Innovation by SIT

Let’s begin with a small exercise.

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Please invent a new product.

Yes, really, go ahead and invent a new product…
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Stuck ha….?
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I’ll tell you why.

Paradoxically, when a problem statement is too broad, our mind finds it quite difficult to recruit all its creative powers.

Scientific studies have proved time and again that we tend to become more creative in a constrained thinking environment.

I’ll let you see it for yourself.

Here’s a more constrained task:

Think about a new idea for a pain reliever pill, such as Tylenol.
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Better, but still pretty difficult right?

Well at least now you have something to think about, but most of your ideas probably fall into known patterns of improvements to the medicine, such as reduced side effects, being active for longer periods, and so on.

Here’s the dilemma: when the thinking task is too general, we’re simply stuck; when it’s more focused, we tend to follow known thought paths.

We need a mechanism to help us open new paths in a constrained environment.

OK. How about this: think of possible ways to *damage* or ruin the pill…
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That was easy, right?

Here are some ideas of mine for damaging the pill:

• Make the pill so big that people will not be able to swallow it.
• Take the active ingredients out of the pill.
• Make it have stronger side effects.
• Make it effective for shorter periods.

And so on.

You may have come up with some of these ideas, and probably many others.

Here comes the fun part. Please do this part:

Select one of the damaged products and find a way to sell it.
Yes…try to find real benefits for a real target audience. You can make adaptations to the damaged product, but don’t totally eliminate the damage itself.

Take 3 minutes for this exercise.
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Done? Good.

Did you feel the difference? Did you notice how this exercise leads your brain along different and new routes?

Here’s an example of what I came up with:

Take the large pill, for example. It’s too large to swallow, and I thought about conditions under which this may be an advantage.

What came to my mind was that such a pill would prevent toddlers from swallowing it. In order to take the pill, adults would need to break it along a prefabricated slit.

Another benefit would be the possibility of adding text to the pill with brief instructions.

And from this idea, I went on to a new idea that was inspired by the parameter, “size”.

The idea is to create a package of pills with different sized pills. There would be a scale on the package to help the customer select a pill according to the intensity of the pain.

Let’s summarize this short exercise.

At first you were asked to develop an idea for a new product with no constraints. This was a difficult because it was too broad. Then you were asked to develop ideas for a specific product - a pain reliever.

The new, more focused exercise seemed easier at first, but most people find themselves, at this stage, offering ideas that can be categorized as cliches.

I helped you get around this problem by asking you to damage the product first and then move from there to useful ideas.

This is exactly how SIT works. It helps you create a focused thinking environment by injecting constraints into the process.
Then it provides you with tools to help you think along fresh and original paths.