked away with honorable mentions and grand prizes to help fuel their new companies.

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via yfsentrepreneur.com

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a leading Strategic Management and Innovation Consulting Firm in Denver, Colorado. He is an author, speaker, and a strategic innovation and hypercompetition expert to profit, non-profit organizations and municipalities. He advises clients with an objective view of their competitive capabilities and defines a clear course of action to maximize their innovation return on investment to achieve profitable growth. Build a capability for ongoing competitive innovation across your company. Call 719-649-4118 or complete our form: contact us for more information on hiring Jim to advise or speak for your next event.

Jocelyn K. Glei: Why Entrepreneurial Thinking Is For Everyone Now : The 99 Percent

"We need a new playbook," says entrepreneur and author Ben Casnocha. "The world has changed. The world of work has changed. Many of the assumptions that have guided how we think about careers in America are no longer true."

The Start-Up of You, written by Casnocha and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, is that playbook. It argues that we can no longer expect to find a job, instead we must make our jobs. As Hoffman says, we have to "find a way to add value in a way no one else can. For entrepreneurs, it's differentiate or die — that now goes for all of us."*

Relevant for recent grads to mid-career professionals in the midst of a transition, Start-Up provides pragmatic, actionable advice, finishing each chapter with tasks to complete in the next day, in the next week, and in the next month.

I chatted with Casnocha — a longtime favorite blogger of mine — after reading Start-Up to explore the book's themes in more depth and investigate his collaborative process with Reid.

What role does passion play in a good career plan — if any?

Definitely plays a role. When you're passionate about something, you tend to do better work, longer. The question is whether you find passion or develop it through competence. And then how you square passion with other considerations — such as your aspirations and the market realities. So, passion is key, yes, but it's rather more complicated than many career writers would have you think. Passion without being good at it doesn't get you very far; passion that no one will pay money for is also limited in scope. You need to weigh various factors, passion being one of them.

 

Do you think there's something new about "entrepreneurial thinking"? Or is it the new word for a type of thinking that has always existed?

All humans were born with entrepreneurial instincts. We quote Muhammad Yunus to this effect — he said that for a very long time humans forged lives by finding food, feeding ourselves. The instinct to create a life is deep within us. What's new are the specific skills that complement that instinct — the skills for adapting in the modern world.

What do you think is the No.1 misconception of people heading into a new career or looking to make a job transition?

That if you simply work hard, good things will happen. It certainly increases the odds, but working hard is no guarantee of anything. There are no guarantees, period.

The question is whether you find passion or develop it through competence.

How important is being comfortable with uncertainty? 

Anything worth doing is going to have degrees of uncertainty associated with it. Clamming up and treating any uncertainty as "risk" to be avoided will preclude you from seizing the very best opportunities. So, it's important. How you actually go about embracing risk and uncertainty is something we detail in the book. One tip: induce risk in small chunks, bit by bit, to raise your tolerance.

I love the idea that you present in the book of an "interesting people fund" — where you encourage people to set aside time and money in advance to keep their networks up to date. Can you talk a little bit about this "long view" approach to networking?

The interesting people fund is a pre-commitment strategy: by pre-committing time and money to meeting interesting people, you increase the likelihood that you actually do it. Because many people know they ought to do it, and think about doing it, but when push comes to shove and it's time to take an hour out of your day or spend $40 buying someone lunch — they punt on it.

In terms of the long view of networks, if you're not taking the long view, you're doing it wrong. Relationships — be it romantic, friendship, or professional – take time to develop. A lot of time. Rushing a relationship into a short term transaction can jeopardize the long-term relationship potential.

I recently read a great quote from Steve Pavlina: "If you struggle financially, upgrade your social skills. Money flows through people." Does this resonate with you?

Absolutely. In the opportunities chapter we say that every opportunity is attached to a person. Opportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. They're attached to people. If you're looking for an opportunity — including one that has a financial payoff — you're really looking for a person.

Opportunities do not float like clouds in the sky. They're attached to people.

 

If I had to distill the advice in the book down to the simplest possible equation: It might be something like "constant curiosity + action = career success." Is that accurate? What would be your equation?

Gosh, hard question! "Constant curiosity + thoughtful action = career success" could be one. "Change + adaptability = success" could be another. Networks should also be in there somehow!

What was your writing process with Reid like?

I'll be writing about this more on my personal blog in a bit. But the short answer is that we focused on our comparative advantages. I was working on it full-time and could go deep on some of the ideas and how we should organize them. Reid thought a lot about which ideas from the start-up/entrepreneurship world could be mapped effectively to careers. As with all books, we went through a lot of iterations to get it right. Anne Lamott nailed it: "Shitty first drafts." I will say that writing a book forces a certain rigor on the ideas — the linear text limits you but in a way that ultimately sharpens the ideas, I think. Certainly that was the case for us.

--
Jocelyn K. Glei is the Editor-in-Chief of the 99%. You can follow her intermittent tweets @jkglei. via the99percent.com

Want to increase growth and avoid losses? Want to out compete your competitors? Want to bring new products and services to market faster? Want to be more agile? Contact Innovation and Growth Speaker Jim Woods. Jim works confidentially with start ups, governments as well as profit and for profit enterprises.

Visit our website:www.innothinkgroup.com Executive and Business Coaching: http://ow.ly/anBpK

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective growth strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability.james@innothinkgroup.com

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Ways To Monitor Your Website to Keep Customers

A staggering portion of the country’s consumer activity now happens in cyberspace. Last year, individuals spent nearly $227.6 billion shopping online. Though these customers have a multitude of e-retailers to choose from, they tend to stay loyal to businesses that offer consistently good online experiences.
That makes it more important than ever to measure the experience visitors have on your website. There are various approaches, both software- and appliance-based, that are generally known as real user monitoring (RUM) or end-user experience monitoring. Using such a system can mean the difference between loyal customers and lost sales. Here are a few more reasons to consider incorporating one into your service strategy:

1. A real user monitoring system is basically a smart stopwatch for e-business. It reports the time it takes to perform the requested action, as in transferring money from one bank account to another. This capability is a natural add-on to a technology investment such as application performance management. Look for IT vendors who package RUM with their systems at no additional cost, or check out free RUM software online.

2. Make sure all applications on your website function flawlessly all of the time. The failure of an online payment service, for example, can do hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage within hours. The long-term implications are even more serious. If customers cannot complete a transaction on their first visit to a website, they are unlikely to return when so many other alternatives exist.

3. Fix problems before customers complain. When RUM reports show slow load times or other deadlocks, use the data to pinpoint and repair the problem immediately, before it affects users. A RUM solution should deliver traffic streams from the client side, server side, and the network, so you can see whether a problem resides in the data center, the network, or the browser. via businessweek.com

Want to increase the sustainability of your nnovation initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies.