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12.6.2. Logic: Breakdown

How To Invent (Almost) Anything > 12. The TAO Design Process > 12.6. The Logic Cloud > 12.6.2. Logic: Breakdown

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Breakdown is a part of the logic cloud, a group of thinking tools and processes that can help you find your way through innovative and creative problems.

Fig. 12.6 The logic cloud

By breaking down problems and devices, you can get to look at the smallest parts. Ask questions of them. How are they manufactured? How are they assembled? How well do they fit together? Can they easily be taken apart? Is this and advantage or disadvantage? How do they operate in practice? How do they wear, decompose or decay over time?

You can even look at what the atoms and molecules are doing. This may seem like going too far, but it can be surprisingly constructive. In social invention, you might consider what individual thoughts that people are having. In process invention you can consider the individual micro-movements and actions.

Breakdown can also be done backwards, building upwards to higher viewpoints. This is critical for strategic innovation, but can also be used for other inventing, looking at the whole vehicle or operation. A higher viewpoint shows the purpose of the lower components and allows you to see how the whole is more than the sum of the parts, and where critical regions exist, such as vehicle power trains and crumple zones.
 

Other parts of the logic cloud are:

• 12.6.1. Logic: Trends
• 12.6.2. Logic: Breakdown
• 12.6.3. Logic: Attributes
• 12.6.4. Logic: Unscience
  • 12.6.5. Logic: Unscience: Energy
  • 12.6.6. Logic: Unscience: Matter
  • 12.6.7. Logic: Unscience: Space
  • 12.6.8. Logic: Unscience: Time
• 12.6.9. Logic: Questioning
• 12.6.10. Logic: Resources

Other sections in this chapter are:

• 12.1. The TAO Process
• 12.2. Not OR but AND
• 12.3. The Scientific Track
• 12.4. The Analytic Sequence
• 12.5. The TRIZ Sequence
• 12.6. The Logic Cloud
• 12.7. Psychological Track
• 12.8. The Dream Sequence
• 12.9. The Creative Cloud

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