Unlock Innovation Using These Models

Backward chaining means envisioning your creative or innovative goal—solving a problem, inventing a product, developing a service, completing a work of art—and working backward to identify how you got there. You do this to clarify the process and ensure what you are doing aligns with the desired outcome. It might also spark ideas for unconventional paths to success.

Since creativity is in large part determined by how you see it, see it differently. Frame a problem or idea differently. Consciously reframe hurdles and challenges. Approach what you are doing from a new viewpoint. Step into the shoes of an admired creator, innovator, founder, or artist. These shifts can unlock solutions you might have otherwise overlooked.

Build. Innovation doesn’t happen in leaps and bounds. Rather, it grows and compounds. Creativity stems from the compounding of small, consistent efforts. Regular brainstorming sessions. Recording and developing ideas. Daily creative practices. Incrementally improving your concepts. This gradual accumulation of insights is what results in those soi-disant overnight successes. Breakthroughs seem sudden, but they are often the result of steady efforts over time.

The luck surface area concept states that creativity flourishes when you increase your exposure to opportunities. It makes sense: the wider your net, the more fish you catch. Engage with diverse people. Have novel experiences and explore disciplines. This works to expand your “surface area”. In other words, it heightens the likelihood of you encountering the inspiration, feedback, or collaboration to spark potentially lucrative projects. Closet artists don’t succeed. Put yourself out there.

Your circle of competence is the areas where you have deep expertise. Leverage this knowledge. These are areas you understand well. When you explore adjacent fields—those just outside your circle—ideas get a chance to cross-pollinate. That is, you introduce solutions from your field into another. The archenemy of this is the curse of knowledge. Familiarity with a subject means you can no longer imagine what it is like not to know it. Yet another reason to embrace diversity, to go places where you are not the smartest person in the room. Ask for input from others. Imagine how a beginner might take up the project. Circumambulate the work: view it from different disciplines. See the same portrait from a scientific, artistic, social, and technical point. The more exploration, the merrier.

Equifinality—where multiple paths lead to the same outcome—and multifinality—where one path leads to multiple outcomes—encourages creative thinking by reminding you how ideas are interconnected. A design problem can be approached in myriad ways. An innovative choice can solve several downstream issues at once. To figure out where the more impactful solutions lie, you can draw out empathy maps. These place you in the mind of your audience. Your team. Your stakeholders. Empathy mapping forces you to understand their needs, challenges, and desires—what they do, think, feel, and want. This resonance helps you create impactful stuff. Not just stuff you like. Stuff that touches people. Now that’s creation.