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What do children do when they play with blocks? They pile the blocks up and make things out of them that are fewer in number, that hide details, and that have a more hierarchical structure. We do this every day -- it's part of our evolutionary heritage to organize and simplify the world. But because of this we often get into ruts in thinking, following the same trail we forged many years ago. Sometimes it is necessary to knock down the pyramids, break out of our comfortable patterns, and turn things on their head.

You could imagine a set of tools like this -- far more extensive to cover more situations -- that you could use to turn problems on their heads. Try going through the animation with a particular set of items in mind -- the days in the next week, the projects on your calendar, the people in your group, the stuff in your garage. Do you find any new ideas coming out of leading your thoughts down these pathways?

You could also imagine that this set of brainstorming tools could be used in social and collaborative ways in an organization. For example, at an impass in a design meeting people could use such a tool to make the relative merits of different choices more clear. Or if I was trying to make a point and I wasn't able to communicate it to you clearly, I could pull out one of these tools and "show" you. It would also be useful to create your own tools like this with a simple system, because everyone follows a slightly different path to creativity.