Unpacking the Innovation Process

HAVE YOU EVER LOOKED at a table or chair, stool, or other household item and thought, “Can I use this another way?”

If you have, you might be an innovative hacker, someone who operates from a product-first search process, which is the opposite of the “classic” method of problem solving.

Tian Chan, assistant professor of Information Systems & Operations

Management, worked with long-time friend and fellow innovative researcher Shi Ying, assistant professor of information systems and analytics at the National University of Singapore, to figure out if this nontraditional way of thinking is more effective.

And they used IKEA furniture as the basis for their research.

“Problem-first searching is the ‘classic’ way we think about problem solving. It starts with a problem, such as needing a swing, before identifying possible solutions, like a person turning an IKEA stool into a swing,” explains Chan. Whereas product-first searching “starts with a product in mind,” such as an IKEA hacker having a stool and wanting to make it into something different, then “searching through alternative needs” to identify the most viable option for the stool’s new life.

Ultimately, the research, which involved hours upon hours of searching for examples of IKEA hacking, revealed that the traditional, problem-first thinking remains the most effective way to both solve a problem and create a novel, new use for an item. However, product-first searching presents many opportunities for creative uses of everyday things.

IKEA hacking is popular for a few reasons: The furniture is ubiquitous, inexpensive, and usually requires selfassembly, says Chan. It’s this self-assembly aspect that invites novel uses for common items. During his research, Chan uncovered examples of people taking an IKEA coffee table, flipping it upside down, and attaching it to the ceiling for pets to perch from.

This same method of problem solving created the jogging stroller, says Chan. It just took one frustrated parent to invent a more useful stroller for runners.

Problem solvers and hackers unite: creative ingenuity and adapting existing products for new uses have fueled a movement.

“Companies should look toward users if they wish to more effectively identify novel uses for their existing products,” says Chan. “Users are endowed with such a large variety of interesting problems that we expect they can uniquely generate exaptations–or new uses–from a problemfirst perspective.”