Innovation by 'turning it around'

By Jonathan Halls

IN THIS ARTICLE:

• New ideas are often where you least expect them

• Look at the problem you're trying to solve, then turn it upside down to look at it from another angle

• Review conventional answers to the problem, then turn those upside down to see what comes up

• Often the answers are looking us right in the face

Creativity isn’t just waiting for 'aha' experiences.

If you want something original, don’t look where you’d expect the answer. Look where you wouldn’t. 

Turn it upside down.  Look at it from the back.  Explore it from another perspective.

Huge amounts of money are spent by public health systems around the world on problems caused by alcohol abuse.

Many of the solutions curbing alcohol abuse involve spending money to address the problem.  This may sound straightforward enough. 

Costs include liver transplants, counseling families with alcoholic parents, or dealing with abuse.

However if we're trying to solve problems of the effects of alcohol abuse, why not look at stopping alcohol dependence in the first place?

Spend money and energy on educating people to reduce their alcohol consumption, to reduce the cost of rehabilitating or healing alcohol related illnesses?

How about the cost of broken families? Much money spent in the court system is spent on divorce lawyers working through settlements, and in the welfare area paying for counselors.

If marriages aren’t going to work, why not spend money on helping people work that out before people get married, rather than post marriage counseling and lawyers?

If we are busy thinking about the end result, turn that around and think about the beginning issue.

Often the answers are looking at us right in the face. 

But because we have seen the problem and any conventional solution so often, our mind suffers functional fixation.