The Next Next Common Sense
Leaders can cultivate cross-contextual thinking by:
1. Exposing teams to diverse industries and contexts 2. Hiring people with unconventional backgrounds 3. Creating deliberate analogies between their industry and others 4. Studying innovations from unrelated fields 5. Asking “How would [different industry] approach this problem?”
Reframing Problems
Perhaps the most powerful form of creative mental modeling involves reframing problems entirely. This doesn’t just find new solutions to ex- isting problems—it identifies entirely different problems worth solving. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, he didn’t frame it as solving the problem of mobile communication. He reframed it as putting “the internet in your pocket”—a fundamentally different problem statement
that led to a revolutionary product category. Problem reframing follows several patterns:
From symptoms to root causes :
• Instead of "How do we reduce customer complaints?" ask "What's causing customer frustration in the first place?"
From constraints to possibilities :
• Instead of "How do we work within our budget limitations?" ask "How might these limitations inspire creative approaches?"
From products to needs :
• Instead of "How do we improve our product?" ask "What job is the customer hiring our product to do?"
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