A very popular English band formed in 1971 called Roxy Music. They still perform as of 2014. The first keyboard player in the band was a man named Brian Eno. He is now a legend. He didn’t like traveling and apparently had artistic differences with the lead singer, Brian Ferry, so he quit the band in the early 1970s and settled in as a New York music producer.
What’s interesting is that Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt used their vast experience to create a deck of 100 cards called “OBLIQUE STRATEGIES”. Available for purchase in 1973, each card contained a phrase intended to help musicians and artists in general break out of creative blocks, encourage lateral thinking, and otherwise intelligently coax us from our comfort zones by stimulating sparks of inspiration.
Someone in my circle of musician friends owned this card deck, and I recently discovered that I still have a few of the cards. I can’t remember how my cards got separated from the rest but I surmise that I put them aside because these particular cards spoke to me.
I was looking through the cards for the first time in 30 years and was struck by how these statements can draw a person’s mind into a completely fresh thought stream. The first few that I read were decidedly for musicians: Make what’s perfect more human. Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element. Change instrument roles. Do the lyrics need changing? Give in to your worst impulse. Is it finished?
Then I came across several more general cards: Get your neck massaged. Go outside. Shut the door. Accept advice. Tape your mouth.
Good advice for anyone struggling with a problem. Now here’s where things get eerie. The next group of cards contained statements that sound like they are written for engineers and inventors rather than artists: Use something nearby as a model. Faced with a choice, do both.You’re not building a wall; you’re making a brick. State the problem as clearly as possible. Don’t avoid what is easy. What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving. Use an old idea.
I was taken aback. I knew immediately that I wanted to create a similar set of thought shifting cards for myself, other engineers and technical innovators designed to stimulate sparks of inspiration.
I already use have some questions that I ask myself when I’m stuck for a smart, creative solution. The first 3 cards (although all of the cards need to be randomized or shuffled during use) will have to be 3 questions that most often break me out of my thinking traps:
1 What problem is our customer trying to solve?
2 What assumption am I making that, if false, would destroy my plan?
3 If I was an outsider trying to disrupt my company, how would I do it?
Number one has been very productive for me. The customer doesn’t come to my company because they want to own a lot of our cables and software; they come because they need to train their pilots. This question often produces solutions that seem obvious in hindsight.
Four other cards may each simply say Add, Subtract, Multiply and Divide. Add, as in innovations that combine technologies (moisturizers with sunscreen, cell phones with GPS). Subtract like Post-it notes with chemically weak adhesive. Multiply like that picture-in-picture feature on modern TV sets. Or divide like separating the control buttons from the front panel of a machine and putting them on a remote controller.
I want to hear from readers of this article. Please leave comments with statements that you would put on your strategy cards. Some mind altering words that have changed the way you were thinking and lead to a great new idea. If I can collect enough good ones, we can create our own cards or an app that occasionally smacks our brain into seeing a sideways new approach to creative problems.
- Post Time: 06-05-16 - By: http://www.rfidang.com