TRUE Creativity and Innovation consists of 
SEEING what everyone else has seen, 
THINKING what no one else has thought, and 
DOING what no one else has dared!"
START WITH THE CUSTOMER OR END USER:
The customer is always your first and most important creative challenge. Listen! Try to see the customers problems and needs from his point of view.18 Restate the problem and the customers needs in his terms and iterate until a consensus is reached. Ask not only what his problems are, but what special methods or tools he is presently using to solve them. 7 Work together with or in the place of the end user or customer. Use fictitious product descriptions to stimulate ideas and discussion. Remember that effective market research and sales strategy requires just as much creativity, enthusiasm and perfection as does product development.
IMPORTANCE OF ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS AND
MAKING A PROPER PROBLEM STATEMENT:
The problem as first stated is rarely the true problem. Ask at least five times. Always restate the problem as many ways as you can; change the wording, take different viewpoints, try it in graphical form. Describe the problem to laymen and also to experts in different fields.10 Don't try to learn all the details before deciding on a first approach.9 Make the second assault on a problem from a different direction.12 Transforming one problem into another or studying the inverse problem often offers new insights. If you don't understand a problem try explaining it to others and listening to yourself. Test the extremes.14 If you can't make it better, try making it worse and analyzing what happens. Get a "SuperTech" to help: Imagine how an ideal supertechnician would perform the required function and then try to implement his equivalent in hardware and/or software.
"Why are we so much better at answering questions than at answering the right questions? Is it because we are trained at school and university to answer questions that others have asked? If so, should we be trained to ask questions?" [Or trained to ask the complete set of right questions in the right way?] Trevor Kletz (Analog Science Fiction, January 1994, p195)
DEVELOP THE PROPER TOOLS AND PROCEDURES:
Creative problem solving depends on using the right tools, tricks, procedures or methods of analysis. In some cases new tools and methods of analysis must be developed from scratch by the inventor before a problem can be solved and in other cases special tools and procedures must be developed to take the final critical step of enabling successful commercial applications.
GETTING GOOD IDEAS FROM EVERYONE AND EVERYWHERE:
Asking once is rarely effective, you have to ask many times in many ways. Look at all possible sources of good ideas: your customers, your competition, your peers, the literature, patents, and your own subconscious. Give others some examples, this serves both to illustrate what you're talking about and encourages them to suggest improvements to your ideas. Tell them also what [you believe] you don't want and which solutions [you believe] won't work. Remember that breakthrough innovations often come from the outside. Work with high performers in fields related to your own to identify and adopt their relevant methods, tools and "tricks of the trade". Trade ideas with all.
SERENDIPITY:
Serendipity is a very effective process for coming up with useful new ideas, but requires you to keep your eyes open and imagination turned on. Learn from Mother Nature (the originator of serendipity), and study the lessons or investigate any unexplained phenomena she may reveal to you. Find useful solutions by reviewing your backlog of problems while you browse at random in libraries, trade shows, and the real world. Review your problems before you go to sleep at night and keep a notepad and audio recorder handy.Meditate out under a tree or in an open field. Play with combinations of ideas and concepts. Think about analogies to the problem.
SEARCH FOR MULTIPLE SOLUTIONS:
"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one we have." The first solution found is usually inadequate or non-optimum. There is usually more than one acceptable solution. Suspend judgement and criticism when first collecting ideas (see brainstorming). Studying multiple problems jointly often generate unique solutions. Look for solutions using combinations of ideas from different or evolving technologies. Even if you have one optimum solution it may be necessary to get patent coverage for all other effective solutions so as to protect your market. Team up with others in applying these techniques.
BRAINSTORMING:
In the initial phase of a brainstorming session participants are encouraged to suggest any idea that comes to their minds. During this initial phase it is a firm rule that none of the participants can criticize or react negatively to any of the ideas that are proposed. Following sessions are used to critique the ideas; selecting, improving, modifying, and combining them to produce the final working solution. Have someone throw in ideas from Mother Nature (see Serendipity above). Encourage examination of the problem statement itself (use a separate chart). Encourage ideas on improving the brainstorming process itself. Use different media/descriptions of concepts, problems relationships (text, graphics, pasteup items, show and tell table). Use a separate chart (parking lot) for unclassifiable ideas. Use separate wall charts to record: (a) guesses as to objectives, specs, customer needs/wants, trends. (b) related areas, related businesses or companies, information sources, problem solving methods, (c) things that are "impossible", approaches that "can't possibly work"
VALUE OF EXPERIMENTATION, PLAY, EXAGGERATION & PERSISTENCE:
Get your hands dirty. Spend some time trying things you "know won't work" or "don't know how they will work". If you don't fail frequently you aren't trying hard enough and may be missing a lot of good opportunities. Try Tom Peter's algorithm: "READY, FIRE, AIM." Persist, persist, persist. As Edison said "invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration [persistipation?]". Be very stubborn about solving a problem, but be flexible about the definition of the true problem and be very flexible and open minded about the form of the solution.
