Way back when (actually, in the 1960's I think), a company called AR which stood for Acoustic Research came out with a turntable. As I remember it, their turntable was unique in that it had no automation. Other consumer turntables that were being marketed were full of features — you just needed to plop down the record, press a button, and everything moved automatically as the player spun up to speed. AR was completely manual. You needed to pick up the stylus arm and manually place it at the edge of the record. Instead of putting their money into fancy features, their selling point was the quality of the motor, belt, stylus arm, etc. I remember that there was great debate about whether this was a step backward or a step forward.

Recently, I was looking to buy a treadmill and I recalled the AR turntable. Treadmills these days come with an almost unimaginable host of features. Of course they are all computer driven and you can choose from 25 or 50 different workouts. The displays are snazzy and can hook up to both audio and video entertainment as you run. There are a myriad of programming options and treadmill manufacturers compete as to who can offer more features. Well, what I was looking for was none of that. The selling point for me was the quality of the build (the parts you can't see) and the simplicity of the interface. All I wanted was a speed and incline control that I could manage myself. Unfortunately for me, no such thing exists. High quality with minimal features at a decent price is not a selling point these days.

The values that I was looking for are simplicity and robustness. My ideals seem to be completely misaligned with those of the marketing folks. Today, products are filled with features that look great but that nobody will use. They are also commonly built, not to the highest quality, but to more or less self-destruct after the warranty period ends. This way, the consumer will have to buy a new one.

There is much to be argued on both sides. Most business people accept the orthodoxy of "loading it up with features" and of built-in obsolescence. I am on the other side of that argument. I believe there is a serious marketplace (yes it is a niche market) for those of us who put quality and simplicity first.  People will pay for something that just does what it is supposed to do and does it very well. The AR turntable, even though it lacked common features that were standard on other turntables at the time, was a great success. There is opportunity out there for manufacturers not to simply follow the herd, but be a little different. How about making simplicity and quality the selling points.

By the way, if anyone knows of a basic but high quality treadmill….

Imagine that you had the task of designing a robotic hand. Certainly the phrase "robotic hand" suggests modeling the human hand. After all, the human hand is incredibly dexterous and capable of grasping all kinds of objects. Most robotic hands are modeled in one way or another after the human hand.  That is the obvious place to begin. However, if we re-frame the problem statement to designing a method of grasping and picking up objects, the universe of solutions becomes greater. Your attention focuses more on the general problem of grasping an object.

There are many ways one can imagine to grip and hold onto something, but researchers at Cornell University, University of Chicago, and iRobot pushed the boundaries of creative thinking to come up with a very unique idea — and it works! Their creative breakthrough involved coffee grounds and a party balloon — hardly the stuff one imagines when thinking about hi-tech robotics. I can imagine a researcher on this project after a hard day in the lab (possibly with no results to speak of). On his way home, he stops at the supermarket to pick up groceries, wanders into the coffee isle, grabs a bag of freeze dried coffee, and Eureka! Can this possibly work???  Read about (and see a video) of this unique gripper by clicking on the links below.

What I want to emphasize is the process of creativity. Now the supermarket story probably did not happen as I described it, but I am certain that the insight that a gripping action could be made by shrinking something from a fluid state to a solid state was probably triggered by a similar incident. We often work on problems in a linear and rational manner. Then, if we don't solve them, we let go of them and move onto something else.

However, the problem is still being worked on in the unconscious mind. Something completely unrelated in the outside environment will often trigger the solution. My supermarket scenario is an example of how this could happen. However the researchers came up with this creative solution, my guess is that it was a moment of insight that occurred when they were "off duty."

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-robotic-gripper-coffee-balloons.html

http://roboticstrends.com/research_academics/article/robotic_gripper_eschews_design_based_on_the_human_hand

Perhaps one of the greatest examples of innovative thinking in 2010 was the Stuxnet virus. Let me explain. I am not referring to the technical aspects of the virus, which I'm sure were brilliant as well. I am speaking about the idea of creating a computer virus to solve an otherwise intractable problem. The problem being Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. There were two obvious options on the table as ways to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Option 1 was to bomb their nuclear production facilities. While this might be successful, it would bring about tremendous repercussions. Iran would retaliate through waves of worldwide terror. While the objective of stopping Iran might be achieved, there would be a tremendous price to pay. Option 2, which was actually implemented, was international sanctions on Iran. While this option was a "safer" option in that it would not bring about immediate retaliation, the sanctions were not effective at all in slowing down Iran's drive toward its nuclear goals. If you read the newspapers during this past year, all discussion vacillated between these two options. These seemed to be the only alternatives out there.

What wasn't discussed (for good reason) in the papers was an ingenious third alternative that would significantly damage Iran's nuclear sites without acting as an obvious causus belli. This option was to create a computer virus that would infiltrate the computers that controlled the nuclear production facilities and damage the production equipment beyond repair. Nothing like this had ever been done before, and Stuxnet, as the virus is now called became the first use of a cyberweapon by one (or more) country against another. The Iranians were loathe to admit that their nuclear program had been infiltrated and compromised and therefore their reaction was very muted. The Iranian program was set back (although we don't know for how long), and there were minimal repercussions.

What I love about this approach is that it was so innovative, so out-of-the-box, so original that it shows creative thinking at its best. Most people viewing the Iranian situation were locked between two unappealing paradigms. This third approach is a beautiful example of stepping beyond the obvious to solve a problem in a masterfully unique way.