The LAB: Task Unification on a Guitar (July 2008)

Using Task Unification, an innovation process that assigns an additional job to an existing resource or component, the author focuses on how to reduce the time it takes to re-tune a guitar between songs while playing in a band. The article discusses the traditional approach to innovation, which looks for a solution to a problem, versus the systematic approach of identifying a solution first and then finding the problem it solves. The author suggests assigning the task of knowing when a string is out of tune to the pickguard and the task of re-tuning the guitar quickly to the bridge pins.