If you are interested in innovation you probably already know you need to solve an important problem to develop a new opportunity. Despite the fact that there are lots of the problems out there in the world, it is surprisingly difficult to find good problems to work on. Why? Very few people actually know what a problem is, or how to clearly define the problem so it can be worked on.
A problem is a situation that we want to improve, but something is getting in the way.
It’s important to realize that this definition has two parts, because a problem always has two parts:
First, there’s a desired future state—how we wish things could be.
Second, there’s our current, less desirable situation, held back by whatever is standing in the way.
Let’s call the desired future situation our goal, and the thing getting in the way a barrier.
We could use lots of other words, but for simplicity, we’ll stick with these two when we talk about problems.
Most of the time, when people talk about problems, they fail to see both parts.
Or they only describe one part and assume the other is obvious.
For example, someone might say,
“I don’t have enough money,” or “I don’t have enough time.”
That sounds like a problem—but it’s not complete.
If you had more money, what would you do? What better situation—what goal—would you achieve?
You might say, “I’d travel more.”
Well, maybe you can travel more, even with your current amount of money and time.
Ah, but then you say, “I want to fly business class and stay in luxury hotels.”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
The goal is more specific, and we can see how the lack of money or time is acting as a barrier.
If we’re going to solve any problem, we need to:
Clearly understand the goal.
Clearly understand the barrier.
Make sure the barrier is actually preventing the goal.
If we can’t do these three things, the problem isn’t defined clearly enough to work on yet.
That’s okay.
Goals without barriers are dreams.
And dreaming is fun.
Barriers without goals are complaints.
And complaining is also fun—maybe even more fun than dreaming.
Whenever I explain this defintion of a problem to somebody it never sits right. A problem has connotations of seriousness. How can it just be my current situation compared to a desired future situation? Then I get a question like, "What problem does Facebook solve?" [Choose the app of your choice.]
Does Facebook, or the app of your choice really solve a problem? What does Facebook do? A simple answer: it allows us to communicate with friends and family. We can send messages and pictures, and we can comment and react. We can do lots of other things, too, but this is enough for our example.
Email does all of those things. Indeed, so does old-fashioned snail mail. So does driving over and seeing those friends and family, sitting with them, talking with them directly and showing them the pictures that you took on your phone, or your Polaroid camera. Is Facebook the same as those? Is it better? Sometimes. Are those other options better? Also sometimes, at least for some people, some of the time. I decide to share something on Facebook, because that solves a problem better than other options. Maybe it overcomes a barrier: I can send the same message and pictures to lots of people at one time. Maybe it raises the goal to a higher level: I can share thoughts and pictures immediately.
Of course, there are situations when other options are better--i.e. solve the problem better: meeting face-to-face, chatting together, sharing pictures and laughing and crying together. Facebook is not as good at that.
What do we take away from this? To understand a problem well:
We need to understand the goal in specific terms. Details matter. A desire to meet face-to-face is a different goal than the goal to send out a message and pictures to 100 people in our LINE group.
We need to understand the situation that creates the barrier in specific terms. Details matter. Needing to travel to meet somebody in person is a hassle we often find worth taking.
When we realize that we need to understand the goal, need to understand the barrier, need to make sure the barrier and goal are clearly linked, and need to understand the specific situaiton in detail it opens up many more opportunities for innovation.
We can work to raise the goal higher. When email came out, it seemed to solve all necessary communication needs. Yet, later, other tools like chat, and Facebook made email seem bloated and slow--for many situations, least. (Looking backwards in time, I remember a long time ago during a summer job in college when the boss was talking about how great the new fax machine was: we can send somebody else a document in seconds.)
We can work to lower or remove the barrier.