I Would like to thank you on behalf of the whole team on the excellent training that we went through in the past two days. It's rare that you can learn something one day and apply the next. Everyone is commenting that they feel as they have been in the spa, refreshed, 'would never be with white paper/no ideas again'. All the best and hope to see you soon in Belgrade. Please send us information on what could be next session / insights, upgrade... one day seminar. Thank you. Yours, Ivana Radan McCann Belgrade

SIT did an excellent job with McED and we would love to have you work with us again. I am definitely interested in hearing what new courses you have and what is available for our future programs. Adaline Mahoney Vice President Manager, HFD@WorldGroup McCann-Erickson WorldGroup

I very much enjoyed meeting you and found your session fascinating. It was very refreshing to see a different way of looking at advertising and exciting to think about ways in which it can be used to sharpen our thinking. The group was extremely positive about the time you spent with them. We asked them for individual "ideas for improvement" on the final morning. Almost everyone suggested that we give you more time on this programme or a separate programme to allow you to talk through more patterns. Nicola Ukiah Regional Training & Development Manager Ogilvy&Mather

All the people who attended training are already using some of the techniques - which have already resulted in some great, creative ideas. Ela Jura Account Group Director Upstairs Young & Rubicam Poland

SIT's Seminar "Finding Your Innovation Sweetspot" found a sweetspot with the audience of senior marketing, product development and sales managers at our conference. An ideal balance between content delivery and audience interaction was achieved, keeping the audience completely engaged throughout. While the content was thought provoking and challenging, it was also practical and insightful, a great blend for an audience looking for both some inspiration for breakthrough innovation, and a couple relevant concepts to take home and put to work. Bob Czechowicz Director, Strategic Planning & Marketing Masco Corporation

Systematic Inventive Thinking led a group on 140 participants in a four-hour seminar on innovation. The purpose of the seminar was to stimulate us to think creatively about our business products and practices so that we could continue to offer the best possible English Language Learning materials, work together effectively, and enjoy our working environment. The facilitator presented clear and interesting examples of several tools to help us think creatively, and then involved us in small group activities so that we could practice applying the tools to our business. The seminar inspired several ideas for changing our publishing procedures and developing new materials. In addition to the practical ideas, the reactions of the staff were unanimously positive. They felt encouraged and motivated to explore new approaches to our business, and enjoyed the interactions with the seminar leaders and each other. My goals for the seminar were to stimulate new ideas and instill confidence in my staff that they worked in a healthy, positive and creative environment. The seminar exceeded my expectations. The facilitator skill, intelligence and humor provided an engaging, well-paced morning. His informal yet professional style relaxed the group from the beginning, and allowed them to participate openly and thoughtfully. They were surprised that the morning went so quickly, and felt energized from the experience. I look forward to following up with each department as they continue using the tools they learned from the seminar, and welcome the opportunity to work with SIT again. Joanne Dresner President, Pearson Longman ELT Chairman, Pearson Latin America

SIT's participation in the Greener by Design 2008 conference was a key element of the event's success. Amnon's insightful, engaging, and entertaining style was the perfect complement to the panels and presentations, helping to underscore the points other speakers made. The audience responded extremely favorably, both in the evaluations and in the many positive comments we received. Clearly, Amnon and SIT's involvement helped differentiate us as a conference in the increasingly crowded field of "green." As a result, I look forward to continuing to work with SIT in the years ahead. Joel Makower Chairman and Executive Editor Greener World Media and Host, "Greener by Design"

Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc. (Johnson & Johnson) uses S.I.T. tools in four distinct areas: new product invention, strategy development, organizational design, and marketing communications (MarCom). Within MarCom, we have used the tools for our Harmonic Scalpel franchise, for our LAP DISC product, and for our training facility, the Endo-Surgery Institute. For the Harmonic Scalpel team, the MarCom tools led the group to a completely new positioning approach. They developed an entirely new positioning and communication strategy around a more relevant point of differentiation. In addition the group developed some unique "go-to-market" ideas for the leading product. The LAP DISC team had a similar experience using the SIT tools for MarCom. The tools helped them streamline their marketing communications into a consistent, single minded concept. The Endo-Surgery Institute used the MarCom tools over the course of three S.I.T. workshops to create an entirely new core brand promise, including a new name for the Institute and new brand experience strategy for its surgeon customers. Because the SIT MarCom tools have become such a central part of how some of our franchises are operating, we have included the training of these tools in our Marketing Mastery courses for our employees. The tools are taught in a course called, "Global Brand Promotion," which trains our marketing staff on the brand building process. Drew Boyd Director, Marketing Mastery Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc.

