359° Thinking. Exploring untributes.
When it’s time to reinvent something, may I suggest you start with exploring its untributes? This is a very simple way to rethink anything. Just look at what it isn’t.
Let’s look at how this might work in new product development. Start off by listing the attributes of a product. Now, turn them into what I call untributes. Soft becomes not soft. Fast become not fast. Stop becomes don’t stop.
“Stop becomes don’t stop? “ you ask. Maybe I should, uh, stop here, and give an example.
Okay, let’s take brakes on a car. Brakes stop you, right? Brakes that don’t stop you are bad, righter? Well, how about anti-lock brakes. They stop, then they don’t stop, then they stop, then they don’t stop. Get it.
In their desire to make breaks stop better, some engineers likely figured, “well when stopping causes a skid, that’s not good.” (Engineers are really, smart people.) “So, how about if we employ that pumping action that drivers are told to do to prevent skids.” (Growing up with New England winters I learned the ol’ pumping action routine on my tricycle.)
By exploring untributes it opens up a whole wide range of possibilities. In The Do-it-yourself Lobotomy workshop and book we talk about 180° Thinking™ - going in the opposite direction of conventional thinking. 180° Thinking is great at helping people push away from preconceptions in a quick, easy manner.
Well, looking at untributes is a form of 180° Thinking, I suppose, but maybe it’s more of a 359° Thinking thing. Looking in all other directions but the conventional path.
Hot doesn’t necessarily become cold, it simply becomes not hot, which can mean warm, hot only some of the time, hot in only one place, hot during certain times, or warm during those times, but cool, not cold, at other times,…. The possibilities are endless.
When leading new product brainstorming sessions sometimes I have the teams list ten basic attributes of a product, then list the corresponding untributes. Sometimes saying something is “not __(attribute goes here)___” makes no sense. Sometimes all the “not”-ing you want doesn’t give an attribute a fresh start. Fine, move on and look at the next attribute. But don’t do it too quickly. Often the seeming realization that something doesn’t make sense is the first sign that you’re stuck in one place and maybe need to look at something in a fresh manner.
Toyota is proud to be one of the leaders in mass produced energy-efficient cars starting with their hybrid, Prius. They’ve also been a leader in the Formula 1 racing world, where speed is everything, efficiency be damned. (I sure hope them anti-lock brakes don’t stop too good.) In fact, according to Toyota engineers, every incremental advancement in speed means the vehicle is even less efficient. Me thinks Toyota speaks from both sides of its crash helmet.
Well, guess what? They see the hypocrisy in it as well, and now Toyota is trying to figure out how to make efficiency one of the metrics to measure Formula 1 racing, not just speed. Interesting. Not speed. And untribute.
Now, did they get to this point by doing the little “list the attributes, then say ‘not’ to them” exercise I’m suggesting. Probably, uh, not. But what they did do was to be open to something that is totally not the essence of Formula 1 racing’s reasons for being.
I see creativity as an active process, “I will have an idea!” and as a passive state, “I am open to new ideas.” It doesn’t matter which method gets you there, as long as you do get there.
And get there as fast or as efficiently as you like, I might add.
© 2006 Tom Monahan, all rights reserved.
