Imagine you gave your fiancée an engagement ring that cost over $10,000. After three months, your fiancée returns the ring to you and breaks off the engagement. You return to the jeweler with the ring and try to sell the ring back. You are only offered $3500. What do you do?
This happened to Josh Opperman. All he had left was the fancy ring he had worked so hard to save up for. What could he do? He thought what happened to him must happen to other people. There must be a population of people who bought expensive jewelry for someone and were rejected. Then when they tried to return the jewelry were shocked at the way less than the purchase price jewelers offered for the item. He saw this as a possible business opportunity.
He started a business called I Do Now I Don’t. It is an e-commerce site that allows people to sell gently used engagement rings or any other fancy jewelry and other accessories to other users for way less than going to a jewelry store. He created a unique opportunity where sellers receive more money than ever thought possible, while at the same time the buyers can buy diamonds and jewelry at below retail prices; for the first time ever, a unique model that adds value to both sides of the equation. His idea has been featured on CNN, The Today Show, Fox News, and in The New York Times.
Thomas Edison put it this way: “Make it a habit to keep on the lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea needs to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are working on.” Josh’s new business is basically an adaptation of Craig’s List used for the buying and selling of gently used jewelry.
Another example of adaptation comes from the medical field. Dr. Peter Pronovost, a critical care specialist at the Johns Hopkins medical center in Baltimore, thought he knew how to minimize human error. It was, as Dr. Atul Gawande describes it in his provocative new book, “The Checklist Manifesto,” an idea so simple that it seemed downright loopy.
In 2001 Dr. Pronovost borrowed a concept from the aviation industry: a checklist, the kind that pilots use to clear their planes for takeoff. In an experiment Dr. Pronovost used the checklist strategy to attack just one common problem in the I.C.U., infections in patients with central intravenous lines (catheters that deliver medications or fluids directly into a major vein). Central lines can be breeding grounds for pathogens; in the Hopkins I.C.U. at the time, about one line in nine became infected, increasing the likelihood of prolonged illness, further surgery or death.
Dr. Pronovost wrote down the five things that doctors needed to do when inserting central lines to avoid subsequent infection: wash hands with soap; clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic; cover the patient’s entire body with sterile drapes; wear a mask, hat, sterile gown and gloves; and put a sterile dressing over the insertion site after the line was in. Many of his colleagues thought his idea was a no-brainer. It seemed silly to make a checklist for something so obvious.”
But Dr. Pronovost knew that about one-third of the time doctors were skipping at least one of these critical steps. What would happen if they never skipped any? He gave the five-point checklist to the nurses in the I.C.U. and, with the encouragement of hospital administrators, told them to check off each item when a doctor inserted a central line — and to call out any doctor who was cutting corners. The new rule made it clear: if doctors didn’t follow every step, the nurses would have backup from the administration to intervene.
The nurses were strict, the doctors toed the line, and within one year the central line infection rate in the Hopkins I.C.U. had dropped from 11 percent to zero. Two years after the checklist was introduced, Dr. Pronovost calculated, it had prevented 43 infections, avoided 8 I.C.U. deaths and saved the hospital millions of dollars.
Based on this success, Dr. Pronovost and his colleagues wrote up checklists for other situations in the I.C.U., like mechanical ventilation. (Were antacids prescribed to prevent stomach ulcers? Was the bed propped up 30 degrees to keep the windpipe clear of saliva?) The average length of stay in the I.C.U. dropped by half, and 21 fewer I.C.U. patients died than had died the previous year.
When looking for ideas become an expert at adaptation, ask:
⦁ What else is like this?
⦁ What other idea does this suggest?
⦁ Does the past offer a parallel?
⦁ What could I copy?
⦁ Whom could I emulate?
⦁ What idea could I incorporate?
⦁ What other process could be adapted?
⦁ What else could be adapted?
⦁ What different contexts can I put my concept in?
⦁ What ideas outside my field can I incorporate?
⦁ What ideas inside my field can I incorporate?
Learn the techniques creative geniuses have used to create ideas.
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