PATENT AND PROJECT NOTEBOOKS:
Patent notebooks are used to provide legal protection for inventions, but can have many other useful, complementary functions: a recorder, a reminder, a source of ideas, a means of ensuring project continuity, and a way to communicate with yourself and within a project group. Neatness is not essential, but clarity and conformance to legal standards is critical. Other things that should be recorded: sources, questions, what doesn't work, things to try. A truly effective, comprehensive patent requires planning, team work and iteration: invite everyone to participate in finding ways around your patent claims or to break them or improve on them. A one page summary sheet of the important procedures and checkpoints should be included inside the front cover of every patent notebook issued.
INNOVATIVE COST REDUCTION:
Remember that the real objective is higher profits. Raising the selling price by adding value or retargeting the market can be an alternative or supplement to cutting costs.
EFFECTIVE USE OF NOTES:
Try file cards with text and graphics (diagrams, flow charts, block diagrams, elementary circuits). Keep them simple and easy to change (use pencil or wipe-off transparencies for overlay). Scramble the cards, lay them out together in different arrangements. Consider computer equivalents: outliners, rolodexes, Canvas, MindLink, HyperCard or SuperCard. Mark ideas and questions in a way that makes them obvious to a reader and searchable by a computer. Avoid software that eats up all your creative energy trying to make it work!
(1) An Example of a World Class Patent Strategy at General Electric:
GE uses a very powerful "standard optimizing procedure" in preparation for filing a patent: A brief patent disclosure is circulated within the company before any formal patent application is prepared. Everyone is invited to find ways to improve upon, extend or "break" the patent. All the relevant ideas are then incorporated into the formal patent application(s) and all contributors become co-inventors. There are many important advantages to this approach:
(2) Invention of the Transistor -the Benefits of
"Creative Failure Methodology"
. . . Examples of the Use of "Planned Serendipity"
William Shockley described the process of inventing the transistor at Bell Labs as "creative failure methodology". A multi-discipline Bell Labs team was formed to invent the MOS transistor and ended up instead with the junction transistor and the new science of semiconductor physics. These developments eventually led to the MOS transistor and then to the integrated circuit and to new breakthroughs in electronics and computers.
Richard Feynman, also a Nobel Laureate physicist, believed in getting his hands dirty and doing lots of experiments, saying "To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can".
(3) The True Story! Newton's Laws were Inspired by a Combination of Visual Images:
Seemingly independent visual or mental images that are considered concurrently may inspire unique ideas. According to his own story (and in contradiction to the story of being hit on the head by a falling apple), Newton conceived the concept of universal gravitation when he observed an apple falling and at the same time noticed the moon in the sky. These simultaneous images inspired him to speculate if the same laws governed the falling apple and the moon orbiting the earth. This in turn led him to develop the laws of mechanics and established mathematical analysis and modeling as the principal foundations of science and engineering.
(4) The Telephone and the Importance of Patent Documentation:
The basic Bell patents for the telephone were defended in court and the survival of Bell Telephone was ensured by a few crude notes made by Bell on the back of an envelope which (luckily) had been properly signed, witnessed and dated.
(5) The Invention of the Telescope - Always Keep Your Eyes Open:
An extreme example of people keeping their eyes closed (literally and figuratively) was the simple experiment that led to the invention of the telescope and microscope. It took more than 300 years after eyeglasses were in common use before Hans Uppershey, in 1608, observed the joint magnifying action of two lenses, built a simple telescope and then took action to publish his findings! Shortly afterwards Galileo applied the telescope to the study of the planets and quickly discovered that the "facts" of classical philosophy were wrong. When he invited the scholars of the day to look through his telescope and see for themselves they refused!
(6) The Discovery of the Electromagnetic Laws - Always Keep an Open Mind:
The relationship between electricity and magnetism was first observed in 1820 by Oersted in a public lecture at which he was demonstrating the "well known fact" that electricity and magnetism were completely independent phenomena. This time the experiment failed! - an electric current produced a magnetic effect. Oersted was observant enough to notice this effect, honest enough to admit it, and diligent enough to follow up and publish. Maxwell used these experiments to extend Newton's methods of modeling and mathematical analysis in the mechanical and visible world to the invisible world of electricity and magnetism and derived Maxwell's Laws which opened the doors to our modern age of electricity and electronics.
(7) Von Hipple's Law of User Innovation - Source of New Product Opportunities:
Eric Von Hipple of the MIT Business School made many studies of the sources of innovation in the electronics industry and concluded that more than 70% of the product innovations came from the users, who initially can't find the tools or equipment they need on the market and are forced to develop them in-house. [Most companies ignore this process and consequently miss many good, easy opportunities for new products or product enhancements.]
A related rule is that most breakthroughs in new products and processes come from outside the industries that these breakthroughs will effect most!
(8) Instant Photography was Inspired by Asking
the Right "Silly" Question
(while other companies come up with the wrong silly answer).
Edward Land was taking pictures of his family while on a vacation trip in the southwest. His young daughter asked "Why do we have to wait to see the pictures?" and Land thought to himself "good question!", sketched out some ideas and tried them after he returned to his lab in Boston. The Polaroid Camera and the science of instant photography appeared soon thereafter.
