Their mission is to facilitate collaborative tasks such as problem solving, exception handling, consensus building, and innovative brainstorming, tasks that cannot be pre-programmed into structured processes or workflows.

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Mr Clarkson said he was currently teaching pupils skills, such as problem-solving, that would prepare them for everyday life.

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This comes in many forms, such as problem-solving creativity, special knowledge and skills, work experience, and willingness to risk investment capital for promising new enterprises.

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Flynn asked them to rate themselves and their co-workers on the frequency they performed common office favors, such as helping with problem solving, providing a second opinion or sharing an especially heavy workload.

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In creating a new service, startups need to focus on fundamentals such as solving a problem or addressing a need in a new or different way.

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And it has given rise to detailed pedagogical doctrines, such as the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process, which is frequently employed by business consultants.

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For example, school programs that reward students with money, prizes, or privileges for academic accomplishments or effort are more effective if they reward students for mastering a certain skill, such as reading a book or solving a problem.

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Superior mental faculties, such as language and the ability to engage in abstract problem solving, are the sort of explanations that are currently all the rage.

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Then, the best technocrats, who could move easily between public and private sector, applying the same top-down problem-solving skills to both, were people such as Robert McNamara, recruited as defence secretary by John F.

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Mitchell envisages stacks of cars at various points around the city, such as outside subway or bus stations, solving what he calls the "last mile" problem of getting home from a central hub.

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