Also known as: Morphological Analysis

What it is

A tool to generate the total number of possibilities from the combining every and each property.

Mash-ups is a collaborative idea generation method in which participants come up with innovative concepts by combining different elements together. In a first step, participants brainstorm around different areas, such as technologies, human needs, and existing services. In a second step, they rapidly combine elements from those areas to create new, fun and innovative concepts. Mash-ups demonstrates how fast and easy it can be to come up with innovative ideas.

Technical definition

Essentially, general morphological analysis is a method for identifying and investigating the total set of possible relationships or “configurations” contained in a given problem complex. In this sense, it is closely related to typology analysis, although GMA is more generalised in form and has far broader applications.

The approach begins by identifying and defining the parameters (or dimensions) of the problem complex to be investigated, and assigning each parameter a range of relevant “values” or conditions. A morphological box – also fittingly known as a “Zwicky box” – is constructed by setting the parameters against each other in an n-dimensional matrix (see Figure 1a). Each cell of the n-dimensional box contains one particular “value” or condition from each of the parameters, and thus marks out a particular state or configuration of the problem complex.

Invented by: Fritz Zwicky, currently maintained by The Swedish Morphological Society.

Related: Mash-up Innovation, Bisociative innovation, Semantic Analysis

Further reading

• Wikipedia Article