Taking Out is one of the 40 Inventive Principles of Problem Solving.
Why do I want to fit Principles into SCAMPER approaches? In a recent post (check it here first) I explore how SCAMPER can embrace the 40 Principles of Inventive Problem Solving. The goal is to wrap the complexity of the Principles in the approachability of SCAMPER. Eliminate defined in Applied Imagination Under the category of…
Many autonomous car efforts use lidar (light detecting and ranging) to “see” the world. Combining a laser transmitter and receiver, lidar detects the tiny but measurable time it takes for the laser to bounce off an object to determine how far away it is. By steering the laser, the lidar can produce a 3D scan…
Amazon is a dominant player now, but its birth was plagued with doubt and financial weakness, reveals the book The Everything Store by Brad Stone. Amazon started as an online book seller, and this was a canny move by Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder. Books were true commodities – all the same, no question of whether…
Sell on Amazon I think most buyers who select items on Amazon are scarcely aware that most of the product listed there is not owned by Amazon, but rather by third parties. Amazon has built an entire ecosystem around listing third party products and even storing and shipping third party products under its Fulfilled by…
The problem I live in the fashionable SoFo (south of Fortinos) neighborhood of Maple, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto. Prominent in the local news is the Toronto School Board’s decision to suspend over 5,000 elementary students with incomplete immunization records. For as long as I have been a parent (13 years) the standard method for…
Design Thinking I am currently listening to the audiobook “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. I’m only at the beginning but already it has provoked some thought. They argue that “design thinking” can be applied to one’s life just as it can be applied to…
W. Edwards Deming is a giant figure in the realm of quality management. In the aftermath of the second world war, Japanese companies turned to Deming, an industrial expert, for his input on creating top quality products. These same companies, including Toyota and Sony, rebuilt the Japanese economy and became global competitors, besting many American…
Tweel nice Conventional pneumatic tires use air pressure to maintain their shape and resistance to weight and driving forces yet also cushion the vehicle from road imperfections. Principle 29 – Pneumatics and Hydraulics Michelin has developed an airless tire called the Tweel. This is a merging of tire and wheel into an integrated unit. Principle 5…
Ah, the glamour of international travel. I thought this was cool. This is a package of toilet paper we picked up at the nearby Walmart on our vacation in Puerto Vallarta. Notice that the inner rolls are flattened to reduce the overall packaging size. I’d never seen this before. Since toilet paper is lightweight it’s…
Electric fuel pump New Zealand’s company Rocket Lab has an Electron rocket that uses a similar layout to SpaceX’s Falcon rocket. Both have a nine engine first stage and a single engine second stage. Both use liquid oxygen and RP-1, a refined form of kerosene. The most notable difference is scale – the Falcon is…