Got a Problem? Simply Solve It : In ‘Breaking Through,’ Tom Logsdon says that anyone can learn to find creative answers.

Creativity, Tom Logsdon says, “is not some obscure, mysterious, or magical power bestowed on the privileged few. It can be defined simply as ‘artistic or intellectual inventiveness.’ ” And with proper motivation and training, the Seal Beach resident says, “anyone can learn to accentuate their creative problem-solving skills.”

That’s the premise of Logsdon’s new book, “Breaking Through” (Addison-Wesley; $16.95).

Logsdon--a senior aerospace engineer at Rockwell International--explores the six thought processes, or “winning strategies,” creative individuals use when they make major breakthroughs. He also explains how you can use them to enhance your own creative problem-solving skills.

Stymied by a problem?

Try “breaking your problem apart and putting it back together”--something Federal Express founder Fred Smith did to ensure that millions of packages would reach their destinations within 24 hours. His moneymaking idea? Replace the unreliable and piecemeal system of delivering packages via any available airplane headed in the right direction with flying packages radially into a central hub in the middle of the night, sorting them, and then flying them radially outward.

Or try “taking a fresh look at the interfaces.” Interfaces occur, Logsdon explains, where two dissimilar things come together. Think of the Gillette safety razor, which replaced the old-fashioned straight razor with a blade and handle. The straight razor had to be sharpened before each use, but the safety razor blade could be removed and discarded when it became dull while the more expensive handle could be reused.

And don’t forget to be alert to serendipity.

Scotchgard fabric protector, NutraSweet, Band-Aids, microwave ovens and countless other products are the profitable results of those times when, as Logsdon writes, “we’re seeking one thing and end up finding something completely different, or when we stumble on a creative solution almost entirely be accident.”

Logsdon said the unifying theme of his book is that “simple, creative solutions almost invariably produce the best results.”

Gen. George F. Patton learned that lesson while commanding a cavalry unit at Ft. Hood near Killeen, Tex.

Patton’s staff officers informed him that the townspeople were fully aware of the outfit’s Saturday night hell-raising sprees but had little appreciation for the economic benefits flowing out of the military base. His staff recommended holding a series of briefings with local business leaders to explain how much money the soldiers were pumping into the local economy.

But Patton came up with a much simpler approach: One month, he merely paid his troops with $2 bills and soon, Logsdon writes, everyone within 30 miles could appreciate the economic importance of the Army base.

Logsdon’s book is loaded with famous and obscure individuals who devised simple, creative solutions to problems.

One of the most humorous is that of the Kentucky farmer who thwarted a midnight watermelon thief by posting a large sign in his field that said: “Warning: I put rat poison in one of these watermelons.”

(As it turned out, this was one creative solution that backfired. When the farmer went out in his field the next morning he found a crudely lettered note at the bottom of the sign: “So did I.”)

Logsdon believes “Breaking Through” will appeal to anyone who works. As he says, “Anybody who does work has to come up with simple solutions in these competitive days.” “Breaking Through” can be ordered by calling (800) 822-6339.

Logsdon, 56, frequently teaches two-day courses on creative problem-solving techniques designed to enhance worker productivity. He also delivers professional platform lectures on the subject throughout the United States and abroad.

His presentation, entitled “Flight of Imagination: Creative Thinking for Professional Success,” earned him a Top 10 rating among 45 professional platform lecturers invited to speak at a meeting of the International Platform Assn. in Washington, D.C., in 1989. Logsdon was in good company: His fellow Top 10 included syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, former Sen. William Proxmire and former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese.

Logsdon, who has worked on Apollo, Skylab and the Navstar Global Positioning System, said many of the “winning strategies” for creative problem solving were perfected in the aerospace industry and he learned many of them from his mentors at Rockwell.

While working on the Saturn V moon rocket in the 1960s, Rockwell engineer Bud Brux figured out how to send 3,000 more pounds to the moon just by “tweaking five engine valves” in mid-flight: “We shifted the mixture ratio at which the rocket was burning,” explained Logsdon. Considering it cost $2,000 for each pound of payload, the savings from Brux’s idea were enormous.

The Ford Motor Co. provides an example “of how a simple, creative solution can dramatically enhance corporate efficiency.”

The plant, Logsdon said, had 500 employees doing nothing but processing invoices and payments for parts that arrived at the factory. By installing more computers and streamlining procedures, plant officials figured they could reduce the number to 400 employees.

But after studying their operations, executives came up with a better idea: By simply paying for the parts when they arrived at the plant rather than waiting to pay when the invoices arrived, they not only reduced a mountain of paperwork but were able to cut the accounts payable staff to only 125.

When it comes to breakthroughs, it seems, the simpler the idea the better.

As Logsdon quotes theatrical producer David Balasco in the book: “If you can’t write your idea on the back of your business card, you don’t have an idea.”

A simple idea is what helped the manager of a San Francisco hotel solve his unusual problem.

It seems the hotel’s top floor observation deck not only attracted tourists but occasionally those bent on committing suicide by jumping off the deck into the grassy courtyard below.

To salvage the hotel’s carefully cultivated image, Logsdon writes, security guards and protective screens were considered and rejected: The guards would be expensive and screens would spoil the view.

Then the hotel manager decided to examine how suicide victims behave. He discovered that those who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge almost never jumped onto the land on either end of the bridge; nearly all preferred to jump into the water. Either way, Logsdon says, “they knew they would die. But, apparently, they did not want to hurt themselves in the process.”

Thus informed, the hotel manager immediately ordered the installation of large, jagged rocks in the grassy courtyard below the observation deck. The result: No more suicides.