German psychologist Karl Duncker famously challenged students and other test subjects to attach a candle to a wall using only a book of matches and small box of thumbtacks, so that the candle could be ...

When you have used a particular tool, item, or object for one sole purpose again and again, your brain can sometimes associate it with only that use. This concept is called functional fixedness.

Stuck solving a problem? Seek the obscure, says a psychologist. "There's a classic obstacle to innovation called 'functional fixedness,' which is the tendency to fixate on the common use of an object ...

"We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." Marshall McLuhan The most challenging aspect about innovating is rooted in a concept called fixedness. Fixedness is the inability to realize ...

“Thinking outside the box,” has become the annoying phrase we hear in commercials and bad business meetings. It stems from an actual psychological concept called functional fixedness. Funnily enough, ...