Upside Down, Inside Out

Another way to get new ideas is to turn the problem upside down, inside out, or backward. Henry Ford didn’t worry about how to get workmen to the parts needed in an automobile, but how to get the parts to them. That was the basic idea of the assembly line.

The clock-radio came about when someone thought of combining two bedroom facilities-then someone else came along and thought about dividing it. New clock radios are marketed which can be separated so the clock timer can be used in the kitchen, while the radio is playing out on the patio.

You can borrow or adapt, ring in the changes on a good idea. Make it larger or smaller, thinner or thicker, lighter or heavier. To make sure he tries all combinations, the effective creative thinker uses a check list the same way an airline pilot does before he takes off. He will develop a checklist on the subjects in the area in which he has problems he has to solve oftenest. For example, he might have a plastic-enclosed list hung behind his desk or over his workbench: “300 ways to package plants,” “250 promotional ideas,” “176 ways to reach customers,” or “476 ways to fasten wood.”

You can use the classified section of your phone book as a checklist or an inspiration list. You might even go to your library and look through the yellow pages from other cities. The Sears Roebuck catalogue can be an inspiration stimulant, and I know the Montgomery Ward catalogue used to be known as a “wish book.” Charles Whiting of McCann-Erickson has a Forced Relationship Technique, which does this. You apply the attributes of an object to suggest changes in another object.

For example, if you are manufacturing powerboats, you might well take the time to examine what the car manufacturers have found about the desires of people. What do they like in car interiors, what designs, what colors, what textures, what kind of windows, what gadgets? You should examine the new personal airplanes as well as the airliners. You might visit the latest ocean liners and even the small and very popular suburban homes. The important attributes of the interiors of cars, planes, ships, homes will suggest salable changes you can make in the interior design of your boats.

A good brainstormer never takes the obvious for granted. He knows the best ideas seem obvious after they have been developed. Take an ordinary envelope. Look at it to see the changes that creative thinking has made.

Why lick the stamps? The embossed stamped envelope.

Why type return address? It’s printed on.

Why type the address on the letter and the envelope as well?

The window envelope.

There is color-coding for airmail.

Then someone tore the envelope apart and found out how

much wasted writing area there was inside. He invented the

air letter, which became World War II’s V-mail.

Someone else lost a slip of paper in an inter-office envelope,

so it is made with holes in it.

There are a hundred variations. Large envelopes, small envelopes, Kraft paper envelopes, and onion-skin envelopes. There are even envelopes, which have a smaller envelope on the outside-that way your letter goes first-class, and the material in the big envelope third, or fourth class. There is a self-sealing envelope flavored with peppermint to satisfy the most sensitive tongue puckerer.

Challenge any assumptions. There is nothing sacred about the envelope, the umbrella, or the automobile, as we know it. Sylvania has made a wonderful product by saying, “Why should lamp bulbs be white?” and marketing colored ones.

Finding the right frame of reference and breaking out of the wrong one is a valuable step in creative thinking. For example, when the Pennsylvania Railroad had a problem getting their switching engines around their yards, they naturally thought up all sorts of switching engines-that ran on tracks. The problem was solved when someone broke out of that frame of reference and developed a switching engine which runs on great rubber wheels and can be run along tracks or, just as easily, across them.

Again and again it’s productive to look for new uses for old devices. The New York Telephone Company today makes four million dollars a year from correct time and weather forecast calls. New products, on the other hand, fail or succeed on new uses; the helicopter, for instance. If it hadn’t been tried in rescues, for traffic checks, on low-level photography, repairing remote high-tension wires, it wouldn’t be the basis of a growing industry today. The phone company needs new uses for old devices; the helicopter industry, old uses for a new device. When we discovered radioactive isotopes we had to find how to use them. We have solutions seeking problems as well as problems seeking solutions.