‘If everybody is thinking alike, somebody isn’t thinking.’

GEORGE SPATTON

Pixar came up with the plots and main characters of A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo and WALL-E in a single lunch meeting.

Films that went on to gross more than £1.5 billion. Dreamt up over lunch.

And it seems unlikely that, while slurping their half-caff, low foam, extra tall, skinny lattes with hazelnut syrup they were also wrestling with an A1 printout of a process flowchart entitled ‘How to come up with great movie ideas’.

They didn’t need to. Because successfully solving problems, seizing opportunities and innovating isn’t about following a dry, dusty process. It’s about being in the ‘right frame of mind’. It’s about thinking creatively.

Which highlights why traditional problem-solving models are often so ineffectual. Because instead of changing your thinking, they just replace your thinking.

Their series of steps and impressive-sounding acronyms might create a wonderful sense of being productive. And at the time, you really feel like you’re doing something.

But afterwards, when the novelty wears off … you see that all you’re left with is the same old ideas you could have come up with in a half hour’s traditional brainstorm. You realise you’re no Pixar.

This book will change that for you.

It cuts through the acronyms and processes to reveal how to run rings around a problem. It looks at innovation, creativity, the way the brain works and the way people work in groups – and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of all those factors in problem-solving and innovation workshops.

But most of all, it gives you 12 tools. Simple, powerful, practical tools that will help you become brilliant at business problem solving and innovation – as an individual, a team and a business.

Because, as that Pixar lunch meeting showed, problem solving can be quick and powerful. It can be interesting and successful. And it doesn’t have to feel like work to still work really well.