There have been some famous experiments about why we can’t “think out of the box”. It has to do with the way we learn. We learn by linking like things together as concepts, and add to that the notion of how they function.
“Little Johnnie, what is that?”
“That is a dog.”
“What does a dog do?”
“Woof! Woof!”
“Good little Johnnie”
Get it? So from that moment on (so to speak) it will be hard to think about a dog doing something different. This is called “functional fixedness”.
There is a set of innovation tools called Psychological and Emotional Methods of Problem Solving. These tools are designed to get pull us away from this psychological inertia.
I will try to talk about some of these in a future post.
Category Archives: Innovation
Divergence and Convergence
One of the basic workflows behind innovation is that divergent ideation is needed to get ideas and possibilities. However, these ideas usually have problems which must be solved in order to become viable products (or services). Convergence helps us solve these inventive problems.
Another way to look at it is that Strategic Innovation means coming up with what people will want to spend money on next, whether they realize it now or not. Tactical Innovation is needed to solve the inventive problems associated with these new ideas. In the process we commonly produce patentable intellectual property.
See our blog categories and Strategic and Tactical Innovation.