Snowmobile Synthesis from Unrelated Parts

"Boyd called this, “building snowmobiles,” from an observation that a snowmobile is made up from pieces of other things (treads from a tractor, engine from an outboard motor, etc.) that someone in a spark of creativity visualized could be ripped apart and put back together to serve this new purpose."

"Studies of innovation reveal that practically everything new consists of bits and pieces of other concepts, often from fields that appeared to be unrelated, that somebody had the genius to reassemble to form something new and exciting."

"a technique Boyd called “many sided, implicit cross referencing,” which means to slice the problem a number of ways, draw ideas from across a range of disciplines, and see if we can discern common patterns."

"Musashi, who gave up bathing and other activities generally associated with personal hygiene, still insisted that his disciples be open to all areas of knowledge—that they cultivate the arts in particular—and he produced calligraphy and watercolors that are admired today. “Orient” is the key to the process. Conditioned by one’s genetic heritage, surrounding culture, and previous learning, the mind combines fragments of ideas, information, conjectures, impressions, etc., to form the “many-sided, implicit cross-references,” which become a new orientation. How well your orientation matches the real world is largely a function of how well you observe, since in Boyd’s conception, “observe” is the only input from the outside. Like the canopy on the Korean-era MiGs, anything that restricts the…"