Instead of forcing creativity, recognise when the structure itself is limiting new ideas, writes Barbara Salopek Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits our ability to see novel uses for ...

“Thinking outside the box,” has become the annoying phrase we hear in commercials and bad business meetings. It stems from an actual psychological concept called functional fixedness. Funnily enough, ...

Stuck solving a problem? Seek the obscure, says a psychologist. "There's a classic obstacle to innovation called 'functional fixedness,' which is the tendency to fixate on the common use of an object ...

In a fascinating 2007 social experiment, the Grammy-winning violinist Joshua Bell posed as a street musician busking at the Washington, D.C., Metro station. Despite typically attracting standing-room ...

"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." Marshall McLuhan The most challenging aspect about innovating is rooted in a concept called fixedness. Fixedness is the inability to realize ...

In the corporate team-building exercise known as 100 Uses For A Brick, employees are presented with an ordinary brick, then asked to come up with 100 ways to restrain their rage at being forced to ...

Stuck solving a problem? Seek the obscure, says Tony McCaffrey, a psychology PhD from the University of Massachusetts. "There's a classic obstacle to innovation called 'functional fixedness,' which is ...