4 Strategies to Become a More Innovative Thinker

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, FAAN,

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

One of our younger graduate students recently developed a simple, elegant and low cost solution to a patient safety issue that had plagued her organization. The senior nurse leaders she worked with were quite impressed with her innovative thinking. There are many problems in healthcare today that could benefit from the application of fresh insight and innovative solutions. Imaginative thinking is very important. Fortunately, there is research to suggest that there are strategies that we can use to become more innovative in our thinking.

Jonah Lehrer recently published a bestselling book Imagine: How Creativity Works. In the book, he gives examples to demonstrate how we can all learn to be more creative. Creativity is not a gift possessed by a lucky few, he suggests but rather a variety of distinct thought processes that can be learned. Some key strategies presented in the book that have important applicability to nurse leaders include the following:

1. Adopt an Outsider’s Perspective

Lehrer observes that moments of insight are a very-well studied psychological phenomenon with two defining features. The answer to a complex question often comes out of the blue – when we least expect it. When the answer arrives, we know with certainity that this is the answer that we have been looking for. It feels like a revelation. Those challenges that at first blush seem impossible are typically solved (if they are solved at all) in a moment of insight. Adopting an outsider’s perspective on the problem can help you to become more open-minded. Travel can help us to become more innovative thinkers because we have an opportunity to observe how things are done in different cultures. Studies have demonstrated that by increasing the physical distance between yourself and the problem, more creative solutions can be generated.

2. Relax and Daydream

Forcing insight can actually prevent insight. Lehrer’s research contends that many major breakthroughs happen in the unlikeliest of places, whether it’s Archimedes in the bathtub or on a ping pong table at Google. Einstein once declared, “Creativity is the residue of time wasted.” Scientists have determined that people in a relaxed state and a good mood are far more likely to develop innovative or creative thoughts. Interestingly, the color blue has been shown to enhance innovative thinking.

3. Look for Connections

Steve Jobs of Apple once famously declared that “creativity is just connecting things.” He pointed out that most of the innovations developed by Apple were in fact combinations of things that already existed. The company had just made them better. A good example of this is a story that presented in an earlier blog about G. Sue Kinnick. She is the reason that the Bar Code Medication Administration was developed in the 1990s. Working as a Registered Nurse at the Topeka, Kansas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, she was concerned about medication errors. In 1992 while visiting Seattle, Washington, she watched an attendant at a rental car check-in center scan a bar code on the vehicle she was returning. It occurred to her that a similar system at the bedside could improve patient safety by reducing medication errors. She had this creative insight by making the connection between two seeming unrelated things.

4. Give Problems to Interdisciplinary Teams

Many of the most innovative companies encourage their employees to develop diverse networks, interacting with colleagues in totally unrelated fields. The benefit of working on interdisciplinary teams across fields is that it encourages what Lehrer describes as conceptual blending. New solutions to old problems can occur through a process known as mental restructuring of ideas. Lehrer points out that because the brain tends to file ideas into categories about how they will be used, expertise can actually sometimes inhibit mental restructuring, making it harder to achieve innovative ideas. Problems can often be solved after someone asks a completely new kind of question. He suggests that it is why it’s important not just to bring new ideas back to your own field, but to actually try to solve problems in other fields—where your status as an outsider, and ability to ask naive questions, can be a tremendous advantage.

All of us have the ability to strengthen our creative thinking. It is often our youngest and newest members of the profession who have wonderful innovative ideas to share. It is because they have the ability to attack problems as a beginner, to let go of all preconceptions and fear of failure. That is the key to creativity and one that we need to nurture.

Read to Lead

Lehrer, J. (2012). Imagine: How Creativity Works. New York: Harcourt Publishers.