Got a problem?   Every business does.  Sooner or later you’re going to run into a problem that you can’t solve.  One of those bang your head on the wall things that keep you awake at night trying to come up with the solution.  Well here’s some great advice to help you solve it.

Your business has a big problem. You’ve thought about it, but you can’t seem to crack it. So you consult your colleagues — to no avail. Then you turn to the big guns — your industry’s top experts. They’ve got nothing. (Well, to be precise, they’ve got 40 PowerPoint slides worth of nothing, and you’ve got $225,000 less of something.) Now what?

You might take some inspiration from Pete Foley, associate director of the cognitive science group at Procter & Gamble, who was looking for an inspired solution to challenges faced by P&G’s feminine-care business unit. Its R&D staff had pursued several approaches, but none of them offered the breakthrough that Foley craved. So he did the next logical thing: He took his team to the San Diego Zoo.

Really good advice in this article from the folks over at Fast Company, A Problem-Solver’s Guide to Copycatting.