Trying to Innovate? Learn to repurpose what you have
One of the many surprising and satisfying moments in an innovation workshop is when someone realises that something that was there all along can serve a new purpose and bring an innovative solution to a problem.
It is a eureka moment and it is also a moment of confusion: Surely we saw that before!?
What often stops us spotting these resources hiding in plain sight is a phenomenon known as ‘functional fixedness’. Overcoming this leads to more resourceful ideas. Getting good at scanning for this can save time, money and effort.
The famous candle experiment
The father of functional fixedness was a German psychologist called Karl Duncker. Duncker defined ‘functional fixedness as a “mental block against using an object in a new way that is required to solve a problem.” This ‘block’ limits the ability of an individual to use the components given to them to make a specific item, as they cannot move past the original intention of the object.
Back in the 1940s, Duncker conducted his now-famous cognitive performance test which has been told in different ways. It went something like this:
In the first exercise, a group were given three sets of objects: a candle, a set of thumb tacks and a closed box of matches. They were then given the task of using only these three items to fix a lit candle to the wall so that no wax would drip on the floor.
In the second exercise, the group was asked to perform the same task but the box of matches was open; the cover, the tray and the matches were all apparent. The solution was to remove the matches and use the box as a drawer that they could tack to the wall with the candle in it.
In the first experiment 80% did not find the solution. In the second, over 80% did. According to Duncker, the difficulty of this problem arose from the ‘functional fixedness’ around the matchbox. The problem was that most of them saw the box as an object used for holding matches. This was so entrenched in their thinking that they couldn’t see how it could become a makeshift shelf.
Not surprisingly, when tested using an analogous task, five-year-old children show no signs of functional fixedness. Apparently this is because they have had less experience with the use of various objects. Functional fixedness is apparent in 6–7-year-olds, however, who are significantly slower to use a box for support when its containment function has been demonstrated than when it has not.
Repurposing what we have
Where can we see examples of when functional fixedness has been ‘broken’?
My first car was a white Volkswagen Beetle. It was a fantastic little car that my dad helped me purchase for around $5,000. It made the signature purring sound that was unmistakable in the original version.
Most people know that the Beetle was the ‘People’s Car’. It was supposed to be very affordable and it was pretty basic. One of its well-known quirks was that the engine was in the back. So when, in 1961, they decided to add a windshield washer, Volkswagen had a problem: They did not want to add the complexity and cost of a pump to squirt fluid onto the windscreen, so after experimenting with a hand pump, they came up with a really nice hack. They used the air pressure of the spare tire! All you had to do was over- inflate your spare tyre and wash away!
An existing resource did a reasonable job and solved a problem. Who would have thought that the tyre could serve that purpose?
Sticking with cars, one of the challenges of electric cars is their range. You can’t go further than a few hundred miles without needing a charge. Dutch automotive startup Lightyear found a resourceful solution in the Lightyear One, a futuristic-looking electric sedan adorned with solar panels that recharge the car. The hood and the roof are made of solar cells protected by safety glass. These panels allow the driver to travel 450 miles on a single charge.
In advertising, some of the most creative, award-winning outdoor ads have broken functional fixedness by repurposing a resource in the urban landscape to reinforce a message.
One brilliant advert that had more impact by breaking functional fixedness was a ‘give blood’ campaign for National Blood Week in the UK. The John and Dylan Creative Team ‘drained’ the red from iconic features in London: the telephone box, buses, the red circle of the Underground, mail boxes and the masthead of The Mirror newspaper. In all cases the red was half-removed and the message written was: ‘London is running low on blood. Please make a date to donate’. It made for a visually arresting campaign.
In my go to method, Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), there is a thinking tool that helps scan for and ‘break’ functional fixedness. What the tool entails is to deliberately assign a new task to an existing resource. Here is just one way to use it:
The Task Unification Tool
i) Choose a topic for innovation (product, service, process, system).
ii) List its components.
iii) Choose a component from the list and assign its task to another component from the list.
iv) Visualise the ‘Virtual Situation’.
v) Identify opportunities, benefits and values for potential customers and situations
vi) Spot feasibility challenges.
vii) Adapt the new situation to meet constraints and organisational needs.
Despite how intuitive it may seem, at the end of most workshops where high impact ideas come out of a functional fixedness-breaking session, I hear people talking at the coffee machine stunned by what they missed. This is a blind spot worth chasing!
Rachel is passionate about cognitive bias and how it impacts our ability to think and to think differently. This article is adapted from her book, UNBLINKERED. Rachel runs an innovation and marketing strategy practice in Melbourne, Australia.
