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on developing this kind of openness to other ways of perceiving. She would go to newsstands and look through copies of what she considered to be “weird” magazines, imagining what it was like to be a member of that core readership. For her, the exercise served as practice for seeing the world through their eyes, especially looking at the photos and ads the way they might see them. As a person gifted with words, she was adept at hearing what her plays’ characters would say, but she used this practice to see what they would see.
    I found this method useful in work with designers at a company looking to redesign a product to appeal to younger audiences. We spent time browsing copies of MAD magazine, Skateboarding, Game Pro, American Cheerleader, PC Gamer , and BMXer , among others. Thinking and talking about how the readers of these magazines saw the world forced us to challenge our stereotypes, enabling us to be more specific and insightful about what might actually matter to them. In turn, these enriched perceptions became the input that allowed fresh ideas for the product’s packaging, for new use scenarios, and for its positioning against products already in the market.
    Change Your Perspective
    In meetings and classes, I notice how rarely people change where they sit. They seem to find their way to exactly the same seat, class after class and meeting after meeting. To prove the point during classes I teach on innovation, I require students to move to a different quadrant of the classroom every few weeks. As much as they protest, you’d think I’d asked them to show up to class at 5:00 A.M. However, it doesn’t take long for them to realize that this simple change in perspective allows them to notice things about the classroom, the instructor, and their colleagues that they had never noticed before. Not everything they notice is profound; some have observed, for example, that the glare on the whiteboard is worse over here than over there, or that they can hear much better from this part of the room. But sometimes people report seeing the classroom in a wholly new light—for example, realizing that sitting in the front or middle of the room causes people to participate a lot, whereas sitting in the back or on the sides has the opposite effect.
    You can take this kind of perspective change to an even higher level by literally changing your perspective. If you are accustomed to using quantitative sales data to manage the products in your company’s lineup, go see those products actually displayed in a store. If you are used to looking for only the latest technology to incorporate in your product, take some steps back by visiting a museum or junkyard. Certainly there is no guarantee that this approach will yield immediate, tangible results. But looking at a problem in the same way that you always have does come with a guarantee: that you’ll end up exactly where you started.
    Enrich the Input
    Organizations sometimes put strict limits on changes employees can make to their working environment. In a former Hughes Aircraft Company building where I once worked in San Bruno, California, employees in the 1950s—all of them men—were allowed only one decoration in their office: a single desk photograph of their wife. Although this example may seem a little extreme, there are plenty of work settings today with rules only slightly less restrictive.
    Contrast the practice at Hughes with what I found when I worked at IDEO, a product design consulting firm about twenty minutes away in Palo Alto. At IDEO the buildings are open plan, and employees build their own workspace, even down to the walls, tables, desks, shelves, and computer stands. All manner of personal effects are proudly displayed, primarily collections of parts, models, and prototypes from past projects, but also those eclectic things designers find interesting or “cool.” A walk through one of the buildings is more