Forums Help   General Tools Principles Facilitation Project Management Method: General SIT's method involves five major elements: Thinking Tools allow users to think in truly new and innovative ways. Principles help users to make the most of the tools, by overcoming mental obstacles to innovative thinking. Facilitation Skills enhance SIT facilitators' skills and abilities in leading innovation projects. Project Management ensures that innovative ideas are actually implemented. Organizational Innovation – comprehensive programs that help: 1) Specific innovative outcomes to be generated and executed; 2) People acquire the ability and inclination to think differently on demand; and 3) Structures to be put in place to support and sustain the new innovation culture and practice. At the heart of SIT's method is one crucial idea: that inventive solutions share common patterns. It's an idea that may seem paradoxical: for isn't the most notable thing about inventive solutions how uncommon they seem, how unique and original? In fact, it would seem that if you wanted to understand inventiveness, the natural place to start would be to study what sort of characteristics set inventive solutions apart. But in the mid-20th century, Russian engineer Genrich Altschuller decided to study creativity differently: by focusing not on what makes inventive solutions different, but on what, if anything, they might have in common. His exhaustive study - of over 200,000 patents - revealed strong patterns in innovative ideas. It is the insight that Altschuler derived from his lifetime study - once again, that inventive solutions share common patterns - that drives SIT's methods, and led to our development of the Five Thinking Tools that form its core. Tools We began developing and designing the SIT method in 1996, and our first client was an Israeli producer of detergents called Vitco (now part of Unilever). We had constructed the SIT tools and were ready to apply them. But as we planned the project - our first real attempt to test our methods - we realized that simply presenting or sharing our tools would not be effective. We needed to ensure that people would follow the method, even when doing so would initially lead them to ideas that might not seem to make sense. We saw that the tools could only work if they were used properly, and that in order for this to happen, we had to understand the mindset, or "cognitive context" of the users. We needed to provide users - and ourselves - with ways of understanding and describing some of the assumptions that could obstruct their ability to use the tools well. To this end, we formulated several "principles". Principles Some of these principles were developed especially to work with the SIT method - Closed World, Qualitative Change, and Path of Most Resistance. Another of our key principles - the Function Follows Form (FFF) principle - was adopted from the work of cognitive psychologist Ronald Finke and his colleagues. The SIT method involves a constant interplay between SIT tools and SIT principles. To see how this works, let's look at an example, using a common, ubiquitous product - a chair. If you want to apply one of the SIT tools, let's say Subtraction, to it, you will take away ("subtract") some seemingly essential component of the product. In the case of the chair, you could subtract the legs. The result -a legless chair - might eventually be turned into an innovative new product. But if you were a maker of chairs, you would be unlikely to cherish the notion of dismantling and ruining your chairs by removing their crucial components. This natural resistance would hinder your use of the tool of Subtraction, and prevent you from seeing what potentially inventive new product might emerge - and here is where a principle can be of great use. The Function Follows Form principle, for instance, would remind you that at this stage you are dealing only with the form of your product, and should attempt, for the time being, to set aside your skepticism about its function. Applying the principle (FFF), then, allows you to more optimally use, and reap the benefits of, the tool (Subtraction). Here are some potential uses for our apparently implausible product - the legless chair: The tool, then, defines what you do, while the principle describes how you do it. Combining tools and principles is usually enough to help the method's users invent new and novel ideas. But these are not the only crucial aspects of the SIT method. Because most SIT programs are conducted not for individuals, but for teams of 10-12 participants, we have devised, borrowed and honed a range of facilitation skills. Some of these are the sort of skills any good facilitator would need, but many are specific to the setting of an SIT workshop. For instance, our facilitators must know when to direct the group to work strictly with the tools, and when to allow ideas to come up in a looser way. Our rule of thumb is generally to prefer the former, although at times we allow ourselves to flow with the latter. You are welcome to click here to read more about our facilitation skills, and the sorts of challenges that can arise when a multidisciplinary team attempts to innovate in a workshop setting. Facilitation Ask innovation consultants about the actual results of their work with clients and you will be hard-pressed to get a definitive answer. Because most of the time, even under the best circumstances - even when the consultant does