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In surveys of 106 C-suite executives representing 91 private- and public-sector companies from 17 countries, the author found that a full 85% agreed that their organizations were bad at problem diagnosis, and 87% agreed that this flaw carried significant costs. Fewer than one in 10 said they were unaffected by the issue. What they struggle with, it turns out, is not solving problems but figuring out what the problems are. And creative solutions nearly always come from an alternative explanation for--or a reframing of--your problem. The point of reframing is not to find the "real" problem but, rather, to see if there is a better problem to solve. The author outlines seven practices for effective reframing: (1) Establish legitimacy. (2) Bring outsiders into the discussion. (3) Get people's definitions in writing. (4) Ask what's missing. (5) Consider multiple categories. (6) Analyze positive exceptions. (7) Question the objective.

You have an idea for an innovative project that could have a significant impact on your business. But you also suspect that your idea will meet internal resistance: If realized, it would upend the status quo, and if you were to send it through the regular process for creating new projects, other parts of the organization would probably try to kill it along the way. So what's your next step? The conventional answer is to get a mandate from the top. This strategy, however, carries its own set of risks. In most large firms, CEOs are constantly barraged with ideas for new projects, and most often, they give the pitches a five-minute perusal followed by a "no." And even if you do get the support from the top, the corporate spotlight can be a dangerous place for young, unproven ideas. In this article, authors Paddy Miller and Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg propose a different way to get your idea off the starting block: stealth innovation. They describe how to nurture your idea under the radar, which involves facing four key challenges: finding allies who can support you on the sly; building a proof of concept; accessing funds on the quiet; and developing a good cover story to deflect unwanted early attention from your idea.