Combine and redefine
‘Innovation makes the world go round. It brings prosperity and freedom.’
ROBERT METCALFE
Not everything can be successfully combined. But when it comes to cracking a tough problem, or trying to jimmy open a clamped-shut opportunity, using a range of tools can really help.
Which means employing several tools one after another, to see how they augment the initial solution or how they give you an A, an A+B and an A+B+C solution to choose between.
I would always suggest using more than one tool anyway, to see which gives you the best answer. This Combine theory just acknowledges that sometimes using multiple tools can create a unique answer, because the thinking you get from running your third tool has been influenced by the thinking and idea generation you’ve already done from running the first two tools.
Visual
Build on your progress: here the first tool used comes up with five possible first-stage solutions (1), some of which can be pushed to the second or third stage. But taking one of those second-stage ideas and developing it with a second tool moves it on to a couple of stage-four ideas. Using a third creative thinking tool on one of those gets us to the fifth stage (5), which in this example achieves the goal: a workable implementable solution to the problem.
Theory
If you’ve ever seen House, about an American diagnostician played by Hugh Laurie, you’ll see, in episode after episode, something will happen that gives him the lightbulb moment where he diagnoses the patient’s incredibly rare and esoteric condition. Something someone says (apparently unrelated) or something he sees (apparently unrelated) triggers a memory, makes him realise something or causes him to make a connection … he pauses, stares into the middle distance … and ping, his eyes light up. He’s cracked it.
But in real life it’s rarely like that. In real life, it can be hard to pinpoint what it was that gave you that lightbulb moment, your ‘flash of inspiration’.
And so it is here. Using several tools gives you more cracks at the nut – it might be the third tool you use that gives you the best solution, but perhaps only because you tried another two tools first, which moved things along enough for the third one to deliver the killer blow.
In other words, using several tools one after another can create a transient, hybrid tool – a kind of ‘thinking bigger to solve something simpler with a constraint that involves choice architecture’ tool, for instance.
And that sounds like a very rare kind of breakthrough.
Action
COMBINE AND REDEFINE TOOLKIT
- Choose a creative thinking tool you want to use to address the problem/opportunity/innovation need.
- Have the 11 individual tools in mind at all times; it may be that a particular tool seems particularly well suited to building on the progress you’ve made with a prior tool.
- After you’ve used one tool, instead of going back to the original issue and starting again with a new tool (which is what you’ve been doing previously), this time look at the progress you’ve made and continue from that point, to take it further, by employing a second or third tool.
Using this final tool is very simple – it’s about combining multiples of the previous 11.
In any brainstorming session – whether you’re solving a problem, capitalising on an opportunity or searching for an innovation – you’ll use several tools, not just one.
But that’s tackling the same problem with different tools, whereas combine and redefine is about using a sequence of tools to build upon each other. Using one tool takes you so far, using another tool takes that progress a bit further, using a third tool gets you over the finish line.
PROBLEM-SOLVING TIP
Stack or crack? There are two clear ways of combining these tools to redefine your solution. One is to stack them; you use one tool to create one effect, then another tool to create an additional effect (as in the Example at the end). The other is to crack the same issue further.
So, in your session you run one tool (tool A) on the problem. It doesn’t feel like you’ve got a great solution, so you try tool B on the same problem, at the same starting point. Again, it doesn’t feel like you’ve cracked it, so you try tool C.
That gives you a breakthrough – a good result.
Taking things further
Now review the whole suite of tools and choose another tool to work with. Perhaps in this case someone thinks that going back to tool A and using it on the current solution you have (as a result of using tool C) could take things further (cracking). And after that, someone has an idea that using tool D will make the solution even stronger still, or add a useful new advantage (stacking).
Play with the arrangement
It may be that choosing three tools and using them in a different order would give a different result, and that may concern your group – how do they choose the ‘best’ order to run the tools in, so they can iteratively build on success?
In truth there’s probably no way of knowing in advance. Just experiment, play with it and try running different tools in different orders. But as I say, you’ll often find that after running one tool someone gets a feel for what next tool would dovetail effectively with it.
Finally, there’s a bonus half-tool I’ll squeeze in here because it’s about redefining how you approach problem solving. I call it the equivalence approach.
This means looking at how someone else (in an unrelated field, preferably) has solved a problem – not the same problem you have, but perhaps one that has a little overlap or commonality. So you know what they did, now you brainstorm ideas around how they might have come up with their solution/innovation. You might not be right, of course, but you may still come up with a post-rationalised method you could use yourself. You’ll have created your own brand new problem-solving tool. And if you do, please let me know and (with your permission) maybe I’ll include it in the next edition of this book.
It’s not quite the same as think like another, which means having the mindset of another person or brand; it just means asking a question like, ‘How did Barclays come up with their Ping-it app, which gets around the problem of being able to send money securely via a mobile, even if you’re not a Barclays customer?’
So there you are – 12.5 tools for the price of 12.
Example
Dyson is a client I’ve worked with; a fantastic example of a man, company and brand that has dared to solve problems differently and achieved great success as a result.
I remember having a meeting in a board room at Dyson with a large glass table that James Dyson had designed. Not a conventional glass table, mind; this one didn’t have any legs. Instead there were thick steel cables clamped to the ceiling that came in at an angle, through holes in the desk, then back out wide to clamps on the floor. So the glass table top floated in mid-air.
