More on breaking functional fixedness

Here’s a fun little video that poses an interesting question. If you had $5 and 2 hours, what could you do to raise the most money? Start up studies: A pop quiz Aside from various illegal schemes, the people in the story came up with some fairly inventive ideas. I hate to use the phrase “out-of-the-box” but that really sums up the thinking approach the participants used. Having said that, I thought the restaurant idea was better than the “winning” idea. Why? It provided a service of tangible value to a larger group of people, and is something that is probably reproducible (i.e. you could probably do that over and over). And as the presenter pointed out, sometimes we put constraints on a problem that are totally of our own making. Breaking free from those can lead to some really interesting (or profitable in this case) solutions! See also: Overcoming functional fixedness