Created by Alex Osborn, the inventor of brainstorming, this technique can significantly boost your creativity once you master it. It includes 9 questions.
1. Does it have other uses, or could it be modified for other uses? For example, draft material cut from this project could be used in the next one. Rice can not only be eaten but also cooked into paste, and newspapers can also serve as wallpaper.
2. Can inspiration be drawn from elsewhere, or can experience or inventions from other fields be applied? For example, the steam engine was inspired by boiling water pushing up a kettle lid. Some bloggers rehash or repost the work of other original creators.
3. Can innovation be achieved by changing its inherent properties? These include shape, color, sound, taste, material, texture, temperature, and state. For example, changing how ordinary dental floss works results in a water flosser; changing the materials and optical properties of slide projection results in PPT.
4. Can innovation be achieved by expanding, enlarging, extending, or increasing something? This includes volume, length, width, time, intensity, speed, thickness, and concentration. For example, changing the light waves of an ordinary lamp turns it into a UV sterilizing lamp or an infrared heating lamp. Increasing the concentration of a floral scent turns it into perfume.
5. Can innovation be achieved by making something lighter, smaller, shorter, or less? This includes miniaturization, lightweighting, ultra-thin designs, concealed features, and simplified functionality. For example, reducing the size of a desktop computer produces a laptop; compressing the pacing of a video produces certain short videos.
6. Can something else be substituted, including materials, personnel, methods, energy sources, ingredients, or processes? For example, mismatching characters in a story and using misunderstandings can heighten the effect. Replacing waitstaff in a traditional restaurant turns it into an unmanned smart restaurant.
7. Can it be rearranged or transformed, including its sequence and layout, models and specifications, and the relative positions of component connections? For example, moving the propeller from the front of an early airplane to the top turns it into a helicopter. Put a visually striking shot at the beginning of a video to aim for a viral hit.
8. Can it be reconsidered from the opposite perspective, including swapping top and bottom, left and right, front and back, inside and outside, or reverse and forward? For example, using deceleration and braking to recharge an electric motor. State the conclusion first to improve communication efficiency. Use props to tell classic stories and play with memes.
9. Can things be combined? For example, a camera plus a newspaper, a phone, a map, and a music player equals a smartphone. Add 4 wheels, and it becomes a Xiaomi su7.
In fact, they could express this much more simply: Can something internal be applied externally? Can something external be drawn on internally? Can its attributes be changed? Can it be made bigger or more numerous? Can it be made smaller or fewer? Can it be replaced? Can part of it be transformed? Can the whole thing be reversed? Can things be combined? If this still feels hard to remember, we can also examine its underlying logic.
Following that logic, we can simplify it further: Can it be applied externally or drawn on internally? Can its attributes be changed or parts of it replaced? Can it be made bigger or more numerous, or smaller or fewer? Can part of it be transformed or the whole thing reversed? Can it be merged with something else? These five questions should be easy to remember.