Morphological Analysis

Also known as Matrix Table and similar to the Heuristic Ideation Technique, Morphological Analysis is a idea generation technique that goes by the principle that new ideas are usually combinations of other existing ideas.

Morphological Analysis is usually a good method for systematically structuring and investigating the total set of relationships contained in multi-dimensional, usually non-quantifiable, problem complexes. Given a product that could be made of 3 types of material, in 6 possible shapes, and with 4 kinds of mechanism, 72 combinations. Some of these combinations may already exist; others may be impossible or impractical. Those left over may represent prospective new products. With its systematic, process-based simplicity, the method can be stretched to problems with hundreds or thousands of combinations, although use of computers should be used in this extent.