Problem Solving and Need Recognition Techniques
Sometimes, navigating from the recognition of an opportunity to overcoming problems in the development of that opportunity can feel like winding through a maze. Problem solving is essential to the genesis of entrepreneurship. At the same time, problem-solving techniques can be used in management and in an individual’s everyday personal life.
Entrepreneurs often visualize an opportunity gap, a gap between what exists and what could exist. Entrepreneurial problem solving is the process of using innovation and creative solutions to close that gap by resolving societal, business, or technological problems. Sometimes, personal problems can lead to entrepreneurial opportunities if validated in the market. The entrepreneur visualizes the prospect of filling the gap with an innovative solution that might entail the revision of a product or the creation of an entirely new product. In any case, the entrepreneur approaches the problem-solving process in various ways. This module is more about problem solving as it pertains to the entrepreneur’s thought process and approach rather than on problem solving in the sense of opportunity recognition and filling those gaps with new products. The key learning points are the following:
Define problem solving in the context of entrepreneurship
Describe and compare the adaptive model and the innovative model of problem solving
Identify the skills entrepreneurs need for effective problem solving
Identify types of problem solvers
Often an artist will know what they want something to look like, but they have no idea how to get there. This is the obstacle or problem that they must figure out how to overcome in the process. So in this way, art is a way of figuring something out. Sometimes it is an emotional release or a way of coming to terms with emotions or feelings and sometimes it is as technical as learning a new way to attach an item to an artwork substrate.
Potential Applications:
- An author can’t think of an idea for a new book because she is thinking extremely broadly with no focus. She decides to impose a set of constraints on the story to stimulate ideas.
- A city wants to improve its quality of life by changing the design of neighborhoods to be safe, stimulating, healthy, resilient and clean. They begin by asking for as many ideas as possible from city residents and urban design experts with no constraints such as budget.
- A design team avoids making any assumptions in design concept meetings. For example, a team designing a bicycle avoids seemingly obvious assumptions such as two wheels.
- Reducing a problem to its most general form. For example, a creative director at an advertising firm thinks in terms of the emotions that ads trigger in the customer.
While identifying problems is a necessary part of the origin of the entrepreneurial process, managing problems is an entirely different aspect once a venture is off the ground and running. An entrepreneur does not have the luxury of avoiding problems and is often responsible for all problem solving in a startup or other form of business. There are certain skills that entrepreneurs possess that make them particularly good problem solvers.
Potential Application:
- Problem-solving skills play a crucial role in creating innovative applications. These skills help developers identify and address challenges, think critically, and come up with innovative solutions.
- By adopting a problem-solving mindset, developers can analyze user needs and pain points, allowing them to design applications that offer unique and creative solutions.
- Problem-solving skills enable developers to break down complex issues into manageable components, facilitating effective troubleshooting and debugging.
- Additionally, problem-solving skills encourage experimentation and exploration, encouraging developers to think outside the box and develop novel features and functionalities.
Problem solving skills are essential for educators because they help them cope with the complexities and uncertainties of their profession, and enhance their teaching and learning quality. Incorporating problem-solving into the curriculum is a great way to make learning more student-centered, as it requires students to engage with topics by asking questions and thinking critically about explanations and solutions, rather than expecting them to absorb information in a lecture format.
Potential Applications:
- Consider what would happen if you pursue options that you consider to be obvious mistakes. For example, a student who considers what would happen if they simply dropped out. This may trigger new ideas.
- A project team needs to find a new approach as their project is late and overbudget. They list out current project assumptions and challenge each one.
- Solving current problems by considering what would have happened if the past had been slightly different. For example, considering a current career choice by thinking about your choices up to this point and the universe of paths not taken.
- When you rephrase problems and challenges as open-ended questions with multiple possibilities, it’s easier to come up with solutions. Asking these types of questions generates lots of rich information, while asking closed questions tends to elicit short answers, such as confirmations or disagreements. Problem statements tend to generate limited responses, or none at all.
What’s in the Bag?