a great job, and the client's team comes up with a full list of exciting ideas - few of the ideas they generate ever get implemented and reach the market. Which brings us to the fourth layer of the SIT method - Project Management. This layer consists of all the guidelines and techniques that help us ensure that ideas are not only generated, but actually implemented. We have to admit that most of this layer was "Not Invented Here." Rather, we've drawn upon our experience with hundreds of companies, thousands of people - and dozens of mistakes - to formalize and refine the most effective processes. Project Management Innovation projects are important, but as everyone knows, no single innovation can deliver lasting advantages. In order to grow organically, a company must encourage innovation and creative thinking systematically and continually. Lasting innovation requires three key elements: 1) Specific innovative outcomes will be generated and executed; 2) People will acquire the ability and inclination to think differently on demand; and 3) Structures will be put in place to support and sustain the new innovation culture and practice. The fifth layer of the SIT onion - Organizational Innovation - includes the activities and processes that ensure these outcomes. Organizational Innovation This is what we call the SIT Onion. The core of the onion makes SIT unique. Our expertise in integrating the five layers is what makes the method so effective; and applying the onion across a variety of issues and activities allows us to support you in turning your company into a truly innovative organization. To read about the differences between SIT and other Altschuller - based methods, click here. Bottom Line Here's an example of how SIT Tools and Principles work for New Product Development. In this example we're using SUBTRACTION and FUNCTION FOLLOWS FORM. You begin with an existing product or situation. Here we're using a basic TV. First, make a list of the product's main components: TV Components: Screen Knobs Remote Control Box Tube Power Supply Cord Next, apply one of the SIT tools (we have 5 tools for New Product Development and Problem Solving; for MarCom we have 9). Let's use the tool of subtraction (which, as you might have guessed, asks us to subtract one of the product's components) and subtract the TV's screen. We get a "Virtual Product." But what is a TV with the screen subtracted? It's NOT a radio... It's a screenless TV. Now we need to consider what you can do with a screenless TV. What are its benefits? Who would buy it? What is it good for ? Here, we are using a principle called Function Follows Form - which reverses the thought process of "Form Follows Function" (popularized by the Bauhaus school of architecture). So rather than first asking "what do we need?" and designing accordingly, here we ask "what could we do?" and then figure out who might need or want that thing. Begin by listing any possible uses for the new "product." In the case of the screenless TV... It's good for listening to TV programs in the car It's a low-cost alternative for the blind It's good for the hard of hearing, who can listen with headphones at full volume, while watching a regular TV with others listening at their preferred volume It's good for a monitor It's good as a PC TV Now we look at what we've come up with: A car TV Affordable TV for the blind TV for the hard of hearing A monitor A PC TV (In an actual SIT workshop, we would now go on to the next step - figuring out if our new product is feasible, if it's something that we can actually manufacture, and, if so, what that would involve.) FAQ The SIT Tools and Principles seem almost universally applicable - do you work with people on how to apply them to other (non-work related) aspects of life?   At SIT we often joke that the method is a bit like a virus - once you're exposed to it, you tend to want to see everything in terms of it, to "infect" everything with an SIT - based outlook. We think that this is because the patterns we work with, such as Subtraction, are expressed just about everywhere (the concept that you can sometimes gain more by having less can be just as true in personal life as on the production line). Still, although we heartily recommend that people go around in daily life identifying SIT patterns, we don't want to overdo it, and we absolutely don't see SIT any kind of cure-all or life philosophy. It's basically just a very useful way of coming up with non-trivial alternatives to your regular way of thinking. Is SIT the most important thing our company can do to come up with innovative ideas?   Not really. The way we see it, there are three steps you should take if you want to make your organization more innovative. The first step is to set aside time for people to think. Not to discuss or decide or strategize or whatever else is usually done in meetings, but actually to sit alone or in groups, and to think. The second step is to bring in professional facilitators to assist in the thinking process. While thinking is a natural and intuitive process, thinking for a purpose, or in a group, isn't. A professional, external facilitator will help you make sure that the time set aside for thinking is well spent. The third step is to select a process by which you will organize your thinking. We believe that in most cases SIT is the most effective process you can select. Search: Home Contact Site Map SIT Ltd. © 2005 All Rights Reserved. Created by Puzzlehead