All too often, the stated “problem” keeps a team from innovation: the problem is the problem. Being willing to question the premise, rather than accept it blindly, is a critical practice for creative health.

We've all been there: struggling against some challenge, banging our head against the wall. Even Albert Einstein. How he broke through teaches us something fundamental about creativity.

One of my all-time favorite origin stories is a case study in innovation: a collision between boredom, R&D, ineffective technology and a frustrated choirboy.

It is profoundly uncomfortable to choose to work differently. But sometimes, the best way forward is to allow yourself to retreat. Work different.

LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman and John Steinbeck might be wildly different characters, yet when it comes to sparking creativity, they both employ an unexpected hack.

Stanford Professor Clifford Nass studied hundreds of students to explore what distinguished self-proclaimed “multitaskers” from the rest of us. His conclusions, and their implications, won’t surprise you.

Great leaders know that every innovation begins with a problem. Instead of telling their people to “bring me solutions,” they encourage folks to be on the lookout for problems worth solving.

Paraphrasing Google X CEO Astro Teller, sparking group innovation can be as simple asking a team to “Gimme five.” Those two words contain a remarkable depth of wisdom.

There’s a critical flaw with our default approach problem solving: we tend to look for things to add, even when subtraction yields better solutions.

This guest post comes from Ozan Varol, one of my favorite rocket scientists. It’s excerpted from his new book, “Awaken Your Genius,” which is sure to be on my year-end best books list!

Wildly inventive individuals have a habit of gathering conceptual pieces before they know exactly what they’re going to do with them. The more legos you collect, the more ideas you can make.

If you find a problem that matters, you’re well on your way to a desirable innovation. How do you do that? Practice empathy.

Most folks want to stop diverging as quickly as possible. As soon as a reasonably good idea comes up, there's a collective sigh of relief which says, "Whew! We did it! Mission accomplished!" …

We all want to steward organizational resources responsibly. But sometimes, the problems we face aren’t clear, and neither are the solutions. In such cases, good stewardship requires divergent thinking, which often feels irresponsible.

Most breakthroughs sneak up on us, and can easily recede from our memories. Appreciating the small breakthroughs is an important step in rewiring some of our default ways of working.

Sometimes, the best way forward in solving a problem is to allow yourself to retreat. Operative word here being, “allow.” It is profoundly uncomfortable to choose to work differently, when it doesn’t really look like work.

Stanford Professor Clifford Nass studied hundreds of students, to explore what distinguished self-proclaimed “multitaskers” from the rest of us. His conclusions, and their implications, won’t surprise you.

Some problems can be hard to see from different perspectives. William Hardaway, a design leader in higher education recommends taking a light-hearted approach to exposing unexplored angles.

In the last 12 years, I’ve helped some 10,000 new innovators in training come up with new ideas and quickly assess if any are worth pursuing. I have never seen a new product with too few features.

Cultivating an attention to frustrations is a fantastic competency to develop. Because frustrations are often the soil in which new innovations flourish, minding your frustrations can yield entrepreneurial gold!