The other day someone was asking for some outside of work “how” traps that might get people to rethink “how” they go about their day-to-day activities, and boy did I find one. I was up late the other night watching some movie and an infomercial came on that smacked of an at home “how” trap.
Someone has figured out that tomatoes and some other plants grow very successfully upside down. Instead of getting dirty on your hands and knees and dealing with sprinklers, you start the plant inside and then at a certain size you put it in this thing that looks to be about the size of a waste paper basket filled with enough dirt and then you hang that on just about anything and the plant grows very fast and down.
Not that I have a very green thumb, but this busts up so many false assumptions I had about “how” to grow plants, literally turning them upside down is the gardening equivalent of the Fosbury Flop that I talk about in the Rethink book where before everyone did the high jump running and jumping face-forward, he turned around 180 degrees and jumped over the bar backwards on his way to an Olympic gold medal.
The web site for this company is hangingtomato.com and while it looks very infomercial-y, I think this is just such a great example of rethinking I had to say a few words about it.
I am going to do some more poking around about why it only works with some plants, where in some cases the “how” matters more than others. Well done.
A great example of turning your thinking upside-down, thanks for the story Ric. On a non-business note, I’ve used these for a couple of years and they do work very well for tomatoes.
The articles on the Palm Pre struck me the same way over the weekend with the “Touchstone” charger that uses a magnetic inductive method instead of wires or connectors. Talk about breaking the “how” trap!
Yes, I am learning that I am not the first person to hear about this, but it’s still a very fun example.
Working on an answer for you.