Comment by veli_joza

Great read.

TLDR Shannon's approach to creativity and few mental tools for problem-solving:

  * simplify by eliminating everything from the problem except the essentials; cut the problem down to size
  * seek similar known problems, find analogies and apply solutions to your problem
  * try to restate the problem in just as many different ways as you can
  * generalize the building blocks by trying to apply them to broader class of problems
  * structurally analyse the problem - break it down into sequence of smaller mental leaps
  * invert the problem and see if it's solvable by retracing from solution to the start