How Frame Creation can inspire innovation

I attended my first FWD50 conference—a valuable opportunity to connect with public sector innovators, technologists, and changemakers exploring government innovation and how we can use technology to make society better for all. While it was inspiring to meet others committed to change, it was sobering to hear we're grappling with the same longstanding constraints: structural and cultural hurdles, silo mentality, and strong resistance to new ways of working.

As a Service Designer, I often discuss understanding the context and constraints we’re working within. Rather than viewing constraints as annoyances, they can inspire innovation. As American designer and architect Charles Eames stated:

While FWD50 offered glimpses of hope—re-evaluating processes for delivering value, unlocking organizational change on tight budgets, and collaboratively advancing a more open, human-centred future for public innovation and AI—these changes take time, especially when addressing organizational culture.

The trap of reactive problem-solving

As fellow attendee Roger Oldham noted on LinkedIn: “Technology is racing ahead, but public services still lag because too many leaders are optimizing for a world that no longer exists—they lack the situational awareness to adapt.” Speaker Lena Trudeau stated: “Courage in government isn’t saying yes to innovation, it’s saying no to the familiar.”

It’s not just leaders who fall into the trap of reactive problem-solving—we all do. Our reactive problem-solving relies on “mental set,” the cognitive shortcut of using only past solutions. This shortcut causes inflexibility and inhibits creativity under stress, leading to familiar, tired remedies (more training, automation) that fail to address core problems or explore novel ways to work creatively within constraints.

Frame Creation: A method for discovering new approaches

Knowing our problem-solving patterns can blind us to new approaches, I’ve found Frame Creation and Exploration invaluable for discovering new angles on complex “wicked problems.” Derived from Kees Dorst’s work on Frame Innovation, this method explores paradoxes through reframing.

A frame is a viewpoint that provides a different perspective on a situation—it’s less about generating “solutions” and more about discovering new “approaches” to the problem itself. As Dorst notes, when organizations apply old problem-solving methods to new problems, they accomplish only temporary fixes or superficial tinkering. 

Frame creation is one step out of a nine-step process that Dorst outlines in his book. In our practice we’ve successfully utilized Frame Creation and Exploration on its own, but I encourage you to check out the full process detailed in his book.

The Frame Creation process

Step 1: Archaeology

Investigate the apparent problem and earlier attempts to solve it. A problem has its roots in a specific context, so ask:

• What has been tried before, and how successful were these efforts?
• What drives the organizational behavior of leaders?

Step 2: Identify paradoxes

In complex problems, opposing forces confound solution attempts. Ask:

• What makes this problem so hard to solve?
• What are the opposing forces?
• Is there a core paradox keeping us from moving forward?

Step 3: Generate frames

At FWD50, several themes emerged regarding constraints, such as limitations in resources and budgets, structural and cultural inertia, resistance to change, the speed and pace of innovation, capability building, and the role of leadership. While leadership is crucial in championing and modeling new, proactive ways of working, we do not have to remain passive while waiting for changes in leadership. Instead, we can take action by reframing the problem at hand.

How to reframe

If we successfully change the way we or others perceive a situation, our understanding of the problem can be radically transformed. To do this:

1. Choose a theme. Identify a key theme such as capability building, agility, or cultural inertia.
2. Identify possible frames to explore. Think about associated metaphors or analogies. Ask: Is there another context or situation that embodies the attributes of this theme? 
3. Try out the frame(s) using this structure:

For example, when considering resistance to new ways of working and leaders’ drive to meet mandates: 

If the problem situation of leaders being resistant to new ways of working is approached as if it is a problem of agility then the situation should be approached as if it were a group of musicians coming together for the first time to play improvised jazz.

After framing, identify attributes you associate with the frame and ask: What similar elements (people, processes, places, rules, etc.) are present in the problem situation? What opportunities arise from this?

In the jazz metaphor:

• Active listening / Call and response: Musicians instantly respond to another’s actions, building a collective, emergent outcome.
• Soloing/Emergence: One musician steps forward for a solo, while the rest of the band supports and adapts.
  • Opportunity: The team’s role shifts from seeking permission to showcasing immediate, high-quality performance that captures people’s imagination. 
• Trust in dissonance: Understanding that mistakes and unexpected notes are not failures, but transient points that can be quickly resolved through collective action.

An invitation

While leadership plays a key role in championing new ways of working, we don’t need to remain passive. As Dorst notes: “If one successfully innovates the frame through which we experience a situation, how we see the situation may be radically transformed.”

It’s not about finding “one frame” to solve the problem—it’s about expansion, widening our view, making the situation more complex by adding rather than subtracting. This ensures we’ve contemplated multiple angles and identified potential blind spots.