In previous evolutions weve thought a lot about problems that you encounter in your life. Thanks to your work thus far, you have at least three problems to potentially pursue. These problems are both important to you and interesting for you to tackle.

Its time now to turn to the innovator who will ultimately be solving one of these problems YOU!

This evolution is an introspective one. Your goal is to take stock of your skills and consider how they enable you as a problem solver. This exercise is important because, if you recall from Eric von Hippels segment in a prior module, innovation involves a cost-benefit analysis. If you expect to gain a high benefit from your innovation and if your cost of innovation is low, youre likelier to innovate. A good way to keep your innovation cost low is to utilize the skills that you already have, so thats what we should examine in this exercise.

We ask you to do the following:

A. Conduct an assessment of the skills that you have. Start the process with broad questions, such as: What do I like to do? What are my hobbies? What education do I have? What professional skills and experiences have I developed so far? What am I good at? What expert knowledge do I possess? What special insights do I have thanks to my unique life experience? Remember, skills are not just professional capabilities. Software development is a skill, but so is playing soccer, making origami, solving sudoku puzzles, baking doughnuts, and so on. We hope you dont look at your hobbies as pleasant, but unimportant activities that ultimately dont build valuable skills. They often do. Louis Plantes music hobby, if you recall, played a crucial role in his solution to cystic fibrosis, the Frequencer. Or recall from Frank Nasworthys innovation, urethane wheels for skateboards also began as a hobby.

Spend some time thinking about relevant skills that you currently dont have, but can acquire at a low cost by not investing a lot of resources (e.g. money, time), based on skills that you already have. These are your adjacent, aspirational skills. For example, if you already know C, its probably easier for you to learn Java than it would be if you were starting programming from scratch. If you use Final Cut Pro, youll probably pick up Adobe Premier without much trouble. Another example of that is Imi Lichtenfeld, whose knowledge of wrestling and boxing likely built on each other.

This part of the evolution is important because you wont always have all the skills you need. Constant learning is an inseparable companion to innovation and its fun too!

B. Choose 1 problem from your pre-existing list of 3 that you feel is best suited for your skills. For example, if you have a software problem on the list and youre a software engineer, you may have a good fit. Or if you have a sports equipment problem and you happen to play that sport and be a mechanical engineer, or youre just an all-around equipment tinkerer, thats great.

C. Of course, its not always straightforward connecting your problem to your skills. But do try and explore how you could solve your problem by utilizing the skills that you have. Essentially, frame your problem to fit the skills that you have. If youre a filmmaker for example, can you find a way to see your problem as a filmmaking problem? (In fact, on our team, we do see education as partly a filmmaking problem.) If youre a software developer, can your problem be expressed as a software problem?

Challenge yourself by first limiting yourself to the skills that you already have. Of course, youll learn new things as you go. But itll be easier for you to innovate if you could get started right away.

Conceptualize your solution. Dont worry this isnt the exercise to solve the entire problem just yet! At this moment, you just want to develop a concept of your solution with an understanding of how that solution will be enabled by your skills.

Enjoy the introspection. Youre likely to unearth skills that you havent thought about before and dont we all like good surprises!

If you find it difficult to choose 1 problem from the 3 that you have, dont overthink it. Just pick one that feels right and go with it. Who knows, it just might work, or youll simply come back to other problems on your list later. Experimentation is a big, and enjoyable, part of innovation.

Last but not least, we hope that this evolution will not only help you with this particular problem, but will also give you broader self-awareness and confidence. It will make us very happy if that happens. So keep us posted on that!