One other distinctive German phrase. Umfunktionierung. Useful transformation.
Most of us take the instruments we’re given and use them as instructed. We observe the guide. We shade contained in the traces. We settle for the features as outlined by those that got here earlier than us.
However the ruckus maker asks: What if this software may do one thing else?
Umfunktionierung isn’t incremental enchancment. It’s about repurposing or reimagining. Taking the equipment of manufacturing and basically altering its operate. Brecht coined the time period in his work on the speculation of theater, and the thinker Walter Benjamin wrote about it. Nevertheless it isn’t only for playwrights or Marxist philosophers from the Nineteen Thirties.
Twitter wasn’t constructed for social actions, however activists remodeled it right into a software that wasn’t deliberate for. Electronic mail wasn’t designed for newsletters, however creators repurposed it and invented a brand new medium. Smartphones weren’t made for documentary filmmaking, however filmmakers redefined their use.
Useful transformation doesn’t ask us to construct one thing new from scratch. It requires us to have a look at what already exists and see prospects others have missed.
That is how industries evolve. Not at all times by means of invention, however by means of transformation.
Typically, we make an affect by reworking the operate of what already exists.
