When NASA was preparing to send astronauts into space, they knew that ballpoint pens would not work because they rely on gravity in order for the ink to flow. One of NASA's contractors, Fisher Pen Company, decided to pursue a research and development program to create a pen that would work in the zero gravity of space. After spending $1 million of his own money, the company's president, Paul Fisher, invented the Space Pen in 1965: a wonderful piece of technology that works great in zero gravity.
Faced with the same challenge, the Russian space agency equipped their astronauts with pencils. You can actually buy a “Russian space pen” (which is just a cleverly packaged red pencil).
This story shows the risk of jumping into the solution space prematurely and the advantage of starting in the problem space. If we constrain our thinking to “a pen that works in zero gravity,” we may not consider creative, less-expensive solutions such as a pencil.
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