课程: Thinking Creatively

Applying the division technique

课程: Thinking Creatively

Applying the division technique

- Division is a powerful technique because it forces you to break fixedness, especially structural fixedness. Division forces you to create configurations by rearranging components in ways you were not likely to have done on your own. The division technique works by dividing a product or its components functionally or physically, and then rearranging them back into the product. To apply the division technique, you start by listing the product's internal components. Next, you divide the product or one of the components. And there are three ways you can do this. First is functionally, where you rearrange along some functional role. For example, a water sport company took the controls of the speedboat and then functionally divided them off and placed them into the handle of the water ski tow rope. Now the water skier controls the movements of the boat without having a separate driver. Next is physically, where you are cutting the product or component along any physical line. Now, physical division is different than functional in that we are actually making a cut along some physical line of the product itself or a component. Take a look at this car radio. In this example, the face plate has been physically cut away from the main radio. When you leave your car, you grab the faceplate by pulling it away from the main radio and taking it with you. That makes the main radio completely worthless so thieves won't break into your car to steal it. And the third type is called preserving. That means you divide the product into smaller versions of itself. Each smaller unit preserves the characteristics of the whole. A real simple example of this is what you see here. Cupcakes are essentially smaller versions of a normal sized cake. So once you've rearranged the components, your work is not done. You still need to ask yourself two important questions in the right order. Should we do it? And can we do it? Finally, you modify and adapt the concept to improve it. The division technique cuts your biggest challenges down to size so you can see new innovative opportunities.

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