Hey startups, quit thinking outside the box and start exploring everyday innovation

“Think outside the box” is some of the worst advice I hear concerning innovation. Originating with 1970s management consultants, it offers the comfort of a familiar line, but it carries little actual meaning. It’s the equivalent of an overburdened teacher writing “Try harder” on a grade schooler’s report card. The advice is stale, overused, and provides no actual guidance.

Stop trying to innovate, and start solving problems

The lure of creating a new product or service that people don’t even know they want is enticing, but too many aspiring entrepreneurs waste time trying to change how we live. It’s much more profitable to focus on improving the mundane, just as Google did when it rolled out its conversational search, allowing users to perform search queries by asking questions and building upon past searches.

Another great example is Nick Woodman, founder of GoPro. While on hiatus in Australia, Woodman was trying to capture his surfing on film, so he attached a 35mm camera to the palm of his hand with a rubber band. He also noticed amateur photographers struggling to get close to the action; these observations inspired him to found a company that makes the high-quality mountable cameras base jumpers and mountain bikers use today.

Sara Blakely’s story is a similar journey that started with a mundane observation. In Florida’s stifling heat and humidity, Blakely wanted the support of pantyhose but without seamed toes. When she couldn’t find any, she developed her own product. She incorporated her company under the name Spanx, which is now worth over a billion dollars.

None of these ideas is particularly groundbreaking, but they’re solutions to common problems. The trick to finding these opportunities is by delving deeper into the world around you and paying attention.

The art of observation

It’s easy to sit on a bench in Central Park and people watch, but successful observation is an art form. Here are some techniques to help you detect little problems in everyday life that can be turned into profitable solutions:

Become a fly on the wall

Unobtrusively watching people can yield interesting insights. If you’re observing in public, give yourself a task that fits with your surroundings so you blend in. If you’re conducting observations in someone’s home or workspace, engage directly as little as possible. Your subjects will know you’re there, but minimize your external impact on them to see their natural behavior. You want data that’s as unfiltered as possible.

Conduct in-situation interviews

Go where the person — or group of people — is experiencing the challenge you hope to help with and ask direct questions. This technique offers less behavioral observation, but it provides the opportunity to direct the exploration of the user experience. Warm people up with questions they know the answers to, then dig deeper into desires regarding the challenge you’ve identified.

Design empathetic experiences

Adopting the point of view of your target audience can help you see things more clearly. This technique is especially good for innovating services or experience design. One hotel chain spent a large sum of money trying to improve the check-in experience for its guests, only to discover that the “moment of truth” didn’t occur at check-in — it was actually the moment the guest opened the door to the room.

Look for adaptations

People naturally develop coping mechanisms for repeat problems. Pay attention to makeshift devices and modified behavior. How are individuals adapting to environments they can’t change? People are often clever in resolving gaps or inefficiencies in processes. They don’t jump to making a prototype and marketing it, but they do demonstrate the need for real solutions.

Stick to your senses

The biggest hurdle you have to overcome in observation is your own bias. We are not inherently objective creatures. We create a story about what we observe that “fits” with our own model of the world, filling in holes when needed and rejecting things that don’t line up.

It’s our constructions of reality that shape behavior, not objective input. This leads to perceptional distortion, which means we can miss observing something right in front of us.

While you can never fully escape your personal bias, you can certainly make an effort to process what you observe objectively. The best method for this is to take a lesson from Eastern philosophy and practice mindfulness with your five senses.

Focus on your awareness of the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting your thoughts. This helps you put judgments and assumptions on hold and focus on the sensory experience, allowing you to better understand your subjects.

Searching for problems to solve in everyday life may not sound as exciting as escaping “the box,” but it’s not getting outside the box that spawns the greatest innovation — it’s diving deeper inside, with your gears turning and your eyes wide open.