The nature of problems in innovative work is that they are often ill defined, novel to the individual who engaged them, and complex in that often several solutions exist to the same problem. In this post we will see how expertise is an important factor in innovative problem solving, and how leaders and organizations can cultivate R&D team expertise.

One of the strongest characteristics of creative people is that they spend considerable time and effort into developing their expertise. For instance, Heinzen, Mills and Cameron (1993) found that early intense curiosity about a subject was one of the strongest predictors for becoming a successful scientist. Other scholars have found that extensive practice and involvement in the work at hand predicts creative achievement (Sternberg, 1999). These findings are not very counterintuitive, since creativity in its most basic sense is the combination of two or more elements of information. The more knowledge a person has, the better the chances are for novel and useful ideas and solutions.

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