New Product development through misunderstandings

Boing Boing has a new item about Animal air-mail envelopes. I clicked on the link, the moment I saw it in my feed reader, as I was fascinated to know how they got the animals in there. Sadly - or possibly fortunately - I had misunderstood the headline. It wasn't a story about how to send animals via air-mail, but rather animal shaped air-mail envelopes. Now, this is still a nice product, but definitely doesn't have the same level of innovativeness as the one my mind had created. The disappointment - from which I have now fully recovered, thanks for asking - lead me to think about the role of misunderstanding in the creative process. Deliberately reframing a problem, i.e., seeing it from a different perspective, is a core creative principle. Misunderstandings could be thought of as accidental reframes. I wonder if there is a way to increase the likelihood of misunderstandings in a creatively helpful manner? And, in the mean time, pet owners everywhere can sleep soundly, knowing that the World's postal services are not air-mailing small creatures around the place (yet!) ;-)