you should try to talk to existing experts too. Sometimes they can utter a few words that gives you a helpful mind model that saves days of original thought.
I found that just explaining the problem to someone else, also works in great ways. I knew a guy, who thought that I was much smarter than himself, and often he would come up to me to ask me for advice and started to state the problem, which usually I didn't get, but halfway, he would suddenly see the solution, and thank me for helping him.