Preparation involves investigating a chosen field of interest, opening your mind, and becoming immersed in materials, mindset, and meaning. If you have ever tried to produce something creative without first absorbing relevant information and observing skilled practitioners at work, then you understand how difficult it is. This base of knowledge and experience mixed with an ability to integrate new thoughts and practices can help you sift through the ideas quicker. However, relying too heavily on prior knowledge can restrict the creative process. When you immerse yourself in a creative practice, you make use of the products or the materials of others’ creativity. For example, a video-game designer plays different types of video games on different consoles, computers, and online in networks. They may play alone, with friends in collaboration, or in competition. Consuming the products in a field gives you a sense of what is possible and indicates boundaries that you may attempt to push with your own creative work. Preparation broadens your mind and lets you study the products, practice, and culture in a field. It is also a time for goal setting. Whether your chosen field is directly related to art and design, such as publishing, or involves human-centric design, which includes all sorts of software and product design efforts, you need a period of open-minded reception to ideas. Repetitive practice is also part of the preparation stage, so that you can understand the current field of production and become aware of best practices, whether or not you are currently capable of matching them. During the preparation stage, you can begin to see how other creative people put meaning into their products, and you can establish benchmarks against which to measure your own creative work.

Incubation

Incubation refers to giving yourself, and your subconscious mind in particular, time to incorporate what you learned and practiced in the preparation stage. Incubation involves the absence of practice. It may look to an outsider as though you are at rest, but your mind is at work. A change of environment is key to incubating ideas. A new environment allows you to receive stimuli other than those directly associated with the creative problem you are working on. It could be as simple as taking a walk or going to a new coffee shop to allow your mind to wander and take in the information you gathered in the previous stage. Mozart stated, “When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer—say, traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.” Incubation allows your mind to integrate your creative problem with your stored memories and with other thoughts or emotions you might have. This simply is not possible to do when you are consciously fixated on the creative problem and related tasks and practice.

Incubation can take a short or a long time, and you can perform other activities while allowing this process to take place. One theory about incubation is that it takes language out of the thought process. If you are not working to apply words to your creative problems and interests, you can free your mind to make associations that go deeper, so to speak, than language. Patiently waiting for incubation to work is quite difficult. Many creative and innovative people develop hobbies involving physical activity to keep their minds busy while they allow ideas to incubate.

Insight

Insight or “illumination” is a term for the “aha!” moment—when the solution to a creative problem suddenly becomes readily accessible to your conscious mind. The “aha!” moment has been observed in literature, in history, and in cognitive studies of creativity. Insights may come all at once or in increments. They are not easily understood because, by their very nature, they are difficult to isolate in research and experimental settings. For the creative entrepreneur, however, insights are a delight. An insight is the fleeting time when your preparation, practice, and period of incubation coalesce into a stroke of genius. Whether the illumination is the solution to a seemingly impossible problem or the creation of a particularly clever melody or turn of phrase, creative people often consider it a highlight in their lives. For an entrepreneur, an insight holds the promise of success and the potential to help massive numbers of people overcome a pain point or problem. Not every insight will have a global impact, but coming up with a solution that your subconscious mind has been working on for some time is a real joy.

Evaluation

Evaluation is the purposeful examination of ideas. You will want to compare your insights with the products and ideas you encountered during preparation. You also will want to compare your ideas and product prototypes to the goals you set out for yourself during the preparation phase. Creative professionals will often invite others to critique their work at this stage. Because evaluation is specific to the expectations, best practices, and existing product leaders in each field, evaluation can take on many forms. You are looking for assurance that your standards for evaluation are appropriate. Judge yourself fairly, even as you apply strict criteria and the well-developed sense of taste you acquired during the preparation phase. For example, you might choose to interview a few customers in your target demographics for your product or service. The primary objective is to understand the customer perspective and the extent to which your idea aligns with their position.

