THE ART OF PROBLEM DISCOVERY: Adaptive Thinking for Innovation and Growth

Prologue How can we make the floors cleaner? That’s the question that Proctor & Gamble asked its chemists.1 Years of working on this problem, however, yielded no improved cleaning solution. So Proctor & Gamble took a different approach and hired a design firm.2 Rather than focusing on chemical improvements, the designers watched people clean. Observations uncovered the real problem: mops. People spent more time cleaning their mops than they did cleaning their floors. The mop was an ineffective tool for the task at hand. This insight led to the development of the Swiffer—a billion-dollar product line for Proctor & Gamble. The lesson learned is that innovation isn’t simply about asking the right questions; it’s also involves framing questions differently. Our approach to problems is affected by the manner in which they are presented. To the chemist, a cleaner floor was a scientific problem, while to the designer it was a human problem. It’s vital that we are able to shift perspectives when we need to generate different types of results. If our thinking is too narrow then we may miss breakthroughs. How we formulate problems is just as important as how we solve them. In fact, our ability to discover and translate problems may well be the most significant step toward realizing innovation.

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