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Out Of The Box Thinking...
I love this story so much that I felt that I just had to put it up on my blog - I think you will like it too...
American astronauts upon first going into space soon discovered that their pens didn’t work in zero gravity. So NASA embarked upon a program to invent a writing instrument that would work in outer space... After spending millions of dollars and burning thousands of man-hours on research and engineering, they finally developed a "pump pen" that could write anything, anywhere, at any angle.
Meanwhile, in the secret laboratories behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet Union scientists casually took note of the researches of their American counterparts. They spent almost no time and no money solving this problematic dilemma. They already had the answer, their cosmonauts used…pencils.
From David Abingdon's book: 'Out Of The Box Marketing'
This is a much told story which ably demonstrates the need to think differently but is sadly untrue. They could not consider pencils as loose shards of pencil lead or graphite would float around in zero gravity and if they got into equipment could short out the kit and risk the mission.
ReplyDeleteGood point annonymous, but surely if it worked for the Russians it may have been an idea worth trying, before going the whole multi million pound 9 yrds developing a new space pen?
ReplyDeleteI dont recall news of Russian space missions brought down by pencils in the equipment.
Even if the facts arent spot on factual, the analagy highlights perfectly the 'not being able to see the wood for the trees' scenario.