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Our industrial culture heavily emphasizes the financial value of inventing new objects because a newly invented object can be sold without competition (if a patent is obtained and infringers are sued). Because of this orientation, non-object solutions to problems are often overlooked.
Consider the problem of sealing a shower curtain against the shower wall to keep splashed water inside the shower. One object-oriented solution is to use magnets embedded in the shower curtain to hold the curtain against the shower wall, which is either made of metal or has metal or magnets attached to the wall. In contrast, a non-object solution is to use some water to seal the shower curtain to the shower wall.
As this example illustrates, non-object solutions can be just as effective as object-oriented solutions. However, it's often not financially profitable for the creator of a non-object solution to share his or her idea with other people, so non-object solutions often remain unshared. In contrast, a new object is displayed in stores and advertised in magazines and catalogs, so people readily learn about object-oriented solutions.
Non-object solutions are especially useful in solving problems that involve people. This lesson has been learned repeatedly by inventors who attempted to end war by inventing the ultimate weapon or defense system.
Now consider a problem you want to solve. Of course you can probably think of a device, gadget, pill, or other object that might solve the problem. But what kind of technique, strategy, convention, process, representation, word, or other non-object might also solve the problem?
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