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Personal Pattern Overlay has been around for many
years. Even Jesus chose to teach through parable
analogies so we could overlay them on our lives and
see how we should live. PPO was the basis for many
of the inventions and innovations we enjoy today.
People from all walks of life have seen unusual
analogies or parallels between their work and their
personal experiences and knowledge.

Here are a few of my favorites :

Martial Arts - In Medieval Okinawa, the government outlawed weapons so
the people could not fight back. Lacking the possibility to possess any
sort of weapon, the people started using tools and equipment destined for
everyday use (mainly agricultural) in their skirmishes with the Samurais.
Nunchukas were originally flails for harvesting rice. The Bo staff was
originally the stick used to carry two buckets on the worker's shoulders.
The shields were giant turtle shells used by farmers to carry produce. The
Sai was a tool for planting rice and moving bales of hay. The Tonfa (which
many police carry today) was the handle for the wheel on a grist mill!

Johann was fired from his father’s coin mint where he
ran a coin punch machine. He found a new job at winery
crushing grapes. One day, he lifted the board that
crushed the grapes and noticed how the grain of the
wood was stained on his hands. He mentally put the
grape press and the coin punch together and invented
a new machine. Johann Gutenberg invented the first
printing press which allowed the world access to mass
produced transcripts and educational materials.

Wilbur and Orville Wright loved flying kites but their
business was a bicycle shop. The two areas of knowledge
were combined to create the first powered flying machine
and aviation was born.

George De Mestral was hunting for damsel flys in the
woods near his home in Switzerland when he noticed
the burrs clinging to his jacket. He went home and looked
He found the burr was made up of a ball of spikes with
tiny hooks on the ends of each spike. He then looked at
his jacket under the microscope and found the surface
was covered with tiny loops of thread. He put the two
together and invented Velcro - the space age quick
fastener.

There are many more PPO stories you may wish to
read about :

Archimedes - discovered Specific Gravity by sitting in
a hot tub

Leonardo Da Vinci - Designed the first helicopter from
watching a leaf fall from a tree.

Carl Djerassi - took a chemical for exterminating insects
though infertility and invented “The Pill” (Contraceptive).

Alexander Graham Bell - invented the telephone by
duplicating the inner workings of the human ear.

Isaac Newton - Discovered Gravity by watching an
apple fall from a tree.

Here’s one for you football fans :
Knute Rockne, the famous Notre Dame football coach,
was preparing for his annual rival game. He went to a
Follies show at a dance hall and saw a series of ladies
make a particular move and kick their legs out one at a
time but in perfect synchronization. He had an idea that
excited him so much he went directly into the ladies dressing
room after the show. He asked the dancers to come to
his next practice and teach his players how to move in
perfect timing. That practice resulted in a move we
now see in every football game...THE BACK FIELD
SHIFT! (Incidentally, they won the game and many
more before the play became a standard.)

PPO is not just a tool for the days of old

A biologist with the Pennsylvania Game Commission
had a unique problem. He often found lost or orphaned
bear cubs but had no luck in getting wild female bears
to adopt them. A mother bear licks her cubs and the
smell of her saliva is how she identifies them. If she
smells a cub that isn’t hers, she may attack and kill it.
The biologist recently had a cold and used mentholated
rub to open his sinuses. This triggered some PPO
creativity. The next morning he sedated a mother bear
in the wild, smeared the menthol rub on her nose and
then left the abandoned cub in her den. When the
mother bear woke up, she could not smell any
difference between her cubs and the stranger. By the
time the menthol had worn off, she had already licked
the cub...so that it had taken on her scent!

Dick Fosbury - Dick came up with idea for the Flosbury Flop style of High
Jumping by seeing a turtle on it's back. His style earned him a Gold Medal
at the 1968 Olympics.

NASCAR - When you see some of the good old boys
from Nascar, you could easily assume that the garage
they work in is pretty laid back. You can picture some
guys in suspenders sitting around a pot bellied stove
sipping suds and telling tales. But in fact, the garages
are not only incredibly neat and organized, much of
the labor force are AP Certified Aircraft mechanics.
A lot of the equipment and machinery in the garages
are from Aircraft technology. Why? Because modern
NASCAR is airplanes without wings. From the light
weight aerodynamic bodies and the steel braid hoses to
the safety harnesses and balanced engines. They
borrowed knowledge, equipment and people from
another industry and took racing to another level.

The history of our world is filled with people who
brought unrelated ideas together and found something
new and better. How many inventions and new ideas
are rolling around in your subconscious waiting for you
to put them together? By understanding the PPO
Principle, you can unlock your creativity and find new
ideas and discoveries that can only be found by you!

PPO in HISTORY