What’s the solution to your building having a mailroom which may be targeted by someone sending a suspicious powder? An article in November’s Fast Company describes the way Visa has solved the problem: the mail goes into a modular building near to their office. If a suspicious powder, ‘the mail room can just be airlifted away’.

That wasn’t the solution I’d have come up with, but it is genius. I admire anyone who is that creative. An engineer I once worked with told me the trick to thinking of ideas like this is to stay in the ‘problem space’ for longer. We tend to jump straight to the ’solution space’, rather than really considering the problem.

But jumping there quickly, he told me, means you don’t consider the more outrageous (and genius) solutions. Really fleshing out the problem – for example, that we don’t want the suspicious powder to have any more contact than absolutely necessary – allows you to find the more creative solutions.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/visa-secret-security-center