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1454 : STEP TWO – GENERATING NEW IDEAS

powered children’s squirt-guns. This perception allowed them to
incorporate the toy’s low-cost electric pump and battery into the new
design.112

no one gets ahead by copying the status quo Tom Kelley of IDEO
is also a great exponent of seeking analogies in general and from toy
stores in particular. Recognising that no one gets ahead by copying the
status quo, as he puts it, his company has learned an enormous amount
about how to do things simply and cheaply from toys, tearing apart the
latest models to ‘find out how the toy manufacturer did it with a few
microchips and plastic’.113

The technique for generating analogies for sub-systems combines the
attribute-listing technique with the technique for general analogies
described earlier. The starting point is to break down the opportunity
into sub-systems or attributes, as we saw with the morphological
analysis technique of the ‘four + on the flat’. You then develop
analogies for each of the sub-systems or attributes. This technique is
helpful in bringing alive the sometimes ‘drier’ techniques within
morphological analysis.

bionics The term bionics has been used to describe the systematic

use of biological and botanical analogies to solve novel engineering
problems. Bionics uses stimuli from nature and biological and botanical
systems to inspire ideas for products, services and processes. While it is
a technique widely used in industry and private research labs to solve a
variety of electronic, thermal, hydraulic, mechanical and chemical
problems, it is equally valuable in more everyday situations.

bionics uses stimuli from nature and
biological and botanical systems to inspire
ideas

Joe Moya and Joe Raia, owners and founders of Joe Designer Inc., are
eloquently aware of the power of the environment to stimulate ideas:
‘There are beautiful things in nature that you can apply to products,
especially with form. When we were developing [products with soft,
rounded contours, such as the Betty Crocker Handmixer], we borrowed
contours off everything from nature to classic cars.’114