Kindle Notes & Highlights
straying as far afield as possible will help you come up with a breakthrough idea.
Surprisingly, the majority of new, inventive, and successful products result from only five templates: subtraction, division, multiplication, task unification, and attribute dependency.
Innovative products and services often have had something removed, usually something that was previously thought to be essential to the product or service.
Many creative products and services have had a component divided out of them and placed somewhere else in the usage situation, usually in a way that initially seemed unproductive or unworkable.
many innovative products and services, two or more attributes that previously seemed unrelated now correlate with one another. As one thing changes, something else changes.
Patterns play a vital role in our everyday lives. We call them habits,
Because of them, we don’t have to spend as much effort the next time we encounter that same information or find ourselves in a similar situation.
Patterns that help us do something different are valuable.
You could say that a template is a pattern consciously used over and over to achieve results that are as new and unconventional as those you obtained the first time you used it.
“Use objects close by for new tasks.”
the notion that the best and fastest way to innovate is to look at resources close at hand.
you have components and elements within your reach. In your Closed World, you have this book, for instance. You may have a cup of coffee. Or your dog, who is lying at your feet. The starting point for using our method is to take careful note of these components because they become the raw material you use when applying the templates to innovate.
They discovered that people are actually better at searching for benefits for given configurations (starting with a solution) than they are at finding the best configuration for a given benefit (starting with the problem).
apply one of the techniques to create a “form,” then take that form and find a “function” it can perform. Function follows form.
First innovate things than find the right place for thne innovation
creativity is a skill that can be learned and mastered by anyone.
Creativity is really about an intelligent search among a limited list of possibilities, rather than random, long-distance outward leaps and bounds. This, then, is our first rule: look inside!
It may sound counterintuitive, but excessive freedom of thought leads to “idea anarchy”
It’s true that we will find fewer ideas when we search inward toward the center of the problem. But these ideas will be much more creative than the ideas we could discover by looking outward.
A shortcut to riches is to subtract from our desires. —Petrarch (fourteenth-century
To make this conceptual leap, you have to accept the fact that we all suffer from fixedness: the tendency to see objects only in a traditional way or use them as they have been traditionally used.
“Structural Fixedness” is the inclination of humans to see items as whole units.
First, you cannot replace the item with something identical.
Once it’s gone, it’s gone!
Second, you want to look for replacements that are within your reach: inside the box of the Closed World. It is these replacements that lead to truly unique,
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Was it superior sound quality? Longer battery life? More song capacity? None of the above. Functionally speaking, the iPod was inferior on all counts except two: simplicity and design.
the case of the anesthesia machine, taking out the anesthesia drug itself would have gone too far, obviously. The backup battery and screen, on the other hand, were essential, but not the most essential elements.
When you use Subtraction, you don’t always have to eliminate the component. There is also what we call “Partial Subtraction.”
Step 1: List the product’s physical components. Active ingredients (detergents) Perfumes Binders Step 2: Remove a component, preferably an essential one. For laundry detergent, an essential component is the detergent, of course. Step 3: Visualize the resulting concept. What we had now was a “detergent” that contained only perfume and binder. It could not clean clothes. This function was lost when we subtracted the active ingredients. Step 4: Identify needs, benefits, and markets. At first, this sounds utterly ridiculous. Who’d want a detergent that couldn’t clean clothes?
List the product’s or service’s internal components. 2. Select an essential component and imagine removing it. There are two ways: a. Full Subtraction. The entire component is removed. b. Partial Subtraction. Take one of the features or functions of the component away or diminish it in some way. 3. Visualize the resulting concept (no matter how strange it seems). 4. Ask: What are the potential benefits, markets, and values? Who would want this new product or service, and why would they find it valuable? If you are trying to solve a specific problem, how can it help address that particular
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In this case, you do this by dividing an existing feature or element into multiple parts. Then you reconfigure the elements in a novel way, and proceed to consider the possibilities and benefits that the new configuration offers.
The key is to let the Division technique break the chains of Structural Fixedness so that you can see new potential benefits.
The laptop you carry is smaller and lighter due to Functional Division, because manufacturers divided the functions such as the hard drive, DVD drive, and video card into separate units. This allows you to plug them in only when you need them.
Write down the service or process steps on Post-it notes, one step on each note. Stick the notes onto a wall. First, arrange the steps in their conventional order. This way, you acknowledge your attachment to both the Structural Fixedness and the Functional Fixedness of the original process before you attempt to break that attachment. Then randomly pull one of the Post-it notes off the wall. With your eyes closed, stick it back on the wall. (In the unlikely event that you inadvertently put it back in its original location, try again.) Open your eyes and visualize the new configuration. Create
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The more friends we add to Facebook, the more valuable our Facebook network becomes.
Too many friends, and the quality of those friendships suffers.
To get the most out of the Division technique, you follow five basic steps: 1. List the product’s or service’s internal components. 2. Divide the product or service in one of three ways: a. Functional (take a component and rearrange its location or when it appears). b. Physical (cut the product or one of its components along any physical line and rearrange it). c. Preserving (divide the product or service into smaller pieces, with each piece still possessing all the characteristics of the whole). 3. Visualize the new (or changed) product or service. 4. Ask: What are the potential benefits,
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Here’s how “Resolution” works: imagine sitting in your living room. You can see the furniture, the light fixtures, the windows, the floor, and the paintings hanging on the walls. By applying Division here you would consider separating or dividing these “components” from one another or from the room as a whole. Now zoom in on one of these components—say, the lighting fixture hanging from the ceiling. Make that, rather than the entire living room, your Closed World. Identify the individual components: The lightbulb. The chain that attaches the fixture to the ceiling. The on-off switch. Consider
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Tube-shaped buildings possess a key advantage over rectangular ones: they deflect wind.
Tube buildings are also highly cost effective, as they’re much cheaper to build than rectangular buildings.
First, you take one of those components and multiply it.
Second, you change each multiplied component to make it unique.
We advise that you take a different approach when using the Multiplication technique. Take a step into the unknown. Don’t try to anticipate a logical or practical invention. Instead, leap before you look. (Exactly what your mother warned you not to do.)
Function follows form helps us break fixedness by taking odd configurations and imagining beneficial uses for them.
What good is this new object or process?
Who would want it? Why? When would they use it? In other words, function follows form.
One trick is to select a noticeable feature of that component. Another
is to change that feature in a nonobvious way.
