Snapshot

Taking Cover From Artists

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Goal

Improve employee productive output of a marketing and advertising firm

Problem

Human error is regularly impeding the achievement of this goal

Sebir

Productivity of employees jumps through expressing the specific problem as a more general problem and then describing a general human competence that would deal with that. Find instances of that general human competence at work and from there, drop down to a specific solution that could resolve the original particular problem For instance, typist Bette Nesmith Graham could not easily correct typing mistakes. More generally, she couldn’t conceal them. She remembered that artists conceal their mistakes by painting over them and descended to a parallel thought to develop a paper-colored masking liquid – the iconic Liquid Paper – which typists use to paint over their mistakes

Breeding Hint 1

Think about how you might match key human abilities in your operations with parallel human expertise enacted in fields unrelated to your own. This could deliver large efficiency improvements

Breeding Hint 2

Think how you might identify the human causes of mistakes and defects in what you produce. This could lead to changes that preempt deficient outcomes

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