By Lila Ojha
TINKERTOYS is an interesting book in order to interpose new ideas.
The author Michael Michalko, who is known as the creativity expert, worked as Army officer in the US and organized a team of NATO intelligence specialists and worked at CIA’s think tanks using his creativity thinking techniques.
Michalko has designed various tools and written techniques to generate creative ideas in this book. This is especially useful for those who wants to be entrepreneur or corporate leader. However, any professional can be equally benefited from these unique creative tools and techniques devised by him.
Many ideas, tips, examples and tools are the key resources from this book which anyone can use to overcome challenge and enhance their professional and personal thinking pattern. Following are some key thinking tools for rethinking the status quo situation in a different way.
For instance:
- Reversing conventional assumption
- Attribute listing
- Fractionation
- Mind Mapping
- Questions
By reversing our assumption broadens our thinking. The writer has given many examples about reverses ideas. For example, in previous decades customer had to buy a car before they drove it. But when General Motors created an idea by reversing that assumption then customer could able to buy a car while they were driving it through the installment buying from car dealers.
Recognizing and attributing our problems and challenges we find in our life can also be a new idea. To do so, we need to be flexible on our thoughts. For instance, the book writer states that many corporate and manufacture companies would able to improve their production capacity and design by examining the original structure. For example, the Hybrid car is just the developed form of original designed car.
Likewise, splitting our challenges and the reassembling the parts into new form we can generate is a unique structure by itself. According to the writer, these sort of experiment we can apply in the corporate customer service or in any service company to improve effectiveness of business houses can be highly beneficial to the users.
The 380 pages book has divided into 38 chapters mentioning various good quotes as well. Such as;
- Pumping our mind is like making a path through tall grass. Originally there is not path, yet as you walk the same way each time, one appears.
- Every problem is a house with many rooms. To stimulate new ideas, identify and list the various attributes of a problem and work on one attribute at a time.
- How you involve people in your idea can make or break the Board’s effectiveness.
- Nothing is more harmful to a positive creative attitude than fears, uncertainties, and doubts.
In fact, the key notion of this book is that many things are already out there so we just need to see and observe existing things differently to generate new idea and perception. It’s quite relevant to everyone who wants to lead their field.
