ABSTRACT
Researchers have looked at people facing creativity challenges in a variety of different settings and the same picture emerges. Sometimes the problem can be like a toothache, nagging away in the background but not drawing our full attention. Reframing is a powerful tool in creativity; put simply, if we are blocked in finding a solution to an apparent problem, try looking at it in a different way. The dreadful Indian Ocean tsunami disaster in 2004 was a tipping point in thinking about food aid; the many experiments towards a cash-based solution had matured, and there was an urgent need to provide relief to victims. By the time of the Haiti earthquake in 2010, this pattern had matured; dealing with this disaster was characterized by a very high level of cash-based interventions. Abstracting problems to their essence is the basis of several powerful tools to enhance creativity.
