The Swiss Army knife is a knife that collided with a toolbox. Someone added scissors, a screwdriver, a bottle opener, and a corkscrew. The knife was no longer merely a knife. It had become something new.

Many breakthrough ideas begin with existing world crashing into each other:

• Airbnb collided a hotel with a private home and an online marketplace.
• Slack collided chat rooms with email and a searchable knowledge base.
• The smartphone collided a phone with a music player and a computer.

But smashing two things together doesn’t automatically produce a great idea. A toaster combined with an umbrella would certainly be original, but pretty useless (I guess).

Creative collision needs a reason.

Tay Guan Hin has written a book about it. He argues that breakthrough ideas often emerge from tension: two things people want but find difficult to have at the same time. Travelers want comfort but also authenticity. People want more technology but fewer devices.

Once we understand the tension, we stop looking for better versions of the same thing. We stop studying other knives and start looking at toolboxes. We stop studying hotels and start looking at private homes. We start looking for answers in completely different worlds.

Most people ask:
“How can I improve this?”

Creative people ask:
“What else already exists that could resolve this tension?”