SIT Creative Thinking for Marketing Workshop Good training in learning different ways to become more creative. Would definitely recommend to my colleagues (marketing). I love the thinking tools. Very inventive methods and very useful. I want to know them all. Very positive, there were real examples showing how fixed is our thinking & giving us tools to change it. I got new ways of thinking. Nice tools for managing thoughts and ideas and also I get some arguments for presentations of my ideas supported by SIT know how. I enjoyed spending time for creativity, new ways of thinking, breaking my personal barriers. We got pretty powerful tools for the encouragement of creative thinking ideas that can be used on a daily basis as work. We got enough practical experience to exercise new techniques. I would recommend this learning to all marketing team members. The course was very well structured + interactive presentation. Great to see systematic approach to idea generation. Overall very interesting course, maybe some more case studies and value promise creation would be helpful. New inventive methods of problem solving could be very useful in work (and not only), good to see real examples - shows how your brain works and how can you try to change the way of thinking. Riddles are interesting and helpful. Helps cooperation in work with colleagues in new situations/relations/dependency. Provocative and mind sharpening. Easy to follow and understand. A lot of space for own creative work. Need more time for practical training in adopting different methods.

"I have the immense satisfaction of working with some people that I think you might be interested in meeting. The company is SIT and my first contact with them was in a branding creativity seminar. Like many of us, I have attended all manner of consultancy/marketing/branding/how to sell things/how to sell yourself seminars and I have rarely participated in anything so eye-opening and tangible and, dare I say generous. "Eye-opening" because SIT proposed what appears to be an endless stock of new approaches to thinking through ideas and how they can be expressed. "Generous" because unlike many seminars, you don't just get told things that you wish you could find out more about, you walk out revved up, stimulated and armed with very neat tools that allow you to go further in your thinking and see things from new angles. These guys are subtle thinkers and I believe that they are adding value to our work." Rachel Audigé Global Communications & Branding Manager, BioScience - Bayer CropScience SA

It didn't take long for me to overcome my doubts. Our company is a joint venture of Coca Cola and Nestlé and it's not a usual thing for us to work with a smaller consultancy. So I talked with a friend of mine from my Procter & Gamble days. SIT had conducted a project for him at P&G and by the time the conversation was over, I was considering signing on with SIT without further deliberation. Inviting SIT to meet with me and discuss the upcoming project indicated that they might have a different approach to what I had seen before: there was none of the usual PowerPoints or glossy brochures. But, personally, I like to work in a structured manner. And I have always believed that innovation can be structured too. I was being offered an opportunity to see how to work with a systematic innovation method. And the lack of glossy brochures really did stand for a different approach to innovation, as we soon found out. I must say that I was impressed by the quality of the ideas that came out of the process. Working within constraints as opposed to the "all limits off" philosophy we had been exposed to previously served as a reality check and introduced us to a robust way of approaching innovation. We ended up with a long list of ideas, 6 of which were developed, with SIT, into projects, are being implemented, and will be launched shortly. I don't know that whether we left no stone unturned, but we were reassured that we turned over a lot of them. Another important result was the early buy-in from all major constituents. Representation from all of our company's departments in the process meant that everyone was involved with raising the ideas and determining which projects will be developed. And this has made implementation a shorter process. Rainer Schmidt Marketing Director Tea Europe, Middle East & Africa BPW - Beverage Partners Worldwide

SIT gave us a systematic way for the first time to come up with new product concepts on demand. Before SIT, we were too passive about innovation relying on happenstance or following our competitors for new ideas. In our first SIT workshop, we generated over 140 new product ideas covering six concepts that will address our pipeline needs for the next six to eight years. Drew Boyd Director of Marketing Mastery Ethicon Endo-Surgery

Our profitability has increased sharply, our brand name is strong in our market and associated with innovation, our customers like and respect us, and a couple of Patent attorneys have gotten much richer - all as a result of the SIT process in Kapro. Paul Steiner Managing Director Kapro Industries To read Paul Steiners keynote speech about innovation in the STAFDA Convention at San Francisco, CA 2004, click here.

