When Desperate, Flip

Shifting perspective on a challenge, the framing of it, can lead to some great insights and ideas.

When truly desperate to get out of the box, one creative tool is to turn the challenge upside down, inside out, or “flip it.”

A former business partner of mine saved our medical software start-up from disaster using this technique. He said “if we can’t sell software to doctors, why don’t we buy the doctors?” Of course we all thought he’d had some thing to smoke on the way into the office, and we all slammed the idea the instant it came out of his mouth. On further reflection, it was brilliant, and we changed course rather dramatically. His idea, his flip of the problem frame, led directly to our IPO in 1996.

A fellow blogger in the creativity space posted a great piece on this concept with several real world examples, check out the Abundance Blog. I like a lot of Marelisa Fábrega‘s posts, this one related to the concept of reversals, or flips, is a particularly good one. She talks about reversals in the context of the TRIZ methodology (and TRIZ is a lot more than just reversals or flips). Now, you can do a flip without knowing TRIZ, but her short intro on the method is worth the read.

Think of a current challenge and try to turn it on it’s head. It’s a great way to stretch your thinking.

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PS: If you want to start into more advanced creativity practice, you might consider my book — Jack’s Notebook, a business novel about creative problem solving. It’s done in story form, this is not your typical didactic business book!

PPS: If you liked this post or found it interesting, please comment, and/or subscribe to this blog, thank you)

    3 responses to “When Desperate, Flip”

    1. Marelisa says:

      Hi Gregg: Thank you for mentioning my blog here, and in particular the blog post on doing things the other way around. I recently discovered TRIZ and I’m having a great time learning about each of the 40 principles. But you’re absolutely right: you don’t need to know TRIZ in order to start solving problems and generating ideas by flipping things around. 🙂

    2. Kate Hammer says:

      Gregg, great image. It called to mind Daniel Burrus’s book on Flash Foresight. Early on he describes technical innovations in nanotechnology and oil extraction. The examples share the feature you’ve highlighted: the flip. Burrus writes: “When you look in the opposite direction from where everyone else is looking, you see things nobody else is seeing.” Put this way, it sounds like a simple and straightforward thing to do. But of course it’s all our habitual ways of doing things and the mental shortcuts we learn that make actually flipping hard in practice to do.

      Maybe because I’ve just been re-reading Burrus’s deep sea example, but it strikes me that whereas a flip may feel terrifying or plain impossible on dry land, it’s a cinch in a swimming pool. Being in water makes all the difference. Maybe there’s a kernel in this “build” for another blog post?

      • GREGG FRALEY says:

        Thanks for the comments Kate and Marelisa.

        A flip isn’t always easy to do as Kate points out, any very different thinking seems very uncomfortable. One way to step into this kind of very different thinking is simply to pretend you are someone else. Maybe that’s tomorrow’s post! I’m feeling a bit like… Abe Lincoln.

Posted in Creative Problem Solving (CPS), Creativity and Self-Expression, Innovation