How we define a problem can hide better solutions.

Expertise can lock us into assumptions that once made us successful.

Real innovation starts by questioning the problem, not perfecting the same answer.

I'm sure you can relate to having the same argument again and again. You explain yourself differently, try a new approach, but somehow end up right back where you started. Maybe you've stayed in a job long after you knew it wasn't right for you, working harder instead of asking whether effort was ever the problem. It may feel like progress, but you may be working on the wrong problem.

Psychologists call this functional fixedness. Once we define a problem in a certain way, we can stop seeing that definition and begin building solutions around it without questioning the frame. The same pattern can happen in professional fields, where people spend decades chasing the same goal, such as more power, speed, or intensity, simply because it works well enough.

To learn more about this, I spoke with Shlomo Assa, a technology executive who spent more than a decade working within this mindset before recognizing that the problem itself needed to be redefined. His experience offers a firsthand look at how fixed thinking takes hold and how challenging our assumptions can open the door to better solutions.

What Familiarity Hides

Think about anything you've used the same way for years: a spare room that's stayed “the guest room” for a decade, or a budget line nobody questions. Once something becomes associated with one purpose, your mind........

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