Elaboration

The last stage in the creative process is elaboration, that is, actual production. Elaboration can involve the release of a minimum viable product (MVP). This version of your invention may not be polished or complete, but it should function well enough that you can begin to market it while still elaborating on it in an iterative development process. Elaboration also can involve the development and launch of a prototype, the release of a software beta, or the production of some piece of artistic work for sale. Many consumer-product companies, such as Johnson & Johnson or Procter & Gamble, will establish a small test market to garner feedback and evaluations of new products from actual customers. These insights can give the company valuable information that can help make the product or service as successful as possible.

At this stage what matters most in the entrepreneurial creative process is that the work becomes available to the public so that they have a chance to adopt it.

Creative Problem Solving

Innovative entrepreneurs are essentially problem solvers, but this level of innovation—identifying a pain point and working to overcome it—is only one in a series of innovative steps. In the influential business publication Forbes, the entrepreneur Larry Myler notes that problem solving is inherently reactive. That is, you have to wait for a problem to happen in order to recognize the need to solve the problem. Solving problems is an important part of the practice of innovation, but to elevate the practice and the field, innovators should anticipate problems and strive to prevent them. In many cases, they create systems for continuous improvement, which Myler notes may involve “breaking” previous systems that seem to function perfectly well. Striving for continuous improvement helps innovators stay ahead of market changes. Thus, they have products ready for emerging markets, rather than developing projects that chase change, which can occur constantly in some tech-driven fields. One issue with building a system for constant improvement is that you are in essence creating problems in order to solve them, which goes against established culture in many firms. Innovators look for organizations that can handle purposeful innovation, or they attempt to start them. Some innovators even have the goal of innovating far ahead into the future, beyond current capacities. In order to do this, Myler suggests bringing people of disparate experiential backgrounds with different expertise together. These relationships are not guarantees of successful innovation, but such groups can generate ideas independent of institutional inertia. Thus, innovators are problem solvers but also can work with forms of problem creation and problem imagination. They tackle problems that have yet to exist in order to solve them ahead of time.

Types of Problem Solvers

Entrepreneurs have an insatiable appetite for problem solving. This drive motivates them to find a resolution when a gap in a product or service occurs. They recognize opportunities and take advantage of them. There are several types of entrepreneurial problem solvers, including self-regulators, theorists, and petitioners.

Self-Regulating Problem Solvers

Self-regulating problem solvers are autonomous and work on their own without external influence. They have the ability to see a problem, visualize a possible solution to the problem, and seek to devise a solution, as the figure below illustrates. The solution may be a risk, but a self-regulating problem solver will recognize, evaluate, and mitigate the risk. For example, an entrepreneur has programmed a computerized process for a client, but in testing it, finds the program continually falls into a loop, meaning it gets stuck in a cycle and doesn’t progress. Rather than wait for the client to find the problem, the entrepreneur searches the code for the error causing the loop, immediately edits it, and delivers the corrected program to the customer. There is immediate analysis, immediate correction, and immediate implementation. The self-regulating problem solvers’ biggest competitive advantage is the speed with which they recognize and provide solutions to problems.

 

Theorist Problem Solvers

Theorist problem solvers see a problem and begin to consider a path toward solving the problem using a theory. Theorist problem solvers are process oriented and systematic. While managers may start with a problem and focus on an outcome with little consideration of a means to an end, entrepreneurs may see a problem and begin to build a path with what is known, a theory, toward an outcome. That is, the entrepreneur proceeds through the steps to solve the problem and then builds on the successes, rejects the failures, and works toward the outcome by experimenting and building on known results. At this point, the problem solver may not know the outcome, but a solution will arise as experiments toward a solution occur. The figure below shows this process.

For example, if we consider Marie Curie as an entrepreneur, Curie worked toward the isolation of an element. As different approaches to isolating the element failed, Curie recorded the failures and attempted other possible solutions. Curie’s failed theories eventually revealed the outcome for the isolation of radium. Like Curie, theorists use considered analysis, considered corrective action, and a considered implementation process. When time is of the essence, entrepreneurs should understand continual experimentation slows the problem-solving process.

