The other day, I bought (another) shirt with a slightly peculiar cut–a half-body design that can be turned into a V-neck. Whatever, that’s not the point.
It suddenly occurred to me just how far shirts have come since the nightmares from the 80’s–just how much innovation has been packed into one simple shirt!
So, I figured that “shirts” would be a good subject to address–to ideate about.
Let’s see if we can come up with some cool ideas for novel shirts (it’s a pity I’m not a seamstress!).
Here are some first thoughts:
A shirt that’s made entirely of pockets – stitched one next to the other, the pockets are the shirt.
A patchwork zip-shirt – the shirt is made of many different patches, each attached to its neighbors by a zipper. Each time you wear the shirt, you can choose which parts to wear and which to remove (sleeveless, one-sleeved, mid-drift, collarless, etc.). The opportunities are endless! Continue reading ‘Think About a Shirt!’
I believe that criminals often find creative ideas not because they are really creative people (research shows that they are less creative than average…), but simply because they have no choice.
And not having choice is the mother of creativity.
So here’s a story I once heard on the radio. It’s about an interesting car theft method:
A gang innocently rented a car, but then forged the documents making them identical to those of an existing car of the same make, and replaced its license plate with that of another car (that’s the dirty part. Well…if you want to steal cars, you probably have to get your hands dirty too!)
They then sold the car. There was no problem selling the car because of the forged documents, but there is still a different problem… the car needs to be returned to the rental car company.
Have you ever seen a policeman giving a ticket to someone honking their car horn in a no-honking zone or at 2 am? In all of my 37 years I have seen (and gotten) speeding, parking, j-walking (etc.) tickets switching hands from the policeman’s to the felon’s. Not once have I seen a driver getting a ticket for miss-honking.
As a “walker”, I find all this honking quite annoying. One thing is sitting in the car with your windows closed and radio on, another thing is standing next to a nervous wreck in the form of a driver in the rush hour, honking at cars failing to move 0.00001 seconds after the traffic light has turned green.
It often seems that being innovative is a privilege of the wealthy. Those who have the time to invent and innovate are most probably not busy with everyday survival. Or are they?
Constraints enhance creativity. When resources are limited or have been exhausted, constraints have a ball; and so does creativity.
For example, lack of access to safe drinking water is a critical problem in poor countries around the world. Every year, thousands of people die from infectious diseases, brought on by polluted water. PlayPumps International has come up with a successful, creative solution to the problem: a merry-go-round that pumps water into a storage tank, while children have fun riding it round and round. What is so brilliant about this idea is its simplicity. Kids at play spin the merry-go-round anyway, so the system uses an existing resource to achieve a new objective, improving the quality of life for the entire village.
So, how exactly are we killing ideas? Relax - We all carry the bug, and each of us has heard the voice of the naughty kid inside that pops up every time we hear a new idea and gets us to say: “What?! We’ve tried that idea already and it didn’t work!”
Even if we’re creative types, we sometimes can’t stop ourselves from uttering: “Yes, but it’ll never work.”
Even if we’re patient and open-minded managers, at some point we’re likely to find the following sentence escape from our mouths: “It doesn’t fit into our current set of priorities.”
We’re all murderers; okay, that’s not a nice word. We’re all idea-killers. Perhaps it’s better that way. Otherwise, we’d be drowning in a swamp of new ideas that don’t provide a sound basis from which we can progress .
If you’re studying political science, there’s a chance you’re going to become a bit of a paranoid. Your mind, striving for knowledge, finds itself flooded with conspiracy theories, false consciousness and the inability to think for itself. Big Brother’s eye—watching, analyzing and most importantly, guiding—seems much more realistic from the high windows of the academic ivory tower.
When you leave the academia and join the ‘evil forces’ of the free market, the paranoia releases its grip a little and you start to understand, consent, and even collaborate.
Several years ago a friend of mine, who runs an Internet site selling wedding gifts, asked for some ideas to help him differentiate his site from the rest, and thus improve sales.
To find ideas, I decided to apply SIT’s Breaking Symmetry technique with the “wedding day” as the starting point.
To do that, I asked myself in what way is a wedding day symmetrical ?
One simple symmetry that came to my mind is the obvious fact that the husband and wife celebrate their wedding day at the same time.
This helped me come up with the virtual idea or pre-idea (something that is not an idea in itself, but triggers a thinking process that leads to an idea) of having some kind of wedding day that the husband and wife don’t celebrate on the same day.