In my 26 years as a senior executive at Xerox and at Eastman Kodak - I have implemented many process changes, strategies and marketing initiatives. The best return on investment I believe, came as a result of engaging SIT. When I hoped to define some new strategies for our Health Imaging Business, I contacted the CTO of Eastman Kodak who referred me to SIT. He and his team had seen significant results form working with the SIT team to facilitate the company's future plans. At first I was quite skeptical. How could a team from Israel that did not know my industry, business or technology help to develop a plan that our experts had struggled with for the last few years? Never the less, we called SIT to facilitate a 3 day workshop with 20 people representing Strategy, Engineering, Marketing, Sales and Service made up of individual contributors and senior executives. The results far exceeded all expectations. Using the SIT methodology we: Identified core technology that could be reused to make our product line extensible. This enabled us to enter into markets where we had not had a presence. The result was increased market share and significant revenue growth. Identified multiple opportunities for reducing costs. Improved our bottom line earnings (as a result of the first two). Investing three days with SIT resulted in a motivated team with a shared vision, improved products, and significantly improved financial performance. Linda S Becker VP/GM Digital Business Kodak Health Imaging VP Eastman Kodak Corporation

What I find most beneficial from SIT's work with the teams is their non-conventional way of creating an atmosphere to put people at ease. SIT facilitators are always able to generate the confidence, throughout the process, that something valuable will come out in the end. The method creates a different mindset for "activating brains" and makes sure that the participants are able and willing to share ideas that they have. As a scientist who works on complex food science and technology issues, I appreciate that SIT takes time to understand new domains. This reflects in the work that they do and gives them added credibility in front of the technologists that are involved in the projects. Our teams are composed solely of Nestlé employees working on development, but R&D can't be responsible for launching products. However, we knew that SIT normally deals with the entire innovation process from raising ideas to bringing the products to market. We were surprised with SIT's flexibility to work with a rather homogeneous group of development people. It was also encouraging to see that SIT knows how to adapt the method for working upfront without the possibility of going downstream. People ask me why I don't use consultants closer to home to help me with my projects. I tell them that I believe that diversity helps in the innovation process. Having Europeans facilitate a group of mostly other Europeans doesn't bring that added value. But, most importantly, it's because I've worked with SIT several times during this past year and they have always delivered. Each opportunity has met its objectives and several resulting project proposals have already entered our development pipeline. Jürg Löliger Scientific Advisor - CT-R&D Nestec Ltd

The difficult thing is that people believe that creativity is a personality trait of the best people in the company, but if you apply the right methods, like SIT, you generate many, many useful ideas. Today [6 years later] the company is still rolling out many of the 149 usable ideas generated. Henk Speijer Marketing Intelligence Philips Consumer Electronics

Our company's success is predicated on a constant influx of new product ideas. We have undertaken various traditional efforts (brainstorming, etc.) but have found that these techniques have not delivered practical, implementable ideas. The SIT program, with its focus on closer-in ideas, has resulted in a number of actionable new product ideas, along with establishing a set of techniques that we can use for further new product development. Pete Maglocci Sr. Vice President, Business Development Hydro Systems

This is a new way to approach NPD in a market that is highly competitive. It highlights key areas of opportunity. SIT makes use of exciting tools and gets to real new product ideas. This process is very effective for generating new product ideas/features. The most important topic at the workshop for me was approaching the way of thinking from another angle to arrive at new product ideas and getting a structure to do so. SIT provides a reason to call colleagues together for a really effective/productive meetings. New techniques to develop new product ideas which are different from the "normal" way of starting with consumer needs to find new products. New methodology for generating product ideas quickly and effectively. The virtual product tool and creation of dependency ideas are fantastic. Facilitation and contents were excellent. I would apply these tools to other products in line or competitive products. It really is a systematic approach to come to ideas. It really opened my eyes on what can be done. Surprising how only a few techniques can bring so much results. Forces you to do the least expectable in innovating. The facilitator showed a perfect combination of skill, feel of humor, sensitivity to status of group. Don't think we could have achieved more in 3 days. We need to have a yearly follow up to redo the process. As a business we need to ingrain this process into our daily activities. It widened my horizons of creative thinking, I learned new approaches of how to tackle problems and develop new products I had no idea of.

