Finding Unseen Opportunities

Problem solving, thinking in reverse and defining innovation

How can we solve problems differently than we do currently? Is there a way that will allow us to think differently? Is there a way to see unseen opportunities we can chase? And how do we know what we pursue is innovation at all?

Lately, I have been reading and re-reading Charlie Munger’s “Poor Charlie’s Almanac” and listening to Rory Sutherland’s podcast, O’Behave, which is about behavioural economics. And somehow ideas of these two men clicked in my head. And I came across some interesting ideas that might be useful in a daily design decision making process.

One of the central questions I was trying to answer is, how can we solve problems differently and see if what we found or solve is innovative?

The current process most of us use is a straightforward one. Define the problem, do research, and find solutions during the discovery stage. Then you design prototypes, you test it, and you build it.

But then I read what Charlie Munger (vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway) wrote, and his approach seemed interesting to me. It looks like a “preventing system” or thinking in reverse.

The way complex adaptive systems work, and the way mental constructs work, problems frequently get easier to solve through “inversion”. If you turn problems around into reverse, you often think better — Charlie Munger

You must think in reverse

Indeed, many problems can’t be solved forward. And that is why the great algebraist Carl Jacobi so often said, “Invert always invert.” And that’s also why the Pythagoreans thought in reverse to prove…