Skip to main content

Reverse your Assumptions - My Ideation session at Barcamp06

I conducted two ideation sessions at the Barcamp organized by PuneTech. The crowd was very enthusiastic and creative - it was not only my first Barcamp but also the first time that I did Ideation sessions with such a big crowd. I chose to demonstrate two powerful creative thinking tools.

The first session: I demonstrated the application of the tool "Reverse your Assumptions" - the Techies found this tool very cool. I had learnt this tool from the book "The Medici Effect" and got good ideas every time i used it.

First we did some generic examples like Restaurant, School etc. Then we took up the problem of improving the traffic situation in Pune - came up with a big bunch of reasonably out of the box ideas in just 30 minutes.

How - The tool works like this. Take the concept of School. List down the most basic assumptions about a school - like a school needs taechers, students, classroom, books, exams etc. Then reverse each of these assumptions - a school without a teacher, no exams, no books, no students etc. Brainstorm around these reversed assumptions and list teh ideas, Finally relate the ideas to a convention school - we end up with innovative ideas to run a school.

Why - The tool readily gives out of the box ideas because when you reverse the assumption, you are able to break free from your present paradigms. You are able to escape your psychologial inertia and think fresh.

Reverse your assumptions to break the psychological inertia.
Labels:

Comments

  1. RyanReibeyJanuary 4, 2022 at 5:49 PM

    I'm not sure why but this weblog is loading extremely slow for me. Is anyone else having this problem or is it a problem on my end? I'll check back later and see if the problem still exists. mexican war service records


    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Archimedes' Bathtub, Newton's Apple and Einstein's Chair

When do Great Ideas come ? .... after Incubation  Archimedes had his bath, Galileo had his leaning tower,  Newton had his apple, and Einstein had his chair. All these Inventors were (a) intensely focused on solving specific physics problems (b) they had each looked at a variety of promising ideas, but reached an impasse after some stage (c) they smartly decided to move away from the scene - took a break (d) after some time, a fresh idea popped into their Mind (e) they recognized the potential of the idea and held on to it (f) they diligently worked on it  and finally developed a real breakthrough concept. Many Inventors have shared the vale of incubating their idea and described specific instances where the incubation phase is followed by a sudden enlightenment. We have heard the stories of Archimedes, Galileo and Newton too often - so let us focus on Einstein's story. You might have heard of Einstein's Violin but not about his chair - the chair that gave...
4 comments
Read more

Why & How we should study AI & Machine Learning (6 Easy Steps)

AI & ML are fundamental new technologies that can create immense value to humankind. It is very important for us to learn AI & ML and apply this knowledge in our work.  If you are somebody like me without prior exposure to computers, you may wonder where to begin the journey – I did some homework and found an easy step-by-step using online resources . It takes only 6 easy steps to gain mastery in AI & ML. I will start with sharing with you the talk that Risto Siilasmaa (Chairman, Nokia) gave in Nov, 2017 – “Why you should study AI and Machine Learning and how I did it”. Step # 1 - Risto Siilasmaa started his journey into AI & ML by asking, “Where could I find good material explaining how machine learning works in terms that would speak to an engineer who loves to understand how things work?” Step # 2 - “ Why not study machine learning myself and then explain what I learned to others who are struggling with the same questions. Perhaps I could mo...
68 comments
Read more

Parallels between Panini and Altshuller

There are good parallels between how Panini simplified and made Sanskrit grammar accessible to all and how Altshuller simplified and made the collective wisdom of Inventive knowledge accessible to all. Panini and Altshuller were not contemporaries, they were separated by at least 25 centuries. But their zeal and perseverance to reduce complex stuff into a handful of powerful principles is very much comparable. Their himalayan effort connected the invisible dots and brought out patterns that were submerged in a vast amount of unstructured data.  Panini is a great sanskrit grammarian and logician (~ 4th century BC).  He was a pioneer in Linguistics and his works were path breaking in both descriptive and generative linguistics. He was a forerunner of modern formal language widely used in modern computer languages. Source -  http://ramm.hubpages.com/hub/PANINI-LOGICIAN-AND-SANSKRIT-GRAMMARIAN Genrich Altshuller, the originator of TRIZ, was working in the pat...
1 comment
Read more