I found the SIT problem solving session to be useful, productive and a lot of fun! Many of the ideas that were generated were new to our company and the whole process of coming up with these potential solutions was very efficient. In fact, I am currently working on four of the leading directions of attack that came up during the workshop. All of the participants felt they could find uses for the technique within ALZA to address a variety of problems. I plan to provide SIT's contact information to key people within the ALZA organization and in particular, to participants who expressed interest in using SIT methodology. Rama Padmanabhan Ph.D. Senior Research Fellow and Director E-TRANS Technology ALZA Corporation

SIT has made a remarkable improvement in the original TRIZ process - by overall simplification, by introducing new and more effective heuristics and by organizing the process. SIT made a unique impact when it reduced the forty-plus problem solving tricks of TRIZ to four techniques. This was the first indication that codified problem solving may not have to be an open-ended process. SIT makes problem analysis time efficient, gives the analyst provocative perspectives, and provides effective solution techniques. Its simplicity and logical flow enable a technologist to memorize the entire process and use it effectively without any supplemental aids such as data bases. Dr. Ed Sickafus Corporate technical specialist Ford Motor Company Studied a number of problem solving methods before choosing SIT at Ford. Over 800 technologists and scientists at Ford have been trained in the SIT method

When we worked with SIT, we wanted to carry out ideation sessions to fill our pipeline with ideas. As a result of the SIT process, we benefited not just from getting people to think about new technologies, but also achieved organizational change. In terms of value – we identified needed processes and developed a philosophy of how we were going to go to business, which has been very significant for us. In terms of R&D value, the SIT process helped us solve problems that we run into repeatedly. We developed a toolbox to approach some of our more vexing challenges. As the market leader in this Process Technology we had been looking for ways to solidify our position. At the end you're not going to make a widget, it's all about the stuff that’s in between the input and the output. The improvements identified during the project were part of a revitalization which gave us new avenues to pursue. As opposed to other innovation techniques, SIT was easier to do because there was more structure to it. It wasn’t like brainstorming where people just throw things on flipcharts. One of the primary benefits of the SIT method is the structured process that moves you along and continues to create virtual products. Additionally, it stretches your imagination to create virtual products that you would have never come up with on your own. The breadth of the ideas that come out are very impressive. Greg Stakem Vice President of Research and Development Univation Technologies

I really enjoyed the day - I thought the Multi-Focus Group techniques were outstanding and I've passed the Harvard Business Review article about SIT on to my Group President. Andrew Craig-Bennett Deputy General Manager COSCO Maritime (UK) Ltd.

The Pearson Education School Group has had the pleasure of working closely with Systematic Inventive Thinking for over a year. In May of 2004, we decided to make innovation training a top priority for our employees. As a first step for this initiative, we invited one hundred employees to attend a two-day innovation forum last August. Amnon Levav of SIT was one of our guest speakers. With just two hours to introduce us to some of his techniques, Amnon had the entire room using an SIT tool to help resolve Pearson issues. The SIT tools and principles were immediately appealing to us-more so than the tools and principles provided by the other guest speakers-as they gave employees a step-by-step path to follow to find a solution we may not have considered otherwise. Based on the success of the innovation forum, and the high level of interest in the SIT tools and principles, we wanted to provide a similar experience to all School Group employees. We set a goal for 2005 of training over 1,000 School Group employees at eight different locations around the U.S., and thus we needed to come up with a way to generate more trainers familiar with SIT techniques. SIT and Pearson management decided to provide intensive training to small groups of employees from each of the sites. Once trained, these employees would then be able to assist SIT with larger training sessions that we deemed "Innovation Days." At each Innovation Day, SIT would introduce a tool to the larger group, then participants would break into small coach-led teams to apply the new tool to a specific Pearson issue. Within the short time frame provided for breakout groups, teams were able to come up with potential solutions to complex issues. Seeing results this quickly energized our employees to continue using the tools on a regular basis. After the completion of the eight innovation days, employees from each of our business units were given time to meet with their Pearson coaches to evaluate the ideas that had arisen. We are now in the process of moving forward with over fifty new ideas-all a direct result of our training with SIT. In addition to working with SIT to provide innovation training to our employees, we have recently retained SIT for assistance on specific projects. One of the strongest reasons I can give for why our relationship with SIT has been so successful is because they care about the results just as much as we do. We view SIT as a partner in our innovation initiative, and we look forward to continuing our relationship with them in the future. Martha G. Smith President Pearson Education School Group

