I believe I can fly - Lighten the load to get a new idea

I recently read this article on lightening the load to fly (article link given below). I couldn’t help but sing along “I believe I can fly” by R. Kelly, one of my all-time favorite songs.

When we think of product/service ideas, we always think of adding features, adding this, adding that. But, a more powerful approach, is to remove or lighten.

In my graduate school days at Arizona State University, I bought so many things electronic. Latest CD players, MP3 players, hard disks, speakers, printers, empty CDs, mouse pads, extension boards. I was a regular at those Black Friday sales during Thanksgiving weekends. When I moved back to India, the company who hired me, offered to ship all my stuff. So I happily shipped all the stuff that I bought in the US back to India. All of that stuff remained stashed in my house for the next 10 years.

We decided to move to Italy for a couple of years, but this time, no one was offering us any shipping of any sorts. So, I did the unthinkable, I got rid of stuff, all my stuff. Why? Each of us were allowed only 23 kgs of stuff. So, everything had to go.

This very act made me much lighter and we, as a family, could concentrate on living a full life in Italy.

From the TRIZ toolkit is a method called trimming, which suggests that in order to get a patentable idea, remove components.

So, back to the article that prompted this article. There are many ideas suggested for lifestyle design.

When, we have constraints of space or time is when we think of trimming (in fact, that is when it is needed the most). So, next time, somebody (your boss or maybe me, as your professor) tells you to do something in very little time, you should consider that as a good thing, since they are giving you an opportunity to try this tool out.

Then, you can sing, “I believe I can fly” along with me.

The post that triggered this post:

https://nosidebar.com/the-reason-they-can-fly/