Suppose you are trying to create a new way to reduce concussions in football players. You attempt to bypass all the known approaches and get out to unexplored territory. You ask Google “What are promising unexplored ways to reduce concussions?” by typing in variations on the keywords in this question. No matter how you type it, Google returns known approaches that perhaps at some point in time were considered “promising” or could one day lead to “unexplored” ways. The fact is that Google and the other search engines are extremely good at digging up the past. But they are constrained by the past and cannot look into the future.

Using a new search method designed specifically for innovation, we have come up with a radical new solution to reducing concussions that reliably transforms direct helmet hits into glancing blows. We are moving to patent our idea that has been evaluated by two physicists and one mechanical engineer. But what kind of search engine could have possibly helped us glimpse into the future?

This new search engine accepted “reduce concussions” and exploded it into over two dozen ways to phrase the goal that are far-removed from the world of football, including the following phrases: reduce energy, minimize force, exchange forces, substitute energy, oppose energy, repel energy, lessen momentum, and alter direction. A simultaneous search on this extensive collection of loosely-related goals returned solutions from diverse fields and easily thrust us into unexplored territory. Quickly, we identified a known solution from a distant field that would do the trick. Quite likely, there are more hidden treasures within our search results, but we took a break after finding the gem we did.

The trick to peering into unexplored territory is to look laterally as opposed to focusing in depth on one area. We humans easily get stuck on the particular details of a problem. This tendency keeps us close to the areas where our search started: football helmets, sports helmets, brains, and craniums. Psychology research confirms that without help, it is very difficult for us to think broadly. My research has found that rephrasing the goal in vastly different, somewhat-synonymous ways is an easy way to break free from the shackles of the details of the problem. It turns out that when you look broadly across the vast horizon of the manifold areas of human research, there are many ways to achieve something like “reduce concussions.” It just takes the right method to liberate us from the minutia of the problem and send us to the right altitude from which to view the overall landscape.

Every goal can be described in short structured phrases, such as reduce concussions in football players. The first item is always a verb (e.g., reduce), which describes the change you desire. The second item is a noun (e.g., concussions) or noun phrase (e.g., a concussion), which names what you want to change. The remaining items are one or more prepositional phrases (e.g., in football players), which articulate important constraints or relations. To look laterally, the first thing to do is to discard the prepositional phrases (e.g., in football players) that tie you down to the specifics of your problem. With just the verb and the noun remaining (e.g., reduce concussions), you have named the essence of your goal and are poised to freely move laterally by considering the many closely associated terms (i.e., synonyms and causally-related terms) of these two words.

You can partially perform this goal-explosion process manually by using a thesaurus, but you will miss out on many relevant close associations. And, you can, of course, perform a search on each phrase individually and attempt to group all the search results in meaningful ways. Our research has resulted in a search engine that does all this and more while targeting the resources of your choice: patent databases, scientific journals, your own corporate data, etc.

Being truly innovative requires peering into the uncharted territory of untried ways to solve your problem. Google-style searching cannot help you because it is chained to finding the known approaches. Lateral-searching is the way to maneuver at the right altitude to reach the clearing of unexplored approaches to your problem. Innovation requires lateral-searching and there are now lateral-search engines that can help you gaze into the landscape of the future.

Contact Dr. Tony McCaffrey (tony.mccaffreyphd@gmail.com) for more information.

For example, a company needed to adhere a coating to Teflon--a problem they had been stuck on for quite some time.

In one day, I solved the problem because I systematically listed out all the assumptions they made by stating the problem the way they did. Here's how I did it.

I went through each of the  50 Viewing Lenses and articulated what assumptions were hidden behind the verb adhere. I listed 23 assumptions but the key ones were the following. The verb adhere assumes:

1) chemical energy is used
2) two surfaces are involved
3) contact is crucial to the act of adhering

Negate the assumptions and explore alternatives to each, such as:

1) magnetic energy
2) three surfaces
3) contact is NOT crucial to the act of adhering

The result is the Teflon Sandwich.

Place a magnetic surface behind the Teflon and some ferrous material in your coating. The coating will now stick through the Teflon to the magnetic surface, but all the while keep the coating juxtaposed to the Teflon.

In sum, listing out your assumptions in a systematic manner can quickly get you unstuck by uncovering possible features of the solution that you are overlooking.

For example, suppose you want to create new kinds of candles. Innovative designs are built on the commonly overlooked (i.e., obscure) features, but how do you notice what is obscure about a candle (or any other object, for that matter)?

Let's look at the candle through 50 different lenses and notice which lenses are rarely used for a candle. Each lens represents a different type of feature that any object could possess.

When examining a candle, people generally notice the size, color, and shape of the candle. But almost no one notices motion--that a candle is motionless when it burns. It is just too obvious to come into awareness. However, when shown a rocking chair, people notice motion right away. So, motion is obscure for candles and thus a good feature upon which to build new candle designs.

Let's build a candle that goes into motion of its own dynamics. The rising hot air from candles has been used to turn little fans above candles, but weight loss of candles is a feature that is generally overlooked and thus underutilized. Using weight loss to cause vertical motion led to the self-snuffing candle, which has been licensed for production by Pilgrim Candle.

As it burns the candle loses weight and slowly moves upward. After a while, it will move into the snuffer and extinguish itself. Make it look ornate and adjust the counterweight to alter the time before snuffing and you have a new candle built upon two obscure features: motion and weight loss.

This is just one of our moving candle designs and there are many more obscure features of candles that the 50 Viewing Lenses uncovered. The 50 Viewing Lenses can be applied to any physical object to help notice its obscure features. Once obscure features are noticed, then innovative designs come quickly.

Contact Dr. Tony McCaffrey to learn all 50 lenses.