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 the tendency to fixate on the common use of an object or its parts. It hinders people from solving problems.” McCaffrey has developed a systematic way of overcoming that obstacle: the “generic parts technique” (GPT)…

Here’s how GPT works: “For each object in your problem, you break it into parts and ask two questions,” explains McCaffrey…

“1. Can it be broken down further? and 2. — this is the one that’s been overlooked — Does my description of the part imply a use?”