Dora Psaltopoulou, arts teacher at AUTH
Following her participation in a Problem Solving and Need Recognition module, Dora Psaltopoulou, an arts teacher, introduced the “What’s in the Bag” activity to her students. This hands-on project aimed to cultivate problem-solving skills and creativity in her classroom. By incorporating the SCAMPER technique and repurposing existing artwork, Dora provided her students with an engaging opportunity to explore innovative solutions to artistic challenges. Let’s delve into this real-life example to see how Dora effectively applied problem-solving strategies in her teaching.
I created 6 bags for each of my art 1 classes. That required my students to break into 6 teams of 4…no one was allowed to work alone. (Working together in a group was another problem to solve). Each group picked a prompt from the bucket and then received their bags. They were given an hour (broken up over 2 classes) to bring their prompt to life. Bag contents included: a portion of an egg carton, 3 pipe cleaners, a cork, a round plastic piece, 10 popsicle sticks, 2 tongue depressors, some puzzle pieces, 3′ strip of lollipop wrapper, 3 small square chipboard pieces, and 2 rectangular chip board pieces. They could also use the bag if needed, but it was not required. After time was up, students were asked to present their creation to the class, addressing topics like what was your prompt, or what was the hardest problem to overcome building your creation and how did you overcome it. To complicate things a little I decided to involve in this module an SCAMPER activity. I learned about SCAMPER while at a Gifted and Talented training this past summer. Out of all the different activities we went over at the training, I felt SCAMPER was one that I could actually take back to my classroom and have the students use. I wanted my students to create an artwork, on their own, but I wanted it to fall under this unit. I thought with SCAMPER I could kill 2 birds with 1 stone so-to-speak, as I have a ton of old student artwork that I no longer needed or wanted. So, this was a great time to use them. Students would pick an artwork from the pile and use it to create a new artwork. The catch was, they had to choose one of the letters of SCAMPER when creating their “new” artwork. Subject matter, medium(s), and technique(s) are all up to the student.
S = SUBSTITUTE
C = COMBINE
A = ADAPT
M = MODIFY
P = PUT TO OTHER USES
E = ELIMINATE
R = REARRANGE
Modify (M) was the letter most used in the activity. But, a few really dug in with combine, rearrange, eliminate and put to other uses. I wish I had some of the before images, but I don’t. Oh well. Anyway, they stepped up with SCAMPER –some students taking the artwork so far off the original…YAY! One student totally took her piece apart and created a whole new piece. One note I did have for myself for next year is to have a wider variety of old artwork for the students to choose from. Too many of the same starting image and ending with not changing the image enough.
Activities
This activity helps with collaboration. Why collaboration is important for problem-solving: “Collectively, we can be more insightful, more intelligent than we can possibly be individually,” writes Peter Senge in The Fifth Discipline. We can solve problems better as a team than we can alone, which means developing your team’s collaboration skills will lead to better problem-solving outcomes.
What you’ll need (per team):
20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti
1 roll of masking tape
1 yard of string
1 marshmallow
Instructions:
1. The goal of this exercise is to see which team can use the materials provided to build the tallest tower within an allotted time period. The tower must be able to stand on its own.
2. To make this exercise more challenging, try adding a marshmallow to the top of the tower. This team problem-solving exercise helps people think on their toes while building camaraderie and leadership.
This activity helps with Communication. You will need an empty room or hallway, blindfolds, and a collection of common office items.
Instructions:
1. Place the items (boxes, chairs, water bottles, bags, etc.) around the room so there’s no clear path from one end of the room to the other.
2. Divide your team into pairs and blindfold one person on the team.
3. The other must verbally guide that person from one end of the room to the other, avoiding the “mines.”
4. The partner who is not blindfolded can’t touch the other.
5. If you want to make the activity more challenging, have all the pairs go simultaneously so teams must find ways to strategically communicate with each other.
Take the Quiz!
Top 15 Problem-Solving Activities for Your Team to Master:
https://www.wrike.com/blog/top-15-problem-solving-activities-team-master/
The Four Types of Problem Solvers:
https://bossproject.com/podcast/the-4-types-of-problem-solvers-your-team-needs
Problem Solving Games, Activities & Exercises for Adults:
https://teambuilding.com/blog/problem-solving-games
Problem Solving video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehRNriENFic
Need Recognition videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l0d7avvp0w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN9aX67689U