THESE DAYS, MANAGERS at Johnson & Johnson are willing to look in some unusual places for inspiration. Last year a small unit within J&J's Ethicon Endo-Surgery tools business was brainstorming about how to design a better surgical clip. A team of seven scientists and engineers fanned out to buy as many clips of any type as they could find. They grabbed a motley collection--more than 100 of them--from Wal-Mart Stores, Home Depot, and other local hardware and hobby shops. Those clips now hang on a big board in the group's warehouse-like research and development offices outside Cincinnati. "The idea was to free [the team] up," says Dr. Harlan Weisman, chief science and technology officer for J&J's device and diagnostic unit. "Let them be like kids and maybe they'll come up with a nifty solution."
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