How many times do you encounter a problem or challenging situation but get stymied in your search for a workable solution? If you are like most of us, it happens all of the time. I am one of those who are truly amazed by the true innovators among us and and during the Great Ideas Conference back in December, I posted a tweet where I pondered: “Where do great ideas really come from?” Needless to say it’s an area that I am extremely interested in because it is as much art as it is science and requires the ability to be in the moment and keeping an eye on the future.

In a recent Economist article: The accidental innovator, Evan Williams, founder of Obvious and creator of Blogger and more recently Twitter, was profiled and he shared some of his thoughts about innovation.

What I found most interesting and useful about the article was Evan’s pragmatic approach to innovation. He cites three primary insights gained during his time creating Blogger, working at Google and as he has further developed Twitter and ramped-up his work at Obvious:

1. Genuinely new ideas are stumbled upon rather than sought out.
2. New ideas are by definition hard to explain to others, because words can express only what is already known.
3. Good ideas seem obvious in retrospect.

Great thoughts and something to really consider in our everyday lives. I really appreciate his commitment to making stumbling on accidents a core competency. My key take away from the article and from Evan, himself, is his willingness to embrace mistakes and use them to his advantage. Blogger was created out of frustration with collaboration software and Twitter was created by asking the simple question: “What can we take away to make something new.”

What frustrates you or your members? What can you take away from one (or more) of your processes, programs, services, etc. to make something new and potentially more valuable? It may not be the only or best approach to innovation or problem solving but it does give you a great starting point.