Adaptive and Innovative Creative Problem-Solving in Organizations

Creative problem-solving excellence is increasingly an imperative for organizational resilience. However, truly embedding this capability requires a fundamental mindset shift — from viewing innovation projects as one-off consulting engagements to seeing them as platforms for empowering teams.
 
The key ideas this paper emphasizes are:
Take an employee-centric perspective that focuses on developing people’s skills and sparking their creative potential through hands-on problem-solving challenges.
Assess tolerance for innovation across units, Clarify the specific appetite for experimentation and risk-taking before applying methodologies.
Customize process design and individual support to team member strengths and motivations while encouraging creative abrasion.
Use each collaborative problem-solving initiative, at either team or enterprise levels, to expand skills in framing issues, hypothesizing solutions, prototyping ideas, and contextual scaling.
 
By continuing to nurture our problem-solvers, we build the creative muscle and leadership bench critical for repeatedly tackling complex issues ahead with speed and ingenuity. The ultimate solutions emerge when our systems enable our talented teams to thrive.
 
This intentional focus on empowering teams through applied innovation opportunities unlocks enduring organizational agility.