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The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away. In 1992 NASA launched a program that had among Its key objectives to demonstrate a low cost entry and landing system. Specifically the goal was to allow for a gentle touchdown of an unmanned craft on Mars, without leaving trace amounts of foreign chemicals that would letter make it difficult to analyse the composition of the rocks and soil. So officials were considering a radical new approach allowing the Mars Pathfinder, armed with a parachute and a rocket working system, as well as multi layered fabric airbags to bounce a few times on Mars, rather than worrying about a single proper landing (that is the way most every lander appears to land today or the way the Apollo II module first landed on the moon). In 1997, the Pathfinder landed successfully on Mars using this new controversial approach. Its first bounce was 15.7 m (51 feet) high, and there were at least 15 more bounce, before it settled down. NASA engineers had shifted their perspective form the spacecraft fragile box to the new box of the planet is fragile. The outcome was a classic example of Eureka.

Excerpted from ‘Thinking in new boxes’ by Alan Iny and Luc de Brabandere