Compilation of Heuristics for Inventive Problem Solving

Heuristics are widely accepted and used as tools for inventive problem solving. A problem when using heuristics is that their number is relatively high (469 heuristics were found in this research) and keeps increasing. This amount of heuristics makes it necessary for problem solvers to spend a significant amount of time in understanding them, finding the most applicable ones to their specific situation and using them. This article presents a first step towards decreasing this complexity. We synthesized the available inventive problem solving heuristics in a single list. The development of this list involved the identification of the inventive problem solving heuristics in literature, followed by analysis and comparison, resulting in a final list of 263 heuristics. The authors hope that this list can save problem solvers’ time and become a basis for a future, essential set of inventive problem solving heuristics.