"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless." -- Thomas Alva Edison

Here is an example excerpted from my book Creativity For Entertainers Volume One: The Creative Process.  "Almost every idea has some value or you wouldn't have bothered considering it.  Before you discard an idea, look at it carefully for those elements that you might be able to use in another way.  The 3-M company makes Scotch Tape.  One of their scientists was attempting to improve the glue they use on their tape.  He came up with a new formula but it was easily peeled off.  He thought his glue was a failure, but asked others in the company if they could think of an application for the glue.  Art Fry worked at the company, and sang in his church choir.  Art was looking for a way to temporarily mark songs in his hymnal.  He put some of the new glue on squares of paper and discovered it worked well for his purpose.  That evolved into the Post-It Note, one of the company's best selling products."

I have become increasingly interested in adding motivational messages to my performances so several years ago I purchased a set of "The HERO in You" silk scarves from Wonder Imagery.  The set has four small scarves each with one letter on them.  Together they spell out the word "hero."  As you display them you describe qualities associated with that letter.  For example, H means to be Honest and to give a Hand out to others.  You put the four scarves into some kind of change device and they are transformed into a 36-inch scarf depicting the body of a superhero.  (This is a headless cartoon scarf.  According to the directions you hold it up in front of a child who is supposed to embody all of those qualities so the child becomes a hero.)  I have never performed that routine in a show because the script that comes with the props does not fit my personality, and I have not yet written one that I like better.  Also, I haven't found the right spot in my performances to do the routine.

That does not mean the scarves are useless.  The current Funundrum edition of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus includes the classic clown car of enormous capacity act.  In this particular variation all the clowns exiting the car are costumed as superheroes.  For example, somebody exits in a parody of a Batman costume and then juggles three baseball bats.  This past weekend I entertained at a birthday party for a boy who had seen the circus two months ago.  He loved that act and told his parents that he wanted a superhero clown party.  They put up clown decorations, had carnival style games, and some of the kids came dressed in superhero Halloween costumes.  I wanted to do something related to being a superhero without going to the effort of constructing a new costume for this party.  I have one routine where I produce a headless cartoon scarf depicting a monkey and hold it in front of me without realizing what it looks like.  I used the headless superhero scarf instead of the monkey and got a tremendous response because it was topical for this party.  That was worth having originally purchased the set.  Now I will experiment with the headless cartoon scarves that I own to see which consistently gets the best response.

Here is another example of the unexpected benefit concept.  When I painted a bald eagle on a 36-inch scarf I used a product called Gobo to keep dye from spreading into neighboring areas.  I used black Gobo to give the edge of the feathers a black shadow.  Gobo contains latex and it turned tacky so the scarf stuck to itself when I tried using it.  I had the scarf dry cleaned which removed the Gobo, but also left white areas around each feather and looked wrong.  I used dye to paint new black outlines, but left a little of the white showing.  That formed a highlight and a shadow making it easier to see the feather design.  What was a series of mistakes ultimately improved the design.  I may purposely do something similar in the future when I want that effect.

When something doesn't work the way you expected ask yourself, these questions:  How else can I use it?  How can I turn an apparent mistake into a benefit?  Can I make it do that again on purpose when I want what just happened?