How to Develop Innovative Solutions

Coming up with original or innovative solutions can help you stand out from your colleagues or peers.

Being able to develop innovative solutions can make you a very valuable commodity in the workplace. Innovative solutions are mostly seen as "thinking outside the box"; generally, this speaks to your ability to see beyond mass movements or failed solutions that have been tried multiple times. Innovative solutions can provide original material, new strategies to frustrating problems, or more efficient solutions to get things done.

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Write down a problem statement on a sheet of paper. The act of putting the problem into written word can help bring a more concise view to a frustrating problem. It also utilizes a different part of the brain than speaking or discussing the problem out loud.

2. Write down the root causes of why existing solutions did not work or why their results were not good enough to solve the problem. Put this bullet point section below the problem statement. This further clarifies the problem at hand and allows you to see any common trends in the previous solutions applied.

3. Apply insights from writing down the problem and why the previous solutions did not work. It can be helpful to also write new solution ideas on this sheet of paper and compare them to solutions already tried. This will show if the new solutions attack the problem in different ways than the older solutions.

Tips & Warnings

• One method of developing innovative solutions does not work for everybody. While the technique of writing ideas down can be helpful, everyone has his own way of thinking best and being more creative. Utilize various techniques to develop something more suited to your strengths.

References

• All Life Is Problem Solving: Problem Solving Patterns
• Daily Blog Tips: Tips for Searching For New Ideas