One of my clients is on crutches following an athletic injury. “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a streamlined version of crutches, something closer to hiking poles?” a friend of his wondered aloud.
My client is a hard-core engineer who realizes the functional dynamics of both crutches and hiking poles. He is mechanics.
His friend is a creative thinker who appreciates beauty and form to enhance function. She is design.
It seems to me that this is how ideas hatch – like peanut butter and chocolate (remember the Reese’s peanut butter cup ads? Vintage Alert), two seemingly divergent ideas meet to create possibility.
Dan Pink writes about how the successes of the future combine engineering and design in A Whole New Mind.
The Y Combinator showcases life- and world-changing companies and their creations, like Standard Cyborg‘s 3-D printed waterproof prosthetic that inspired this blog post.
Divergent ideas are the future.
