Coaching practices for Inventive Problem Solving
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Inventive Problem Solving, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I’ve been treating this like a problem nobody’s ever solved, pouring original effort into it
- I feel like I’m staring at this from inside my own little field with no fresh ideas, but I have a nagging sense that somebody, somewhere
- I’ve got maybe two ideas for what to do about this and both feel hopeless, so I shoot every other thought down before I even finish it
- I’ve been brainstorming this for hours and every idea is a slight variation on the same one
- When I try to brainstorm how to make this work I freeze up and self-censor every idea as not good enough
Practices that may help
- Calibrate whether the problem requires invention or just search
Determine whether your problem is already solved elsewhere before investing in original invention.
TRIZ: Systematic Invention and the Logic of Contradictions - Import a frame from a different domain
Describe your problem as if it were a challenge in an unrelated field, then steal the solutions from that field.
Problem Reframing: Solving the Right Problem First - Generate solutions without premature evaluation
List as many potential solutions as possible before judging any of them.
Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical - Sample inventive principles to generate solution directions
Apply one or more of TRIZ’s 40 inventive principles as generative lenses, even without the full contradiction matrix.
TRIZ: Systematic Invention and the Logic of Contradictions - Reverse brainstorm: solve the opposite problem first
Ask "How would we guarantee the worst possible outcome?" — then invert every answer.
Lateral Thinking, Made Practical - Solution-space exploration
Generate multiple different approaches to a problem before converging on one.
Productive Failure: How Struggling First Makes Instruction More Effective - Adapt
Ask: what could be adapted or borrowed from another context, industry, or era to solve this problem?
SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique - Use morphological analysis for wicked problems with many interdependencies
The method shines on problems too complex for brainstorming to cover adequately.
Morphological Analysis, Made Practical - Use forced analogy to generate unexpected solutions
Randomly pair your problem with an unrelated domain and mine the analogy for ideas.
Combinatorial Creativity, Made Practical - Concept fan: map the solution space before picking a direction
Expand from specific solutions to the broader concept behind them, then generate alternatives at the concept level.
Lateral Thinking, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Inventive Problem Solving Steps
Determine whether your problem is already solved elsewhere before investing in original invention.
Calibrate whether the problem requires invention or just search
- Creative Problem Solving Technique
SCAMPER is a structured brainstorming checklist that prompts you to Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify/Magnify, Put to other uses, Eliminate, and Reverse/Rearrange elements of an existing product, process, or problem. It is a practitioner-derived tool with no randomized trial evidence but a strong theoretical grounding in divergent thinking research — it works by forcing systematic exploration of an idea space that unguided brainstorming leaves partially uncovered.
- Creative Problem Solving
Identify the key dimensions that fully describe your problem space before generating solutions.
Decompose the problem into independent parameters
- Brainstorming Solutions
Have people generate ideas silently and individually first, then pool and build.
Brainwrite instead of group brainstorm
- Complex Problem Solving Method
Identify the key dimensions that fully describe your problem space before generating solutions.
- Creative Problem Solving Framework
The method shines on problems too complex for brainstorming to cover adequately.
Use morphological analysis for wicked problems with many interdependencies
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.