Creativity break: what are some new ways of thinking about problem solving? | Khan Academy

[Music] We have the opportunity to work together with a variety of different voices, colleagues from all over the world who have different strengths that they bring, different perspectives that they bring about life and about how the world operates. Only when we bring those voices together do we have a more complete picture of how the living world works.

So, in order to really solve the problems of the future, we're going to need to work together as a global community. Problems are not solved in isolation; they're solved in collaborative groups with other people, and they're solved to be realistic. You have to consider not just your own discipline or your own science, but also some economics and ethics and other things that relate to the real world, to help you reach a real-world but sensible solution.

So, it requires combining all those different ways of thinking, being communicative, problem-solving, and working with other people, so that you can reach solutions that actually benefit the world. Because some solutions are going to be great on paper, but in practice, they aren't really practical.

So, that's why using new ways of thinking to solve problems is really important. As an example for me in my PhD project, even though my background has been in biology, the problem that really captured my interest and that I wanted to pursue involves mechanics and physics. It required learning a lot of some deep theories and ideas in physics that I wouldn't have thought of before.

Now, I kind of approach it in a way that has changed how I tackle biological problems. Now, I have this physics lens that I didn't have before, and that expands the possibilities of experiments I can think of or hypotheses that I could have for how something works.