Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills

Section IV Conclusions and Innovation

Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with uttering, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” The process of using inductive reasoning that starts with a premise to form our conclusion usually produces sound, executable, and reliable solutions—better mousetraps.

But what happens if a better mousetrap is not enough? What if you want to produce a true breakthrough, a paradigm-changing solution? Let's say revenue is flat, and the only solutions seem to be more marketing dollars, more salespeople, or an incremental product line revision. Someone asserts during a meeting, “Come on folks; we need to think outside the box!” Everyone starts to scramble for outside-the-box solutions. The trouble is that to think outside the box, you first have to know what the box is.

We define innovation and creativity as providing a new or modified conclusion that obtains a positive result. Innovation might be a customized process, fresh product, different marketing approach, or different way of handling a customer call.

What's the difference between regular conclusions and innovative conclusions? Well, there's no checklist to help differentiate. If a solution works, the problem is solved. Of course, there are ways to solve a problem that result in different outcomes. For example, maybe your headscratcher is to increase sales by 5 percent. There may be several solutions, but only one might enable sales to grow by 20 percent or accomplish ...