When the great composer and conductor Mahler was undertaking a concert tour of Finland he met Jean Sibelius, another great symphonist of the late 19^th and early twentieth centuries.

They went for a walk and shared their views about what constituted an ideal symphony. Sibelius thought that the symphony should be a tight enclosed form, where the music emerged and evolved from a small, exclusive group of initial ideas. Mahler thought differently. He thought that ‘the symphony was the world’ and that consequently it needed to be an expansive form that sort to embrace everything and anything.

These two attitudes to the symphony spring from two different ways of thinking, both of which are essential for effective creative problem solving.

When looking for innovative solutions we must first allow ourselves to search freely across the entire landscape that surrounds our problem, seeking out anything that may have an impact upon it or offer some small or unexpected insight. As we do this we must be careful not to judge the usefulness of what we find, but instead enjoy the act of curiosity and our ability to be intrigued and stimulated by our discoveries.

Next, we must test the solutions that gradually emerge from our enclosed system of ideas. If they deal with the problem effectively we will have succeeded in our endeavours, but if not we may need to start thinking even more widely than before, allowing ourselves to become intrigued by the distant recesses of the still unexplored landscape within which our problem exists.

Until once again it is time for us to focus upon a few new key elements, using them as the foundations upon which to build and develop our thinking.

And so on and so on, until we gain the solutions we need.

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