Episode 4 - Defeating Functional Fixedness: Avoiding Blind Spots in Science, Engineering, and Design

“We all have a blind spot, and it’s shaped exactly like us.” – Junot Diaz

In Games for the Super-Intelligent, James Fixx tells the anecdote of a high school physics teacher who challenges his students to determine the height of a building using only a barometer. He believes the “right” method is to read the barometer at ground level, climb to the top of the building for another reading, and calculate the height via the measured pressure differential. One student, “bright enough to be bored by the obvious answer,” comes up with two alternative solutions: 1. Drop the barometer from the top of the building and measure the time to ground impact with the formula for. In this episode, Patrick K. Sullivan and Catherine Cruz discuss how defeating functional fixedness leads to breakthrough ideas and unorthodox solutions.

Oceanit practices ‘Intellectual Anarchy’ – empowering teams to break down traditional silos, transcend disciplines, and cross-pollinate ideas and expertise. We create breakthrough ideas, insights, discoveries, and developments — delivering the future as an interdisciplinary force. Through spinouts, co-development partnerships, licensing, and direct manufacturing, Oceanit thrives in delivering solutions to market at scale. Oceanit calls this practice ‘Mind-to-Market’, delivering deep science to disruptive, real-world innovations at scale and impact.

 

Intellectual Anarchy: The Art of Disruptive Innovation by Dr. Patrick K. Sullivan is available on Amazon. Get your copy at https://bit.ly/2Vk5bhN. 

 

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