{"id":100,"date":"2009-03-02T16:41:28","date_gmt":"2009-03-02T23:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/workingknowledge.com\/blog\/?p=100"},"modified":"2023-03-02T21:29:07","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T03:29:07","slug":"dr-seuss-innovating-within-constraints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/dr-seuss-innovating-within-constraints\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Seuss: Innovating within Constraints"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Point<\/strong>:  Use a constraint to convert complexity into simplicity<\/p>\n<p><strong>Story<\/strong>:  In 1954, <em>Life<\/em> magazine published an article on illiteracy among schoolchildren, reporting that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. &#8220;Pallid primers&#8221; featuring girls and boys who were &#8220;uniform, bland, idealized and terribly literal,&#8221; its author, John Hersey, contended.  Publisher William Spaulding of Houghton Mifflin wanted to change that. He approached his friend Theodore Geisel (later known as Dr. Seuss) to write a much more lively primer.  But he gave Geisel a challenge: the book could only use a vocabulary of 225 words, so that beginning readers could read it. Geisel took up the challenge.  The result? <em>The Cat in the Hat<\/em>. Dr. Seuss used clever combinations of the 225 words and fanciful illustrations to create a playful story.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Action<\/strong>:  A constraint limits the creative choices you have. Instead of viewing the constraint as merely negative and frustrating, consider the positive side: you can ignore those choices.  Strip your problem to its basic elements. Then generate unusual combinations of those bare building blocks to look for a creative solution. This technique can be used in marketing, product development and strategy.<\/p>\n<p>For more: <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=9W3ck0aIepsC\"><em>Dr. Seuss &amp; Mr. Geisel<\/em><\/a> by Judith Morgan, Neil Morgan, Neil Bowen Morgan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Seuss: Innovating within Constraints: use a constraint to convert complexity into simplicity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9,5,11,21,34],"tags":[33,368],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creativity","category-how-to","category-innovation","category-new-product-development","category-strategy","tag-constraints","tag-creativity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2302,"href":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/2302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.workingknowledge.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}