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The Mindset of Problem Solving

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas 

Have you ever learned how to do something complicated over time and become good at it? This could be a sport, a business process or skill like woodworking. Many times, we say these things become “second nature,” meaning that we’re good enough so as to make what we do look easy and natural. This is common when we see athletes and performers, artisans and craftsmen or women. Almost always, we acquire new knowledge and skills as a solution to a problem. If we play a sport or a musical instrument, it’s usually answering a problem in that we have an innate need for self-improvement. We may not be a professional athlete or musician, but we can feel good about the process of improving our skills over time. In our professional lives, we all need to be life-long learners and improve our professional knowledge and skillset in order to survive and thrive in the ever volatile economy. This process of continuous learning and self-improvement in order to meet the challenges and solve problems in our personal and professional lives becomes a mindset; a mindset of problem solving. 

Successful entrepreneurs and small business owners have this mindset for problem solving. They have learned to view problems as opportunities for innovative solutions. When problems arise, they don’t throw up their hands and give up, but rather they subconsciously search through their minds, extracting bits and pieces of prior experience to go together to  solve the current problem at hand. We call it entrepreneurial mindset and we believe everyone should have it, no matter what age and no matter what walk of life; student, professional or personal. 

Most people that are good at certain tasks or processes find it difficult to explain how they think while performing those tasks or processes. If you ask them how they know to do things a certain way or how they have made certain decisions, they find it difficult to answer. We call this tacit knowledge, “the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it.” Successful entrepreneurs and small business owners have this tacit knowledge and it is, indeed, difficult for them to articulate how they think. Gary Schoeniger, founder of the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative and the revolutionary Ice House Entrepreneurship program figured out that the way to learn how they think is to listen to them tell the stories of how they got started in business and about the twisted and winding paths they’ve taken to become successful. The Ice House program is centered on video interviews of dozens of entrepreneurs from around the globe. As you listen to each one, you begin to see some common themes. These themes are organized into the eight life’s lessons of entrepreneurial thinking. The eight life’s lessons, that should be practiced by all of us, are: the power to choose, recognizing opportunities, ideas to action, pursuit of knowledge, creating wealth, building your brand, creating community, and the power of persistence. 

At Fab Lab ICC, we have discovered that adding the process of making things to the entrepreneurial mindset greatly accelerates the development of our mindset for problem solving.  

We would like to become the national leader in the combination of entrepreneurship and the Fab Lab making experience. We believe this combination is an essential ingredient in the economic re-development of our small rural communities across the United States. 

In our area, the Entrepreneurial Mindset class will start on August 23; Wednesday nights through Thanksgiving. Class is a collaborative effort by participants to further develop their mindset of problem solving by listening to video as well as live entrepreneurs while practicing their own problem solving skills. 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu.


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