Today, as we announced the Thinking Corner results and updated the summer camp schedules for 2012 I was wondering if I had to choose to be creative in the realm of solutions or problems. I’d say, any day, give me the creative flexibility to reframe a problem in a way that it looks like a challenge worth solving, give me the creative ability to be able to focus on a new way of looking at the boundaries of the problem and give me the power to be able to redefine the limitations – the solutions will emerge from the insights you have and how you have moulded the problem at hand. But are we flexible enough? Are we looking too hard not to be?
Lets look at an example: Lets think of a child who adamantly refuses to study math but is an avid cricket fan. He keeps the weirdest of scores handy in his memory but says that he does not ‘get’ math! Flexibility on the parent’s/teacher’s side would involve framing the math problem in a cricket context and you would have the child interested in math in a way that he would prefer to be. Any guesses on what the outcome would be? The tough part is on the parent’s/teacher’s side to reframe the problem in a context that the child understands, the rest magic happens on its own!
Do you have any such examples where just a different frame around a problem opened up a lot of creative solutions? Do share…