March 2016
Intermediate to advanced
192 pages
4h 9m
English
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21 Take Away the Context
“It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.”
G.K. Chesterton
When we've got a problem to solve, our mind's tendency is to fixate on the common use of an object or its parts.
For example:
Problem 1: A ski company had a problem with their skis vibrating too much at high speeds. Obvious action: Look at other manufacturers' skis and snowboards.
Problem 2: People feel a lift journey takes too long. Obvious action: Make the lift faster.
Problem 3: Too many head injuries are happening in American football.Obvious action: Give helmets more padding.
But in actual fact the best solution to these particular problems were found in some very unexpected areas:
| Problem: Vibrating skis | Answer: Violins |
| Problem: Slow lifts | Answer: Mirrors |
| Problem: Head injuries | Answer: Magnets. |
Now you might think these very lateral solutions come from taking the blinkers off and widening your thinking. Wrong. You need to narrow your thinking. Reduce the problem to its purest form.
Take the problem of vibrating skis. The natural solution would be to focus on everything related to skiing: What happens to other makes of skis; what happens to snowboards; what happens on different types of snow at different speeds; what effect does the weight of the person on the skis have; and what effect does the width of the skis and the length of the skis have? And so on.
The trouble is everything is related to snow, skis and skiing. True, that's the ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.