What is the Replacement Template?

We have already encountered several examples of the Replacement Template, for instance

1. Edison's legendary gate which forced his guests to activate his private water pump.

2. A keyboard of a portable computer which transforms mechanical energy (from the user's fingers) to charge the battery.

3. The Wirefree device which uses the loudspeakers from a car's radio system to improve the sound quality of the cellular phone.

4. Antenna pole in which the ice that accumulated in the environment was used to increase its sturdiness.

One abstract structure surfaces from all of the above ideas, based on their underlying code – harnessing existing resources from the immediate environment to replace a product component which fulfills the same needed function. Another such code may be extracted from the following illustrations.

The Replacement Template creates a link between a resource (material, energy or a phenomenon) existing in the environment and a role that requires fulfillment. Thus, the system saves resources while it becomes more “compact.” In most cases two existing components are connected, but we must remember that systems undergoing Replacement are likely to be considered creative even when no resources are saved.

In this chapter we will present the structure of this template in detail and suggest the best way to implement it. To illustrate its generalization let us look at some examples before we provide a complete formulation of the Replacement Template.