Kodak marketing decided that their customers for cameras and films wouldn't mind "waiting to see their pictures" as they always had. Kodak didn't get involved in the business of instant photography until too late, when development costs and patent infringement suits cost them billions of dollars and a lost market. Kodak then repeated this pattern by first ignoring customer interest in video cameras and most recently ignoring customer interest in low cost digital cameras with built in view screens.
(9) The Telephone, an Invention Inspired by Misunderstanding:
Bell was inspired to start development of the telephone when he read an account, written in German, describing an invention which he thought had the function of a telephone. After demonstrating his first working telephone Bell learned that, because of the language barrier, he had misunderstood the report, and the German invention had an entirely different function.
(10) Spectrography Originates by Searching for a Cross-Disiplinary Solution:
Bunsen, a chemist, used the color of a chemical sample in a gas flame for a rough determination of the elements it contained. He described the technique and its shortcomings to Kirchhoff, who, being a physicist, immediately suggested using a prism to display the entire spectrum and thus get detailed quantitative information. This led to the science of spectrography and, following application to measurement of the absorption spectra of the stars, to the modern science of cosmology.
(11) READY-FIRE-AIM! Don't Assume the First Solution to a Problem or the First Product Design is the Best or Only One:
Tom Peters, in his book "In Search of Excellence"
observes that successful companies [and individuals] have a bias
towards action, doing short experiments to feel out new technologies
or markets and then quickly revising their plans and goals
based on what they learn. They admit in advance they don't
know all the answers and expect to be surprised. Similarly
they avoid an emotional or ego fixation on their first
plans or prototypes.
Tom Peters describes this process as: "Do it. Try it. Fix it."
or, in other words, "Ready! [or not]: Fire! Aim!".
This rule is very context dependent and frequently misinterpreted in the literature, particularly by quality management experts who believe that a failure in a product prototype or the failure in a trial marketing plan is equivalent to poor quality.
(12) The Electron Microscope - Advantage of Developing Many Different Solutions:
A physicist learned of the invention of the electron microscope and, not knowing the principle used, worked out 3 different ways by which it could be built. Later he checked the patent and found it used one of his methods, but another of his methods was superior and made the original patent obsolete.
(13) Inventions Result from a Combination of Ideas from Different Sources and Technologies:
(-: Borrowing from one source is called plagiarism, but borrowing from more than one source is called research :-) [And is probably patentable!]
(14) Test the Extremes to Discover More Solutions:
Nick deWolf, cofounder of Teradyne, had many informal
rules for doing good engineering.
One such rule was: "To select a component, size a product,
architect a system or plan a new company, first test the
extremes and then have the courage to resist what is
popular and the wisdom to choose what is best".
Similar important benefits occur in the sciences:
Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity by thinking what
happened at extreme speeds, when matter traveled near the
speed of light. Other physicists performed thought experiments
about what would happen at the limits of very small sizes and
energies and discovered the laws of quantum mechanics.
(15) Invention of Television - Observing Analogies from Nature:
Philo Farnsworth had the inspiration which led to television while sitting on a hillside in Idaho. The neat rows in a nearby farm gave him the idea of creating picture on a cathode ray tube out of rows of light and dark dots. He was 14 at the time, the next year he presented the concept at a high-school science project, and demonstrated the first working model of a television set when he was 21.
(16) Computer Programs that Facilitate Creative Thinking:
SuperCard for the Macintosh supports color, text, graphics, picture, video, links, searching, random scanning, backtracking, multiple windows, with programmable access and control of other resources such as spreadsheets, databases, CAD, CD-ROMs, video discs, audio discs,...
Check out the SuperCard Home Page and learn about the plans for integrating Multimedia with cross-platform (Windows Player) and the World Wide Web (BlackHole extensions).
(17) Use of Proper Notation to Facilitate Computer Searching:
Use a standard, unique designation for indicating ideas so that they stand out clearly within any text and are unique so they can be found by a computer search. Suggestions: !!this is an idea!! or !?questionable idea?!
(18) Invention of Xerography: A Search for Completely New Technology Solutions:
Carlson was a patent attorney who was motivated to find an easier way to make copies of his patent applications. Because of Kodak's strong patent position in photographic processes Carlson deliberately looked for solutions to document copying in non-traditional fields. The result was Xerography which had an invincible patent position and, as history has demonstrated, was an optimum solution to the problem.
(19) Getting Mother Natures Help in Solving Problems -
An Example of a Not-So-Intelligent Approach to Artificial Intelligence:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) researches went off on a dead-end track for years by trying to design around a single processing level in neural networks. Eventually it was found that multilayer processing eliminated this fundamental barrier. The AI researchers might have avoided this wasted time and effort by checking first with Mother Nature. By asking a biologist they would have quickly and easily learned that the image processing cells in the eye exist in three distinct layers.
(20) Einstein Discovered Relativity by Using New Mental Models and Tools:
Einstein started his work on relativity by imagining what things would look like if he traveled on a beam of light.
When asked what single event was most helpful in developing the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein replied: "Figuring out how to think about the problem."
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Revised: November 21, 2005, 25849 bytes
Your comments or contributions of new stories are always welcome.
Peter Sylvan