#ThinkfullyHabit: Repurpose
When you want to make a change or an improvement do you tend to start from scratch or do you look for a similar idea elsewhere? Many of us start from scratch because it’s not always obvious that a precursor for an idea already exists which could prove helpful to adapt from. Why isn’t it obvious? Because many precursor ideas come from different industries, parts of life or separate places that you may not naturally be exposed to.
Take the example of how the Braille system for blind and visually impaired people to feel and read, came about. As a young boy, Louis Braille accidentally stabbed himself in his eye with a cobbler’s tool that was in his father’s workshop. He went on to become the inventor of the Braille system, and importantly, when designing this system, he definitely didn’t start from scratch.
“Uncommon thinkers reuse what common thinkers refuse.”
WHY?
Louis was inspired by a system that acted as a precursor to the Braille system. He didn’t start from scratch, instead he repurposed and modified an existing system, for a different use. The system he repurposed was called ‘night writing’ and was created by Captain Charles Barbier of the French Army, designed for sharing secret military code. It comprised of a series of dots and dashes embossed into thick paper which could be interpreted entirely by touch to let soldiers share information without the need to speak or have light. It was too complex for everyday use but it inspired Louis Braille to repurpose this system and adapt it to the Braille alphabet we know today. He realised that he could create an alphabet based on different sequences of the raised dots.
His adaptions were to reduce from 12 dots down to 6 dots, discard the dashes and enable the dots to be felt in an area no bigger than a fingertip, making it far easier for people to quickly scan and interpret. Louis Braille’s system is very different from the original ‘night writing’ system, but the origins of the idea remain evident. He created the Braille system from it. It's a system which remains virtually unchanged today and is now recognised as the reading and writing method for blind and visually impaired people throughout the globe.
So next time you’re facing a problem, put some effort into finding the closest solution that exists before trying to solve it from scratch. When you do this, you are using Link Thinking, which is a thinking strategy that deliberately looks to other areas of life to take ideas and inspirations from in order to repurpose and adapt them to your own problem. Not only can it be a more efficient route to finding a solution, it may also give rise to better solutions by building on what has gone before.