Anyway, as everyone knows, James was turned down by all the major vacuum cleaner manufacturers with his bagless invention. He had to create his own company to get it made. A company which has continued to innovate ever since.
In fact a recent TV ad for the very slim, handheld Dyson talks about how the smaller, faster digital motor was compact enough to fit in the handle. This made it better balanced and easier to use. And in the ad, presented by Mr Dyson himself, he talks of challenging conventions (tool iii: be contrary).
But I want to look at how Dyson has taken another problem and solved it with a combination of creative thinking tools to innovate a breakthrough solution.
Here’s the problem: in the UK, the weather’s not really hot enough for long enough for most people to invest in air conditioning at home. If it gets really hot, we might use a fan. But fans are a bit rubbish. The blades chop the air, so it feels irritating. They’re also distractingly noisy and those whirling blades mean they have to have a grille to make them safe(r) for children and animals, which makes them ugly.
So let’s solve that problem. First of all, let’s give ourselves a constraint (tool iv: be constrained). And the constraint is: develop a fan that has no blades. It’s never been done before. There are thousands upon thousands of fans out there by hundreds of different manufacturers, and they all have blades. So let’s insist that whatever we come up with, it has to be blade-free.
Hmm … The Dyson engineers go away and work out how you can make air move without blades. They come back with an idea reminiscent of a jet engine, drawing in up to 33 litres of air per second. Suddenly you’ve got a fan that you feel safer using when children are around, because they can’t stick their fingers/tongue/a knife through the grille to hit the blades. In fact, we don’t even need the grille any more.
But let’s go further with our redesign. We’ve got a fan without blades, so we’re solving the problem of the whirring noise, of the dangers if it tips over and even maybe the problem of the buffeting, chopped air. But can we do more? What if we think like another (tool ii).
So how about Apple? Because, believe me, many people at Dyson consider their brand to be the Apple of the markets they’re in. So how would Apple make a fan? It would be beautiful, sculptural, elegant … and so perfectly balanced you could tilt it to any angle with just one finger.
And instead of having three or four fixed power settings, you’d have a single dial (without any clumsy wording written by it, obviously) so you could change the power of the fan to precisely the level that suited you.
And if you look at the Dyson Air Multiplier, that’s exactly what you’ll find. A beautiful, sculptural, minimalist, blade-free fan using (hidden) innovative technology.
Solving one problem, creating another
However, we have created a new problem. All that development time … was expensive.
So our fandangled spandangled new fan is going to have to be pretty pricey. (Currently the Dyson desktop fan is about seven times the price of a cheap one with blades.)
Now this is a problem I don’t think Dyson has solved – at the time of writing, it seems to me they’ve simply ignored it. Of course, over time the price may come down as the cost of manufacturing falls and they cover their development costs. And they market it as the best fan there is, so if you’ve got pots of money and you want the best, then you’ll buy it.
But I think they could go further: perhaps by using sidestep the issue (tool viii). Instead of ignoring the problem, how could they sidestep it the way Stella Artois did for their high price?
Perhaps they could position the Dyson Air Multiplier as more than simply a fan, but also as a piece of art for your desk or room or office. Because it might be expensive for a fan, but it’s cheap for a modern sculpture. Imagine doing some product placement in films and TV programmes, the way every laptop user in the movies has an Apple. A beautiful piece of sculpture in the living room of a Jennifer Lawrence film: Dyson fans would quickly get many more … fans (sorry).
Or could they solve something simpler (tool xi). Instead of trying to find ways to reduce the price (which might be a valid but challenging route), could they just make it seem better value? For instance, they offer a five-year guarantee on their vacuums, but only a two-year guarantee on their fans. Why’s that?
The price of a Dyson vacuum is not seven times the price of a cheap vacuum, unlike the fan price disparity. So they should at least match the guarantee – perhaps double it. (After all, for most people in the UK, the fan’s not going to get that much use, so you’d hope it would last 10 years.) And if you advertised the product with a 10-year guarantee then the price wouldn’t seem so steep, because you knew the fan was going to last. In fact, customers might divide the price by 10 in their heads and think, ‘Oh, per year that’s pretty good value.’
Perhaps they could think like another (tool ii). Furniture stores like DFS, for example – they’re always advertising their ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes. ‘Pay nothing for a year then pay 12 interest-free instalments of just £XX’ for example. There’s no reason Dyson couldn’t do that; a two-year payment period would be no longer than the guarantee they’re currently offering anyway.
We could go on, but I think the point’s been made. Dyson, it might be suggested, has created a breakthrough product using a combination of problem-solving/innovation tools. And by exploring a few more tools, you can see how we could take things further still.
Summary
Combine and redefine is not about just using one tool after another (which you’ll do anyway), but about seeing if one tool can build on the progress made by a previous one. You’ll need to experiment to see what the ‘best’ order of tools is for your particular challenge.
It can be just as effective for capitalising on an opportunity/developing an innovation as it is for problem solving. And it’s best used when you’re talking about a significant problem or opportunity and you have the time you need to explore it fully.
It’s also one you’ll get better at over time – make a little progress with one tool and instinctively you’ll get a feel for which other tool will help you move things on further. You’ll create favourite combinations from individual tools, like coming up with a pleasing chord from individual notes.
To use combine and redefine successfully, ask:
- Can we stack the benefits with more than one tool (as in the Dyson example), or use multiple tools to crack the problem further?
- Are we persevering with one tool for long enough?
- But are we alert to when another tool is itching to jump in?