Back to Basics: Embracing Simplicity for Creative Problem-Solving

Recently, I stumbled upon the Osborn-Parnes model of Creative Problem Solving (CPS), and its simplicity struck me. It just clicks.

While reviewing it, I had one of those "aha" moments, realizing it mirrors the process we employ in our work at Design Sprint Academy. Though it wasn't a groundbreaking discovery, the confirmation that we're on the right track was reassuring, particularly because in our field ambiguity and uncertainty often accompany the journey of innovation and new product development.

I thought it would be a good idea to share it with you, for a couple of reasons:

It might boost your confidence in your own approaches, if you follow this model. If not you might understand why your approach is not optimal and where you could improve it.

While this CPS model is intuitive, it only outlines high-level steps and I’d like to show more concretely what happens at each stage. As they say, the devil is in the details. Considering that many of you are in product/innovation and facing challenges similar to those our clients face, I hope that sharing Design Sprint Academy’s approach to creative problem-solving will offer some inspiration.

Here's how we at Design Sprint Academy tackle an innovation project.

1.Mess or Objective

The starting point of our projects is usually fuzzy, unclear, and messy. Our clients come to us with broad requests such as, “We need to do something with AI” , “We want to target a new customer audience with our product” or “ What features do we need to build to be competitive?”. These are hardly problem statements primed for immediate solution development.

2. Fact-finding

As tempting it might be to jump into solutions, we take our time to understand the existing landscape surrounding the challenge. It varies from project to project, but generally involves conducting customer interviews & surveys, talking to stakeholders, doing competitive analysis, trend watching, reviewing any existing user research and prior attempts to address the problem.

This phase can be particularly challenging—not only are we not yet close to finding a solution, but the problem itself still lacks clarity despite the accumulating data. By the end of this phase most important data are identified and analyzed, laying down a solid foundation for the next stage of problem identification and decision-making.

At Design Sprint Academy we call this part of our process Groundwork, and it typically takes us 1 - 2 weeks to do it.

3. Problem-Finding

In our world that’s called Problem Framing. It’s a half-a-day to a day workshop where key stakeholders and key decision-makers come together. Following a structured process, facilitated by DSA, they leverage the data gathered during Groundwork to identify and define clear problem statements.

The outcome is a working problem statement that not only reflects business objectives but also addresses real customer needs. That is made possible by grounding the decision-making process in the insights and data collected earlier — also ensuring the identified problem is both relevant and actionable, backed by stakeholder support.

4. Idea-Finding

It’s the start of the solution development. For the type of problems we work on (requiring novel, innovative solutions - that’s why it’s called innovation), the Design Sprint is our go-to method. It’s fast, user centric, and collaborative. In just a few days many alternatives, possibilities and ideas for responding to the problem statement are generated by a small cross-functional team of experts.

At the end of the design sprint the most promising solution is selected informed by both expert opinions and customer feedback.

This is typically where our direct involvement at Design Sprint Academy concludes. We guide our clients through the most challenging aspects of problem-solving, from identifying the problem and securing stakeholder buy-in to creating a user-validated solutions. However, this is not the end of the problem-solving process.