A similar shift occurs, at a generic level, whenever business strategists move from focusing on the problem of "How do we sell more of product X7 to "What need is the customer trying to satisfy?" For, as one of the fastest growing companies in the traditionally staid construction air compressor market explained to us, it was the realization that "nobody needed an air compressor - what they needed was efficient, reliable compressed air" that allowed customers to complete their projects on time and budget. This reorientation caused them to rethink their entire portfolio of products and services and to see the possibilities inherent in offering energy efficiency monitoring and a host of other services that complemented their traditional product offerings and drove dramatic new growth.
Playing
To an extent that is often unrecognized, even by engineers and designers, play is a key element of the creative act. Many significant technical achievements have their origins in playful experimentation. Think of the architecture of Frank Gehry. His famous flowing curtain walls, as in the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum or the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, are the product of the highest order of structural engineering, but channeled in ways directed by playful experimentation. Gehry comes from an architectural tradition of modeling, and this tradition itself has a core element of play attached to it. Playful engineering, as it has been called, revolves around the capacity to simulate and model wide varieties of possible approaches. So Gehry's firm, for example, applies the most advanced computer modeling to facilitate enormous variation in possible forms and structures. These variations, in turn, are generated by a playful approach to the problem, allowing the mind to range over possibilities that may at first glance seem unlikely or even foolish, but which, given the opportunity to explore, model and prototype, can become exceptional moments of creativity.