SIT: bottomless mug

Now we need to do some hard work. We start with manipulation number 1 on part number 1 i.e. removing the bottom. Which application ideas do you get when seeing a mug without a bottom?

Here comes the creative effort in. To start up use any source for inspiration. Your kid, colleague, internet, whatever. Allow your mind some time to shift from a rational and judging mindset into a curious and investigating mindset. After a while your mind adapts and ideas flow more easily. Keep in mind that it's not important that the ideas are feasible. That's for later. Important for now is that your mind start to generate ideas.

1. A very common use is the cup holder.

2. In a cup holder the cup fits in nicely. But we can make the holder bigger just as a protection on the table against pushing down, for example a child's glass lemonade.
Or we could place such a mug over something to prevent it from toppling or rolling off the table. For example we could make a kind of sleeve to put around a narrow top-heavy vase.

It is important not to stick to heavily to the initial use. Look at the bottomless mug as something totally new and try to imagine what kind of uses it can have.

3. When we open up the bottom we could eventually fill the mug from the bottom. Why should we want to do that? Well because it's quicker, see http://www.bottomsupbeer.com.

Or because the coffee cools down less during filling. Or because the milk and coffee can filled very gently without mixing together.

4. Come up with one or two more ideas for a bottomless mug.

Next time we remove the cylinder. In the meantime visualize it and imagine some uses of it.

Why am I doing this?

Finally I start a blog. I like to write about innovation, inventing, thoughts that come up. I'm not a writer, I know more or less how to write but knowing and doing is not the same. So at first this blog will probably be a sort of journal for myself, where I can write down ideas that come up during the day.

May be later I'll learn to write and hopefully I can inspire you to use your brain for generating new ideas, or eventually you see an idea coming around that fits your needs or your interest. I'm always interested to elaborate further on ideas, so contact me. Sometimes an idea ends up in a real invention and sometimes a real invention ends up in a real product and sometimes a real product ends up in ..., etcetera.

Here we see already two difficulties:
1. Ideas come up in high numbers and there is simply no time to look at all of them in detail. Thats one of the reasons to write them down here, anybody who likes one of them can do with it what she likes.
2. It's a long run from an idea to a real product. Some people say an idea is nothing, an invention is a start, a product is something and with a desired product we are talking. But in the end without ideas no inventions and no products.

The idea is like the gene combination of an apple tree, the invention is the apple pit, the product is the apple tree and the desired product are the apples. So without apple genes no apples, but in between the tree first has to grow up.

Another problem with ideas, inventings, products is that it makes people lazy. The cave-dweller had to find the way back home by remembering landmarks or stars. Later the map, the compass and the clock was invented and now there is the tomtom. Tomtom users cannot read maps anymore, map readers cannot read compass and stars anymore and compass users cannot read stars anymore.

But the good thing on ideas are that ideas are just fun, inventing is fun, using your brains is fun. It is a sort of discovery of what can be invented just by using your brains. Imagine for example the time over lets say 1.000 or 10.000 years, nobody will argue that we do everything the same as now, so a lot of inventions have to be made by then.

So why not doing it right now? Everything needed is already available!