In this paper we present the basic idea behind the lifting scheme, a new construction of biorthogonal wavelets which does not use the Fourier transform. In contrast with earlier papers we introduce lifting purely from a wavelet transform point of view and only consider the wavelet basis functions in a later stage. We show how lifting leads to a faster, fully ш place implementation of the wavelet transform. Moreover, it can be used in the construction of second generation wavelets, wavelets that are not necessarily translates and dilates of one function. A typical example of the latter are wavelets on the sphere.