If you can spare an hour I highly recommend listening to this talk that Tom Kelley of IDEO gave on innovation and identifying problems as part of Stanford's Ent

If you can spare an hour I highly recommend listening to this talk that Tom Kelley of IDEO gave on innovation and identifying problems as part of Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders program: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts/2054/Young-at-Heart-How-to-Be-an-Innovator-for-Life http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts/2054/Young-at-Heart-How... The TLDR is to be aware of what is going on around you. He gives examples of that in action including a couple that stuck with me regarding the turnstiles at the Paris airport and children's toothbrushes. Things that are so obvious in retrospect but it takes stopping and observing in order to identify the problem. My favorite quote from the talk, "Be childlike as often as possible. Be childish as little as you can." (If you're looking to do something in financial services I think there are still a lot of problems that need to be solved and tons of opportunity over the next decade as demographics shift. Just think of what has happened in the past fifteen years. People used to do their banking in person. Now people even considering going to an ATM an inconvenience. Let's talk.)