Framing Creative Problems

Introduction

There is a big problem with the word “problem” in the context of creativity. The word “problem” is used in everyday conversations, the media, and in academic and professional settings. A thesaurus lists the following related terms: complication, dilemma, dispute, headache, issue, obstacle, question, trouble, disagreement, doubt, and predicament¹. All these words carry a negative tone, signaling adverse situations which call for attention in order to imagine more desirable future states. This is in fact an influential definition of the concept of “design” in the academic literature (Simon, 1996), i.e., the course of action aimed at transforming undesirable existing situations into preferred future situations. One of the first difficulties arising from this definition is how may a problem-solver start to define what makes a situation undesirable. Inasmuch as design is a servicing activity, existing situations are characterized by/with others within their particular contexts –in other words, problems exist when they are identified as such by someone. This is substantively different from a commonplace understanding of problems existing “out there”, as if they were objective constructs waiting for people to spot them as such. This is a key distinction because creative problem-solvers learn to approach situations in radically different ways as they understand that their creative efforts start, and are fundamentally determined, by framing problems.

The practice and research of creativity has heavily relied on the study of how different people generate ideas to solve a given problem. This constitutes a significant weakness in the pursuit of defining and evaluating creativity, since giving people a pre-defined problem inevitably leads to the enforcement of such particular framing in the problem-solving phase. After all, the comparison of ideas provided by different individuals or teams is only feasible when they tackle the same problem, and this problem remains unchanged in the solving process. However, highly creative solutions often transform the ways in which the problem are viewed –i.e., patent claims must demonstrate non-obviousness or being different from “an obvious extension or adaptation” of current practice (Simonton, 2012). This approach is equally prevalent in professional practice, where problem solving starts by the fairly reasonable step of “defining the problem”. The authors have observed over the years a natural tendency of students, entrepreneurs, practitioners, and government officials to view problems as well-established constructs, i.e., the parking problem, the obesity problem, etc. In the rare cases when the problem-solver does acknowledge that problems are identified, framed, and defined by someone, this is accompanied by a belief that such framing process is not their responsibility. For example, designers often ascribe the role of problem framing to the marketing department, to higher management, or to the client.

Viewing problems as undesirable situations entails that they are mental and social constructs (Volkema, 1983). Hence, defining a problem means defining what makes a situation undesirable and what are its causes and consequences as viewed by the problem-solver as an individual and as a member of her sociocultural context. Such definition shapes the problem and directs problem-solving to focus on factors deemed as relevant and to ignore those viewed as ancillary. In a way, our world is in fact organized in a largely arbitrary (and heavily influenced by past realities) organization of reality into problems. The futility of such structural divisions becomes clearer when so-called “big problems” such as Climate Change are considered: whose problem are such complex and high-priority problems? But even in more concrete, tangible, and everyday situations, such as transportation or housing, it is worth questioning who owns the problem, as ownership carries the responsibility of framing the problem. Experts are habitually granted ownership based on their disciplinary or professional ascription, but there is no natural, objective, or definite way to bind a problem to an area of expertise. People who are directly and indirectly affected by these situations clearly own the problem too, and the main challenge is that in such multitude of stakeholders, each of them brings different and often incompatible needs and desires to the way a situation is characterized. Consequently, problems are shaped by a vast number of formulations of reality –an array of situations deemed as undesirable by many people, and not necessarily for the same reasons.