World Economic Forum published top 10 job skills of tomorrow. In our blog series you will get a deeper dive into each one of these skills of tomorrow.

Analytical Thinking and Innovation 

You know Leonardo da Vinci, right? This multi-talent lifelong learner was great at spotting issues before they even existed or happened – Genius we say.

Nowadays there are geniuses everywhere, we call them analytical thinkers and innovators. People who look ahead, picture a product or service in its development, and make an action plan for it.  Analytical thinking is the ability to tackle complicated issues by evaluating information gathered and organized. Innovations happen more often when people are enabled to be creative. This can be achieved when people are relaxed, they communicate and feel trusted. Analytical thinkers help teams to make decisions based on collected data and identified goals, but also embrace the colleagues or team to create new ideas and develop innovative mindset.

Assisted sometimes by coincidence, brilliant ideas do come. After that we have to see if it is in fact a needed solution, and test it if it works also in practice. Analytical thinkers might be more successful in innovations because they can detect certain patterns. These patterns can be between datasets and details, this data often leads to creative solution.   

Behind the analytical thinking 

Each of us have huge potential for learning and creativity. Sometimes we need education to unlock the potential and the techniques to utilize it in our day to day lives. In order to be highly effective in this constantly changing world with all the new ICT, AI, Cyber Security requirements, managers must support resilience and skills development of their staff.

We must not forget the managers either, they need support and education as well to keep up with all the new technologies. Some bosses already know, how to break large goals or problems down into manageable, achievable steps. They help their teams manage their energy and efforts in the most productive way. 

Growing to analytical thinker 

Critical thinker looks for the simplest ways how to break down a problem and finds a solution. Analytical thinker knows when it is time to stop analyzing and act.  “Doing” helps improve the learning process – and understanding the challenge at hand. Adopting experimental development toolset is crucial as well. The ability to examine information or a situation in detail is important.

Lean thinking and its principles offer great practices for these, without forgetting about the end user. Service Design methods are useful to gain the necessary insights that will enable you to make more effective decisions about the problems you are facing. Root cause analysis helps ensure you have identified the actual problem, so you can focus on the real issue, instead of the symptoms. Once all relevant information has been collected successfully, it’s important to organize all the pieces in a way that will provide you with insights and ideas that can be used to draw appropriate conclusions.

This will lay the foundation for potential solutions to the problems you are working to solve. After all of this, it is time to use entrepreneurial skills and act like Leonardo da Vinci.

Here at MIF Academy we have perfect product – InnoCamp – to improve your analytical thinking and innovation skills.

– Katja Väyrynen

https://mifacademy.com/services/innovation-skills-development-camp-innocamp/