Where does the basketball hoop come from?
I believe our goal in life should be to be better everyday. And how to do it? Improving our skills.
Regardless if it is for a job or just for fun I believe in evolution. And if you are evolving you need to change, for good or bad. Following that, I recently started an on-line course about Unblocking Creativity. I always imagined that I was not creative at all (maybe because I don’t really draw?) but there is already one year that I discovered me creative. But as much as I try to be creative and my mind flies I also feel there are blocking thoughts and habits that I need to get rid off. But, how to remove what you don’t know you have!?
In the course I am following, in Portuguese, there was an interesting challenge to foster curiosity. The challenge was the following:
"Observe something around you, an object or a solution, and try to figure out what were the ideas that were used to create it."
For instance, the iPhone did not appear from nowhere, the palm top already had touch screen and the cell phones were already well known. Be creative is to get things that already exist, work on them, and transform them in something new. Pretty much what a researcher does =)
For the challenge I thought on where the basketball hoop comes from. The solution that, of course, came from my mind and there is no compromise with the reality, is the following.
The intuition is simple: rubish bin + ball = basketball hoop. It sounds pretty obvious when you try to throw that ball paper in the bin, but stop and think: is it true? Imagine a big basketballl court and one small bin at each side. How is someone supposed to see the bin in order to throw a ball inside?
Ok, iteration number 1: rubish bin + high place + ball = basketball hoop. Keep it simple, put the bin in a high place and now everyone can see. Perfect, extraordinary! But who will take the ball when someone throw it inside? It remembers me when I was a child and everybody hated to take the ball when it started to roll out at the street (given it was around 30 degrees of inclination). Ok, let’s make it easier then.
Iteration number 2: rubish bin - bottom + high place + ball = basketball hoop. As there is no interest to take the ball inside of the bin all the time, let’s remove the bottom of the bin that the ball can just drop from there. Now, try it! I would guess that the ball will not pass quite easily through the tub formed by the bin and will get stuck anyway. In other words, our solution didn’t work quite as expected. Let’s try a new iteration.
Iteration number 3: rubish bin - bottom - 80% of the sides + high place + ball = basketball hoop. Let’s cut the sides and leave it smaller that the ball will not get stuck so easy. At then end what we will have is just a ring from what was previously a bin and now the ball can pass much easier. Let’s play!!
- Point!</br>
- No!</br>
- Yes, it was point, didn't you see?</br>
- What are you talking about? It was out.</br>
- Of course it was in!</br>
- Well, I think we have a problem here.</br>
Now it is easier and faster for the ball to pass through the ring as much as it is to just bump on it without pass. Even though the previous problem is solved it is now hard to figure out if it was a point or not. We need to make the ball spend some time inside the “bin” and then go out alone. Wow! It looks super hi-tech! Can we really do it?
Iteration number 4: rubish bin - bottom - 80% of the sides + soccer net + high place + ball = basketball hoop. A soccer net seems very handy for our problem. If included in a funnel shape the net can slow down the ball so that there is enough time to check if the ball entered in the hoop or not. And now it is fine, let’s gonna play!
Altough creativity just requires us to see possible combinations between things in the world, it is also necessary a lot of work to figure out how to make our combination works to solve a real problem. When it does happen then we have innovation, something the marketplace praises so much these days. Be more inovative, improve your skills, specially the creativity. Leave the boring job for robots and let’s be more humans.
If after my story you were curious about the real story of the basketball hoop here it is: [http://basketball.epicsports.com/basketball-hoop-history.html] (http://basketball.epicsports.com/basketball-hoop-history.html).
The creativity course I am following is this one http://reaprendizagemcriativa.com.br/ (In Brazilian Portuguese).
See you soon and leave your comments below.