| WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A BOX OF THUMBTACKS, A MATCH, AND A CANDLE? This isn’t the start of a joke, but one of the best experiments ever devised. The Candle Problem shows how we can inadvertently ignore blatantly obvious solutions because we ignore function, made famous by Daniel Pink in his book Drive, from the research in the 40s of Gestalt Psychologist Karl Duncker. Participants are handed a collection of items and asked to affix a candle to a wall without it dripping on the table. Half are given a box of thumbtacks, matches, and a candle. Half are given a box, thumbtacks, matches, and a candle. Do you spot the difference? That one little difference drastically changed the likelihood of solving the problem. People who were given the thumbtacks separately from the box almost always solved the problem. Take a thumbtack and affix the box to the wall and put the candle in the box. It’s on the wall and will not drip on the table. The people who were given the tacks in the box solved it far less frequently, because of a concept he named functional fixedness. In the minds of the second group, the box’s purpose was holding thumbtacks and the many participants were unable to make the leap that the box could also hold the candle. Pink’s assertion is that, especially these days, almost all work is a candle problem, and yet our education system and our jobs do not encourage or reward this kind of creativity. (It’s also how you get a race of aliens in a novel that are so crazy and yet feel completely real.) A TOTAL FAILURE GAVE US POST-IT NOTES The origin of post-it notes is a famous example of this. Dr. Spencer Silver was working for 3M trying to create strong adhesives and managed to create something that didn’t stick well at all. In fact, was very easy to peel off. His bosses were not impressed. After all, he’d failed comprehensively at the goal: creating stronger adhesives. But Silver kept talking about it. Another dude at 3M, Art Fry had a problem. He’d go to his church choir practice during the week, mark all the upcoming hymns with little pieces of paper, and by Sunday, they had all fallen out of the hymnal. The rest is history. He needed something that would stick to paper without damaging it and then be able to peel off easily. He remembered his colleague trying to pitch his not-very-sticky invention. THE ELEPHANT IS IN THE REFRIGERATOR Sometimes we screw up not because the function is hidden, but because it’s too obvious. Elephant jokes purportedly started in the 1960s by a company called LM Becker when they released a set of trading cards of 50 elephant jokes. Unlike many jokes of the 60s, these have persisted because of their sheer absurdity. It is a form of humor that children love and adults dismiss, supposedly because we are SOOO much more sophisticated, but because we let what we know about the world limit what is possible. One of the most famous examples, whose origins I can’t find, so if someone knows, please share, is the elephant in the refrigerator question: How do you put an elephant in the refrigerator? You open the door and put him inside. Nothing in the question specified the size of the refrigerator. Having worked in commercial kitchens, I can tell you, that there are plenty of refrigerators that could fit a herd of elephants comfortably. Children get this answer right often. Adults always fail. Adults know that the average elephant does not fit in the average refrigerator, they just can’t figure it out. Are there any elephant problems in your life, where what you know is possible is keeping you from actually solving the problem? PLAY IS A PERFECT SOURCE OF NEW IDEAS AND NEW FUNCTIONS You will find the future wherever people are having the most fun. -Steven Johnson, Wonderland. There is a long history of serious inventions becoming toys and toys becoming serious inventions. When we are playful, we automatically look for new functions for existing things, that’s actually kind of a play fundamental. This is a child’s number one job – explore the world and learn the rules so that they can break them. There are many inventions that started seriously and ended in play: The slinky started as a part of naval battleships. Play-doh started as a wallpaper cleaner that one cleaner’s kids got a hold of. Silly putty started as a rubber replacement during WWII. Water guns started as a cooling system. Things have gone in the opposite direction as well – from toys to serious inventions. There are archeological records of wheeled toys long before there was any sense of wheeled vehicles. Programmable computers started with their inventor, Charles Babbage’s visit to Merlin’s Mechanicals Museum where he was fascinated by an automated dancer. Typewriters drew much of their function from pianos. How did we create music before we created type? We make leaps and bounds all out of order, more apt to see the possibility when we are only playing than when we are doing serious work. What is a thorny problem in your work or life that you’ve not examined flexibly enough? Find out how slushies can help you get better ideas! If you were an alien, what would you see looking at something? If you were a child, how would you play? |