We conduct a variety of ideation processes throughout the year in parallel to the Think Tank project we commissioned from SIT. The ideas that SIT sent us offer a fresh prospective/perspective and in some cases are more “game changing” then the concepts raised by alternative ideation methodologies. In fact, SIT's ideas usually rank in the top tier of concepts presented to senior management. Tony Huffman Innovation Mgr. BP America Inc.

I am hoping you can make the time for a visit from an excellent resource we have used in the past. There are training programs offered by a company called Systematic Inventive Thinking out of Israel. They have come in a couple of times to train our people about different ways of thinking creatively about a brief (involved creative, Momentum, account service, PR and media planners) and then came back to work with one team and a client together. I can't recommend them enough as I can see first hand how their thinking has helped our creative thinking. Matthew Stern MD McCann Prague

"I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you very much for the assistance you've provided to us with the SIT Project. We first learned of this approach through one of your seminars, and I must say that we have been very impressed with our experience so far. This approach seems to be very useful and down-to-earth, a good fit with our company's culture. Again, without your introductions, we would never have found this company on our own." Pete Maglocci Sr. Vice President, Business Development Hydro Systems

Annina Van Logtestijn, partner at Limetree Business Refreshment has been using SIT for her work with clients for the past 2.5 years. "SIT is a refreshing approach to new product development. The SIT process focuses the creative thoughts in a viable direction and allows for constructive judgment during the process. The process thus greatly improves the quality of the resulting concepts". Jan van Dalfsen, from Assembleon (Philips) in Eindhoven has worked with SIT in his company. Here is what Jan says about his reasons to join the SIT community in the Netherlands: "I like the method as well as the SIT people and their company. I truly believe that it is important that they go around the world and do their work, so actually my reason is somewhat idealistic for wanting the SIT method to succeed, and joining the effort here in the Netherlands." Sandra Minnee, an Independent consultant, Professional Strategies has worked with SIT and trained to be an SIT facilitator. "My experience and belief about SIT is that it is a surprisingly effective tool for innovation. I will share experiences, views and observations on using SIT tools. It is very useful to get new insights as well as to get to know more people who work in the field". Ir. G. Maarten Bonnema, Assistant Professor at University of Twente, Department of Engineering Technology, on (conceptual) design. Maarten participated in an SIT facilitators' course. "I got interested in SIT four years ago as it is a simple but VERY powerful tool to solve difficult problems. It is easier learned than TRIZ. I want to contribute to the spreading of SIT in the Netherlands. In particular I'm interested in ways to teach it to our students (mechanical engineering and industrial design engineering)". Corrinne Goenee, Managing Partner at Innovaction B.V. "We are always on the lookout for the latest news on high quality methods, related to the innovation process. Innovaction has been involved with Wageningen University for the last three years, in research projects which tested the "templates method" on food product development. We believe that this SIT method is an innovative, thorough and structured way to search for new perspectives (for technological developments and consumer benefits), which complements our portfolio of "best practices" particularly well, since it starts from the product and thus has a perfect fit with R&D departments, who now have a method "of their own" to carry through their organization." Henk Speijer Senior Consultant (Retired from Philips Consumer Electronics) "By using SIT the organization gets a wide choice of new product ideas that can easily be developed and produced. The method limits the participants to use building blocks already available to the organization. It is now the responsibility of the marketing department to take the lead, and to show its capabilities, as the selection of the ideas (the survival of the fittest) depends on the ability to translate the functional product ideas into viable product and marketing concepts, and to select those with appropriate methods showing (highest) acceptance of potential buyers."