Who's a good boy/girl, then?

There are, in fact, many ways to use a single spoon to feed a hundred people. It could be a golden spoon that you sell to pay for a meal. It could be a huge, edible spoon made out of pizza. It could be a restaurant in the shape of a spoon. And so on.

A common reaction is to suggest that this is cheating - it's playing with words. It may be cheating, but it's practical cheating. These are perfectly legitimate solutions, taking different assumptions about the spoon than your own. Creativity is all about cheating. Sometimes it's about cheating rules that everyone believes, but more often it's about breaking limitations that you have imposed on yourself.

This example isn't a real creativity technique. They will normally help you to remove the self-imposed barriers, but then return to normality for a practical outcome. Nevertheless, the spoon is a handy reminder of how easy it is to try to solve a problem limited by the confines of your experience.

Creative
technology
Imagination
engineering