A Secret to Creative Problem Solving (Courtesy: MSNBC.com)

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A Secret to Creative Problem Solving

Posted by Nadia Goodman | May 23, 2012

URL: http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/223588

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.

Related Video: Dermalogica's Jane Wurwand on the Creative Process

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.

Related: 5 Ways to Boost Your Creative Power

What creative ways have you come up with in problem solving? Leave a comment and let us know.

Copyright © 2013 Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

How to Improve Your Critical-Thinking Skills and Make Better Business Decisions

By Nadia Goodman

How to Improve Your Critical-Thinking Skills and Make Better Business Decisions -- © hale pakcan/iStock Vectors/Getty Images

Here are 3 strategies for helping you overcome your biases to make more holistic decisions.

As an entrepreneur, you make decisions every day that affect the success of your products, the loyalty of your employees, and the overall health of your business. Tomake the best decisions possible, you need to think critically and quickly to pick out any flaws in your processes that might harm your business.

When you think through a problem, your thought process is naturally colored by biases, such as your point of view and your assumptions about the situation. Each of those biases affects your reasoning. If you let your biases drive your thought process and overlook blind spots in your logic, you’ll unwittingly make decisions filled with holes.

"Critical thinking is a way to intervene in your thought process," says Linda Elder, an educational psychologist and president of the Foundation for Critical Thinking, based in Tomales, California. "It's a way to routinely and consistently seek problems in your thinking."

Related: How to Sharpen Your Decision-Making Skills

Try these three strategies to help you think through a problem effectively.

1. Identify your purpose.
Every time you face a decision, there is a purpose attached to that choice, or a goal that the decision will help you achieve. For example, if you are expanding into a new market, your purpose might be to choose the one with the greatest growth opportunity.

Once you identify your purpose, it should inform every step of your decision process. First make sure that you're clear about what it is, articulate it for yourself and your team, and use it as a starting point, not an end point. “With critical thinking, it is essential to go beyond the basic skills, like gathering information," Elder says.

2. Examine your biases.
When you face a problem, it's common to view it from only your perspective and to overlook how your clients, customers or co-workers might see it. Considering the situation from only one point of view, however, can lead to products that flop, or unnecessary spending. The goal of critical thinking is to bring those biases to light so they don’t obstruct your decisions.

To do that, articulate your own viewpoint. Ask yourself, “What do I believe about this situation? What is important to me?” Next, look for any assumptions you might be making about others' thoughts or behaviors. "Irrational thought is often unconscious," Elder says. "When we articulate our thoughts, we have a better chance to detect distorted thinking."

3. Consider the implications of your options.
Every choice has consequences, and you can improve your decision-making by anticipating what those might be. To do that, approach the problem from many different viewpoints. Imagine yourself as each of the stakeholders, and consider how they might feel and act in response to each option.

If you do make a choice that backfires by upsetting clients or hurting sales, take a deeper look at which implications you failed to think through, and why. "Common reasons are that people were intellectually lazy, didn't want to consider a given viewpoint," Elder says. Knowing what you missed and why will help you avoid that issue in the future.

Related: A Secret to Creative Problem Solving

Self-Disciplined People Are Happier (and Not as Deprived as You Think): Source (cnn.com)

HAPPINESS

Self-Disciplined People Are Happier (and Not as Deprived as You Think)

By Maia Szalavitz @maiaszJune 24, 20134 Comments

It’s easy to think of the highly self-disciplined as being miserable misers or uptight Puritans, but it turns out that exerting self-control can make you happier not only in the long run, but also in the moment.

The research, which was published in the Journal of Personality, showed that self-control isn’t just about deprivation, but more about managing conflicting goals. Since most people associate highly disciplined folks with being more task-oriented — they’re not likely to be the life of the party, for example, or eager to act on a whim — the scientists decided to correlate self-control with people’s happiness, to determine if being self-disciplined leaves people feeling less joyful.

Through a series of tests — including one that assessed 414 middle-aged participants on self-control and asked them about their life satisfaction both currently and in the past — and another that randomly queried volunteers on their smartphones about their mood and any desires they might be experiencing, the researchers found a strong connection between higher levels of self-control and life satisfaction. The authors write that “feeling good rather than bad may be a core benefit of having good self-control, and being well satisfied with life is an important consequence.”

The smartphone experiment also revealed how self-control may improve mood. Those who showed the greatest self-control reported more good moods and fewer bad ones. But this didn’t appear to linked to being more able to resist temptations — it was because they exposed themselves to fewer situations that might evoke craving in the first place. They were, in essence, setting themselves up to happy. “People who have good self-control do a number of things that bring them happiness — namely, they avoid problematic desires and conflict,” says the study’s co-author Kathleen Vohs, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota.

(MORE: With Age Comes Happiness)

That became clear in the study’s last experiment, which investigated how self-control affects the way people handle goals that conflict with one another. In particular, the researchers were interested in how self-disciplined and less-disciplined people differed when it came to choosing among “virtues” or “vices” — like the pleasure of eating a sugar cookie vs. the pain of gaining weight. More than 230 participants were asked to list three important goal conflicts they experienced regularly — and then to rate how strongly the goals conflicted and how frequently they experienced the conflict. They were also queried on how they managed to balance the goals.

The highly self-controlled showed a distinct difference from those with less discipline over their lives. They tended to avoid creating situations in which their goals would conflict, and reported fewer instances of having to choose between short-term pleasure and long-term pain. The result? They experienced fewer negative emotions. The authors write that “one interpretation of this finding is that people use self-control to set up their lives so as to avoid problems.”

“[It’s a] very interesting study,” says Kristin Smith-Crowe, associate professor of management at the University of Utah, who was not connected with the research, “The authors address some of the most important questions in life: What leads to happiness and how can we achieve a life well lived?”

The answer, it seems, lies in being a good manager. Self-control, for one, may not consist so much of being better at resisting temptation, but at finding better ways to avoid it. “High self-control does make you happy,” the authors conclude.

(MORE: The Secrets of Self-Control: The Marshmallow Test 40 Years Later)

So why does exerting more self-discipline seem so dreary? Dieting, for example, is all about self-control but isn’t necessarily associated with happy thoughts. Part of that may have to do with the effort required to bypass or diffuse conflicts created by temptation. “From other research, we know that exercising self-control is taxing,” says Smith-Crowe, but that may only be a perception, since it results from our tendency to focus on the difficulty of exercising discipline rather than the benefits that result when we do.

And self-control doesn’t always mean self-denial: it may mean saving now to get a big payoff later. For dieters, it means making choices to avoid entering a bakery since you’re more likely to buy a cupcake if you do. Granted, self-control isn’t the best route to instant gratification, but it may bring something even better: long-term contentment.

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Tuesday, June 25, 2013