Innovation by SIT

Last semester I assigned my class at university the following project: to develop “virtual products” around the concept of the gym. Applying some of SIT’s tools, my students came up with some very interesting ideas, including a room-less gym, where all the equipment was portable, and could be set up where needed, for instance, in an office or at the beach; a gym with themed rooms, where each theme is expressed visually and in music, based on the physical exercise involved; and a bus that had a gym built in it, instead of seats, and which serves both for transportation and as a fitness centre (so over worked employees can get some exercise on their daily commute).

As you can see, some of these virtual products go against our intuition, that being stationary is inherent to the concept of a gym. In this sense they were truly innovative.

We humans tend to look at the world in a certain way through the filters that our brains have developed over millions of years. Perhaps because of the way we process visual information, we tend to focus on one part of the picture and ignore the rest. As a result, we sometimes forget that there are other ways of looking at the world around us. It is sometimes helpful to remember other animals have evolved different ways of analysing and understanding their environment. Take the chameleon for example, whose two eyes function independently of each other, allowing it to focus on two different objects at the same time.

Back to my students: I asked them to pick their favourite, from amongst the various gym ideas, and they chose the bus. Amongst the reasons they gave, were originality, potential challenges, the impact on different actors’ perceptions and potential market size. I agree with their choice: innovation is not only about having creative ideas. Innovation is also about knowing which ideas to promote, and which to discard. Like the chameleon, you need to look in more than one direction at a time.