Petitioner Problem Solvers

Petitioner problem solvers (see figure below) see a problem and ask others for solution ideas. This entrepreneur likes to consult a person who has “been there and done that.” The petitioner might also prefer to solve the problem in a team environment. Petitioning the entrepreneurial team for input ensures that the entrepreneur is on a consensus-driven path. This type of problem solving takes the longest to complete because the entrepreneur must engage in a democratic process that allows all members on the team to have input. The process involves exploration of alternatives for the ultimate solution. In organizational decision-making, for example, comprehensiveness is a measure of the extent a firm attempts to be inclusive or exhaustive in its decision-making. Comprehensiveness can be gauged by the number of scheduled meetings, the process by which information is sought, the process by which input is obtained from external sources, the number of employees involved, the use of specialized consultants and the functional expertise of the people involved, the years of historical data review, and the assignment of primary responsibility, among other factors. Comprehensive decision-making would be an example of a petitioner problem-solving style, as it seeks input from a vast number of team members.

 

In summary, there is no right or wrong style of problem solving; each problem solver must rely on the instincts that best drive innovation. Further, they must remember that not all problem-solving methods work in every situation. They must be willing to adapt their own preference to the situation to maximize efficiency and ensure they find an effective solution. Attempting to force a problem-solving style may prevent an organization from finding the best solution. While general entrepreneurial problem-solving skills such as critical thinking, decisiveness, communication, and the ability to analyze data will likely be used on a regular basis in your life and entrepreneurial journey, other problem-solving skills and the approach you take will depend on the problem as it arises.

Design Thinking

David Kelley, founder of Stanford University’s Design School and cofounder of design company IDEO, is credited as the originator of design thinking, at least within business and entrepreneurial contexts. IDEO grew from a merger of the creator of Apple’s first mouse and the first laptop computer designer, David Kelley Design and ID Two, respectively. Almost a decade after the 1982 Apple creations, the 1991-merged company primarily focused on the traditional design of products, ranging from toothbrushes to chairs. Yet another decade later, the company found itself designing consumer experiences more so than consumer products. Kelley began using the word “thinking” to describe the design process involved in creating customer experiences rather than creating physical products. The term design thinking was born. Design thinking is a method to focus the design and development decisions of a product on the needs of the customer, typically involving an empathy-driven process to define complex problems and create solutions that address those problems.

A common core of design thinking is its application beyond the design studio, as the methods and tools have been articulated for use by those outside of the field, particularly business managers. Design practice is now being applied beyond product and graphic areas to the design of digital interactions, services, business strategy, and social policy.

Human-Centered Design Thinking

One design thinking approach that is taught at places like Stanford’s Design School and organizations like the LUMA Institute (a global company that teaches people how to be innovative) is human-centered design (HCD). HCD, as the name suggests, focuses on people during design and development. Inspiration for ideas comes from exploration of actual people, their needs and problems. HCD emphasizes the following spaces of the design thinking process:

 

• Empathizing: As illustrated by the human-centered approach, it is important to have empathy for the problem you are attempting to solve.
• Defining: This aspect involves describing the core problem(s) that you and your team have identified. Asking “how might we?” questions helps narrow the focus, as the ultimate aim here is to identify a problem statement that illustrates the problem you want to tackle.
• Ideating: This is where you begin to come up with ideas that address the problem “space” you have defined.
• Prototyping: In this space, the entrepreneur creates and tests inexpensive, scaled-down versions of a product with features or benefits that serve as solutions for previously identified problems. This could be tested internally among employees or externally with potential customers. This is an experimental phase.
• Testing: Designers apply rigorous tests of the complete product using the best solutions identified in the prototyping space.

Creativity and design thinking are essential tools for entrepreneurs navigating uncertainty and solving real problems. By focusing on empathy, experimentation, and iteration, design thinking helps transform ideas into practical, user-centered solutions. Creativity isn’t just inspiration—it’s a skill that can be developed. When applied intentionally, these approaches help entrepreneurs build innovative, adaptable, and impactful ventures.