Katie Konrath has some great posts on the creative technique of using ‘random words’. Her first post is a competition on using her ‘Random Word’ generator to come up with ‘fresh ways to improve cars’:
http://www.getfreshminds.com/2007/07/your-challenge-.html
The random word I got was ‘Sail’, here was my submission:
SAIL + CAR
Sails allow you to harness the power of the wind. There is a lot of research into using renewable energy to power cars and reduce our dependency on gas. Designing cars with sails is an interesting way of using another renewable energy, the wind.
There are also solar sails; this was an idea I read about from Eric Drexler (Nanotechnology inventor) where he worked on using solar sails for powering spacecrafts. This could create ‘sails’ for cars with a dual power source, both capturing wind and/or sun. Now rainy days is always going to be the challenge!
Taking a slightly different angle and using ‘sail’ as a verb, you get the picture of smooth sailing. Cars could be put into a ‘sail mode’ where they use less fuel and move at a constant speed. This makes me think of the research into creating lanes where cars go into auto-pilot and are guided by a rail. This uses far less fuel and stops a lot of traffic congestion. Less stressful and saves the environment.
Proposed Idea
The idea I propose is the combination wind and solar sail for cars that combined with some of the current fuel cell technology could create some pretty eco-friendly cars. Free sail lanes, where cars equipped with this technology could use these special lanes free of charge, and everyone else with less eco-friendly cars have to pay a toll. Brings a new meaning to the phrase I sailed through traffic today.
Her second post is on 'Should you be making connections, or breaking them?' as she describes – ‘The Random Word is actually about escaping current connections to search for new ones.’
http://www.getfreshminds.com/2007/07/making-connecti.html
This is a great explanation of how our brains are great at associative thinking (making associations and seeing connections). The challenge is our brains get wired to associate in a certain way; cultural and other factors play into this. We create some very strong associations and as we learn more, we build more of these associations which in general is good, but we also start building associative barriers as we start to neatly ‘chunk up’ the world. This makes our brains much faster at thinking on a day-to-day basis. Children don't have as many barriers as adults and hence seem to be far more fluid at making interesting connections and asking really tough questions.
The challenge comes is when you want to solve some unique problems or come up with new ideas; our brain’s natural tendency to build these barriers and strong associations stop us from breaking out of our A to B thinking. This is where we need to force connections between disparate domains and break down some of these associative barriers. The random word technique is a great technique for forcing connections sometimes across these barriers. If you practice this technique you will become better at breaking down these associations and seeing connections between unrelated ideas, concepts and domains. This technique is a kind of combinatory play that is used by some of our greatest thinkers e.g. Einstein, Poincare. Being able to make connections and associations between disparate domains, fields and concepts allows you to solve problems that initially seem impossible when we see it in the bounded associative world we live in.
Kes is slated to speak at the 6th Annual Forum on
Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Babson College (Wellesley, MA) on Friday, October 12th 2007. Also speaking at this event will be executives from companies including Zipcar, Polariod, and Exit41. Although Kes hasn't formalized his talk, his intent is to share first hand experience on start-ups, bootstrapping, and innovation. 
