Creative Thinking Techniques. No.1 Fractionation.
After Michael Michalko
It’s often the case that the solution to a problem lies within the problem itself. By pulling apart and dissecting the problem we can see its component parts and, sometimes, reassemble them into a new configuration.
My favorite toys when I was a child were Lego, Mechano, or any simple building blocks (that may be why I became a designer), so I am disappointed to see that Lego now produces almost exclusively specific, purpose-made kits for creating single, specific models. I fully realize that Lego has completely changed its economic fortunes but I can’t help feeling that something has been taken away by adding something more. One of the joys of a simple building block is that it can become almost anything, but that involves some mental effort and some imagination.
Fractionation, sometimes called Split Cherry, illustrated by Michael Michalko in his wonderful book Thinkertoys, is an ideation method used like original Lego blocks, that allows you to re-assemble your challenge into any number of alternative ideas.
In the illustration above, most people will see a square. Yet there is no square. Our perception encourages us to see a square because our brains have a deep-seated need to “complete” the story. The illustration splits the attributes (the circles) and our minds find new meaning (the square) where none may have existed before. We create and complete the square in our minds.
Likewise, if we take a challenge and split its attributes, we can shape and reshape those components into ideas where there were none previously.
Let me explain, in practical terms, how to do this;
1. State the challenge or problem in two words. For instance, if your challenge/problem was “How can I improve my method of picking Pears?” Thus our two words become “Pears” and “Picking”.
2. Split the challenge into two separate units. See the diagram below.
3. Split each attribute into two more attributes. In this example, “Pear” is split into “Delicate” and “Separate”. “ Picking then splits into “Remove” and “Transport”.
Everyone will split their attribute differently, and this is not a problem; everyone sees things differently. It’s up to each person to decide on his or her individual attributes and how to allocate them.
4. Continue splitting the attributes until you feel that you have enough attributes to work with. In this example “Delicate” is split into “damaged,” and “blemished”, “Separate” into “selecting” and “closeness to each other”, “Remove” into “touch and hold” and “Picking”, “transport” into “ground” and “boxes.”
5. Examine each attribute for ideas. This is where the magic happens. Big ideas can be found in insignificant attributes. These smaller sub-attributes may contain the kernel of a transformative solution.
6. Reassemble the attributes. Having changed one or several of the attributes and re-combining them will create new perspectives, and, potentially new ideas.
So our attributes are as follows (specifically reshuffled):
· Separate
· Transport
· Delicate
· Remove
· Blemished
· Closeness to each other
· Picking
· Boxes
· Damaged
· Selecting
· Touch and hold
· Ground
Here you may take any one attribute, such as “closeness to each other” and decide to cultivate a pear tree in such a way that the fruits were not so close to each other, such as Espalier or fan shapes.
You may also recombine attributes such as “transport,” “damage” and “remove” and find new ways to accomplish these three attributes. Perhaps you could wrap the pears in individual biodegradable containers before transporting at the site.
By further associating attributes in various combinations and playing with potential ideas and solutions, novel ideas should become apparent. Rearranging information provokes new ways of doing things. It doesn’t matter how many attributes you use or link together, the idea is to use the attributes as raw building blocks, upon which to construct new ideas.
The more attributes you split down into, the deeper the potential solutions. If this is done as a group activity, the process is multiplied and may produce surprising results, although there may be some overlaps. This process may also be enhanced by swapping attributes found between separate groups of attributes, and then worked on and considered.
Let’s imagine that a sports magazine publisher sets herself a challenge: “how can I extend my market for my magazine?” To address this challenge, she breaks down the problem into some of the relevant attributes:
By addressing and combining the attributes of “sports”, Magazine, Children, school, and young athletes, she saw that by modifying the magazine to appeal to kids there was a new market. Thus, the publisher can add features to the magazine, such as “outstanding young athlete” and then sell subscriptions through schools, and provide free subscriptions to underprivileged children and market to educators with articles on teaching guidelines. Breaking the magazine publishing into its attributes engenders a new way to find new potential markets.
As another example, a beer company was looking for new products to sell. To generate new ideas, they split the challenge into clusters of attributes, one of those clusters as follows:
· Distribution network
· Rural
· Liquid
· Flavored six-packs
· Spring water
As a result of this cluster, they developed the idea of a new line of bottled water. At that time bottled water was distributed to urban areas nationally, but was less available in rural areas. The beer company, because it had an established distribution network, realized hat they could penetrate the rural areas more easily than others.
The beer they sold used the same mountain spring water. They now sell plain water and flavored water in six-packs. Interestingly, the solution to sell bottled water from the mountain spring wasn’t apparent to the executives until they studied the challenge and fractionated it into the component attributes of selling beer.
Another way to further enhance the power of the attributes is to think the opposite. First, reverse the statement of the problem or challenge. In our examples that might be: “how can I make the pear picking process worse?”, “How can I narrow the market for my sports magazine?” and “How can I sell fewer products?”. Each question highlights an aspect of what may not be working or what is actually working. By extending this technique to attributes, you further clarify what is essential, what is important, and what those attributes may, or may not be. The main idea is to drill down into what the problem actually is and what attributes are necessary and unnecessary.
Fractionating attributes is a powerful device for breaking apart a problem or challenge into separate pieces. Fractionating exposes new material that may have been part of something else or enables you to see the same challenge from a different point of view. As with building blocks, attributes are the raw material for building complex structures. By slotting back each piece into a new space, ideas begin to develop into new forms.
