When trying to answer tough problems with novel solutions, be careful not to venture too far out into left field, cautions a new study, reported Inc.

According to researchers from The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, looking to unrelated areas for insight often leads to impractical solutions. Their results come from an analysis of more than 2,000 ideas.

"For people needing fresh inspiration for a problem, these findings imply that you shouldn't just go off and talk to random people or read things totally unrelated to your problem," Joel Chan, lead author of the paper, said in a statement.

He and his colleagues looked at concepts from more than 350 participants who posted to OpenIDEO, an online crowd-sourcing platform that focuses on social and environmental problems.

Here's how the platform works:

Every challenge on OpenIDEO starts with a problem, which is posted by a challenge sponsor. Next comes the inspiration phase, during which users share stories, case studies and examples that they think can help solve the problem. Finally, in the idea phase, users propose a detailed solution. The entire process can take up to 10 weeks.

When the idea phase ends, OpenIDEO experts sort through the submissions and come up with a list of ideas that they think are viable.

Looking at several challenges, Chan used an algorithm to assess how closely related all of the submitted ideas were to the original problem. In the end, he found that the closely related ideas were the ones that OpenIDEO experts picked.

"I saw the same pattern across 12 very different problems -- ranging from preventing human rights violations to fostering greater connectedness in urban communities to improving employment prospects for young people," Chan said.

The findings contradict a school of thought held by many universities and businesses that believe interdisciplinary thinking is the way to go. For example, Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design purposely assembles teams of students form all different fields of study in order to solve problems.

That approach is supported by recent research from European business school professors. They found that incorporating input from individuals from various backgrounds works best because each person has a separate body of knowledge to draw from.

But Chan maintains that your approach doesn't have to be completely new to your field to be good.

"My overall theory is that creative ideas more often come from accumulating many small insights, stretching the boundaries just a bit at a time."