Robinson Crusoe in Manhattan

Planned Accidents Are Good to Innovate With

A Cheeseburger Soaked in Water

In March, 2013, I participated in a three-day innovation workshop organized by Brandnew in a hotel in downtown Manhattan. For a long time I could not bring myself to book a flight from Tel Aviv to New York to attend Brandnew's workshops given the long time that I would have to spend on airplanes, let alone the jet lag that would await me. However, after receiving another email from Brandnew announcing one of their approaching workshops, I decided to book a flight, hoping that my decision would not result in a major waste of time and resources. And so it happened that on a cold and bright early morning I left my hotel in downtown Manhattan in a foggy cognitive state, having barely slept the previous night. After a short walk, I entered another hotel and, after losing my way in a maze of corridors, finally arrived at a conference hall where I found most of the workshop participants — twenty-four business people, some of whom were chief innovation officers in Fortune 500 companies — already seated at the tables that were arranged in a semicircle facing the four facilitators.

After all the participants had arrived, the facilitators asked them to briefly present their names, the companies they worked for, and their roles. Following this presentation, the facilitators devoted the next few sessions to explaining the origins and principles of Brandnew's signature innovation strategy in very broad brushstrokes that did not reveal any concrete applicable tools. During the short breaks between those sessions, some of the participants muttered to one another that they were losing their patience. They wanted to see the tangible results that they would be able to produce by means of whatever it was that Brandnew had to offer. Perhaps sensing this general mood, Tom, a facilitator in his early forties, opened the last session of the first day by announcing, to everyone's relief: "And now we will get our hands dirty. Find a partner and within thirty seconds find a product that your company does not make but which you like, and make sure to discuss what you like about it. It should cost less than fifty dollars." The participants grouped themselves in pairs and followed Tom's instructions. My partner was Angela, a woman in her early fifties who was a chief innovation officer in a major pharmaceutical company. Angela immediately suggested a cheeseburger as our product. She did not tell me what she liked about it, perhaps because she thought it was self-evident.

Tom then asked the participants to describe some of the products they chose. He then gave them further instructions: "Your next task is to make one change to your product — you're going to innovate now — this is the part where we become innovative!" He laughed. "Your task is to make one change to your product, but that change has to ruin it. It will make it absolutely horrible. That's going to be your innovation. Make a horrible product by means of one change to the thing that you love." I turned to Angela to discuss how to change the cheeseburger but it was clear that she had already had something in mind. She told me with a smile, "Let's soak it in water, the bun and the beef, everything. This seems like a nice way to ruin a good cheeseburger, no?" I agreed. Soaking a cheeseburger in water seemed like an excellent way to ruin it.

Tom continued by instructing everyone, "Now you get a full minute to take the ruined version of your product — don't change it anymore, you're stuck with it — but think of somebody who would be willing to pay you money to buy that product. So you have to identify what's good about it, what's better about it compared with the original product, why someone would be willing to pay for it. But," he cautioned, "the person who is going to pay for it can't be a masochist and it can't be used as a paperweight — it has to have a real use, OK? There has to be a real market that is willing to pay real money for this ruined version of your product. And if you have extra time you can name it and come up with a campaign." Angela and I turned to our soaked cheeseburger. Who would be willing to pay for such a disaster? The mere thought of our "product" was unpleasant. After a few minutes of reluctantly tossing around ideas in which neither of us truly believed, Angela, knowing that we had to come up with something in the next ten seconds, suggested in an almost apologetic tone, "How about branding it as a combination of food and drink for the person on the go?" She paused, almost too embarrassed to continue. "That way, you get your food and liquids at the same time," she finished her thoughts. We remained silent. I wondered if the rest of the workshop would be as senseless as this exercise and if I had made my long journey for nothing.

After collecting a few ideas — all unconvincing — Tom gave the participants a long explanation about the rationale behind the exercise. He started with a reassurance: "This was a silly exercise but it demonstrates one of the most fundamental principles of our method, which we will now learn." Angela and I listened attentively, eager to learn what kind of principle could justify ruining a perfectly fine cheeseburger.

Accidents Are Good to Think With

Tom explained that one of the key obstacles that prevent people from coming up with innovative ideas for new products and services is different kinds of cognitive fixedness they have with respect to existing products and services. One type of fixedness is "structural fixedness," which prompts people to approach an existing product or service as something whose parts can be arranged temporally or spatially in only one way: "Structural fixedness, like all types of fixedness, is usually there for a very good reason — or at least at one point in history it was there for a very good reason." Tom showed a slide with a picture of a refrigerator from the 1970s. "We like to show refrigerator freezers as an example of structural fixedness because decades after the first refrigerator was invented, where was the freezer placed? On top. Until at some point somebody said, 'Maybe they can be side by side, maybe on the bottom,'" he said while showing a slide with a picture of a new refrigerator model. "Why did it persevere for so long, the freezer on top? What was the original refrigerator? An icebox. And you wanted the ice block to be on top because of physics — cold air dropping down. And later, even though they had compressors rather than ice blocks, it...