One of the inventive principles we can use to stimulate creativity is substitution. It works like this: You are about to pound a nail into the wall, but you don't have a hammer. Instead, you employ a wrench for the purpose. Your child is watching and learns an important lesson about life- Imagination allows us to use an object in a manner that was never intended.
FIELD EXPEDIENTS
When a job is accomplished using tools that were not purpose-built for the task, the substituted objects are called "field expedients."
When I was a kid, my Dad worked in a mill in a large port city. He built various wooden structures still used in the large ocean-going vessels of the time. My father was a kind of 20th century ship's carpenter.
Good at what he did, his company saw an opportunity to promote its business by sending my father to an official competition, sponsored by the carpenter industry at large. I was so proud when Dad won the contest for the title of best carpenter in our state that year!
When I asked my father about the event, he told me the critical test that allowed him to best his competition was the "Field Expedients" section. Because he could not afford many tools in his youth, my father became adept at using his imagination to accomplish jobs without the "proper" equipment.
SUBSTITUTION, CARIBBEAN STYLE
It is in our youth that we best learn inventive principles, especially through the practice of substitution.
Once I spent a golden summer on the beautiful island of Anguilla in the Carribean. I remember a little girl about six years old, poor, barefoot and pushing a crude little set of wooden wheels in the sand, from the end of a stick she'd fixed to a simple twig axle.
"What's that?" I asked her.
"It's a roller," she answered with an expression that indicated incredulity. How could an American be so dumb as not to comprehend a homemade rolling toy?
IMAGINATIVE PLAY
Children today rarely get the opportunity to use their minds at play. Substitutions are not necessary in a world where highly detailed toys leave nothing to the imagination. Dad does not lack for the correct piece of equipment for every job, nor is Mom missing the latest kitchen gadgets.
Our children have every toy, movie or electronic game that reaches the market. Maybe they should be deprived of those things and turned loose in a patch of woods every now and then because the imagination goes dormant with the lack of necessity to imagine substitutions.
Most kids fail to practice inventiveness because we distract them with so many inventions.
With his inventions site, Michael Glenn explores the intriguing world of inventors and discovers the secrets of creativity.
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