We're all innovators now—how to think like one

As everyone struggles to adapt to this new reality, one thing is clear: no matter your role, you're being asked, and expected to, think differently—to innovate, which is also called design thinking. The approaches and methods don't come naturally to everyone, and an industry has developed around innovation consulting. So here are some resources with methods, tools, and advice on how to increase your expertise as an innovator—how to quickly explore problems or "new opportunities" and develop solutions.

There are many free tools out there—here are a few

• IDEO Design Kit - includes methods and exercises to pivot your thinking
• Design Gym's Design Thinking Mindsets & Skillsets - tools for the five phases of design thinking, available to download for a small donation
• Stanford's d.school Bootcamp Bootleg - a PDF toolkit to support design thinking
• Open Innovation Toolkit - Mozilla's community-sourced best practices and principles for design thinking

What you'll see is that these toolkits offer variations of the "open, explore, close" approach to addressing challenges. It's not easy, so if you need help, you can always hire outside consultants to help you facilitate the process.