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Roger L. Martin and Jennifer Riel wrote an excellent article for BusinessWeek, “Innovation’s Accidental Enemies.” They suggest an alternate path to the two defaults we typically choose when it comes to filtering new ideas.

When faced with a new idea, the boardroom impulse is to ask for proof in one of two flavors: deductive and inductive. With deduction, we apply a widely held rule. With induction, we develop a new rule from a wide range of data. In both cases, we use existing information to understand the issue in play. But for breakthroughs, there is no rule or pool of past data to provide certainty.

Instead of using deductive and inductive logic to reason with a new idea, the authors suggest a third form: abductive logic.

Instead, when facing an anomalous situation, we can turn to a third form of logic: abductive logic, the logic of what could be. To use abduction, we need to creatively assemble the disparate experiences and bits of data that seem relevant in order to make an inference—a logical leap—to the best possible conclusion.

In other words, abductive logic suggests we focus less on what we know and more on what we don’t. “Asking what could be true—and jumping into the unknown—is critical to innovation. Nurturing the ideas that result, rather than killing them, can be the tricky part.”

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