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What Inspired the PRIZM method?The Science of InnovationWhat Creativity Tools Don't Do... In 2005, the PRIZM Game Company did a literature review and summary of what was known about creativity and innovation by English speakers. They looked at the most current disciplines and over 110 tools, which exist to help enhance creativity and innovation. They also looked at organisational change, design and manufacture, in different countries and in different areas of industry, education and science. At one end of the scale were the thinking tools, which are useful for generating ideas or defining problem-scenarios. Tools like the '6 Thinking Hats', 'Lateral Thinking', the 'Random Word' technique of Edward De Bono, as well as the 'Mind-mapping' of Tony Buzan. Unfortunately, these tools lack the kind of rigour required to analyse and synthese complex, potentially contradictory data. That means they are of limited use to people who need high-level, technical results. Thinking tools do exist, which are rational and rigorous. Methods such as Taguchi, FMEA and QFD are highly analystical and statistical but are still one-sided and do not provoke ‘out-of-the-box’ novelty. Even TRIZ, one of the most comprehensive tools for solution-finding used by engineers, is not complete. PRIZM is the first modern thinking tool that guarantees to show you how to systematically borrow relevant knowledge from one object or field of interest and transfer it to another while simultaneously promoting innovation and creativity. PRIZM was influenced by four disciplines in particular: TRIZ - which has information from hundreds of thousands of engineering patents; Biology - which has undergone millions of years of research to evolve the best patterns of form and behaviour; Buddhist meditation - which has been established in 2500 years of research on creative space and mind; and the concept of 'Flow' - which comes from modern research on motivation, joy and skill "PRIZM opens your mind to possibilities. It gets you to think outside the square, |
