Old notes: Techniques for problem solving by creativity

Before there were blogs, before there was Netscape, back when I used Mosaic on a Mac, I authored web pages. Even then I was struggling towards something like a blog post.

One of those early pages contained a review of what is still one of two or three most interesting business books of the 20th century -- reengineering the corporation.

Since it was tedious in those days to create new pages, I just extended the original page. Eventually it became a collection of odd notes.

Today, the whimsy of a full text search pulled up my old page. I found some interesting bits.

Now, of course, we have blogs.

So I'll periodically extract a few of the better parts -- the better to feed my prosthetic memory.

Starting with one on creativity ...

Management and Related Notes

Sutherland and others

1. Examine the symmetry of the problem, and you may find the symmetry of the solution.

2. Build a taxonomy of the problem and you may discover new combinations to explain

* divide problem into features
* make a each feature a dimension or axis
* organize dimensions into triplets (vary the triplets)
* each triplet forms a box: explore the box

3. Identify categories of the problem -- explore the inverse.

4. Attach the most generic and expansive version first .. A simpler version ... A special case ...

5. Describe the problem aloud to another person

6. Read papers, attend lectures on unrelated subjects.

7. Sleep, exercise.