Despite the innovative, inventive image I am accredited with (for no substantial reason), the mobile phone in my possession until two weeks ago was of one of the very first generations, and it certainly fulfilled my basic communications needs. However, during my last family trip to Ein Tamir (a water-filled spring tunnel in Nahal Kziv) I accidentally left my 
phone in my pocket and as I emerged from the water, soaked through, I found that the instrument had ceased to function. About an hour later, at home, I deconstructed the device and, using my daughter’s hair dryer (”utilization of existing resources”, or in SIT lingo – implementing the rule of Task Unification) I succeeded in making the phone functional again… with the exception of the display screen that could not be revived.
While my wife and daughter (clearly post-modern women as made obvious by their choice of mobile phones) began pressuring me to get rid of the device and replace it with one of a more advanced generation, I kept considering what could possibly be done with a screen-less yet functional mobile phone. The idea that flashed through my mind, spiced with a bit of black humor, was “Why not sell it to a blind person?”
But now a little more seriously… Any SIT New Product Development (NPD) workshop addressing mobile phones would inevitably, in a structured and systematic manner (by applying the Subtraction tool), reach the potential product: a mobile telephone for the blind. The end product would have no display screen (the subtracted component), but would have supporting functions appropriate specifically for a blind user.
Due to the family pressure, I found myself with the screen-less device, seated in front of the cellular company’s sales rep, taking an interest in a new device which, of course, has a SIM card (absent from my old phone). “I’ll take the deal,” I told him, “but with the condition that you transfer all of my memories from the old phone to the new one”. The sales representative (who is supposed to be well-versed in the secrets of cellular devices) shook his head with some skepticism. “I’m not sure I can do it,” he said. “In order to transfer the information from the old device to the SIM card in the new device, we must connect the old phone to an appropriate contraption, and then perform a series of actions (pressing keys on the old device) according to instructions that appear on the screen… Since the screen is not intact, I’m not sure I will succeed in pressing the keys in the proper order.”
This is a classic problem, definitely worthy of a Problem Solving (PS) workshop in SIT methodology…. If only I had the time, I would map out the problematic situation, define undesired phenomena and possible routes to attack the problem, choose a route, formulate a specific problem, write down the components of the Closed World and systematically apply one tool after another on each of the components to examine whether the problem can be solved…. But I don’t have the time and I’m not in a workshop.
Intuitively and spontaneously I told the sales rep: take a working phone of the old model – you must have dozens of those in storage – hook it into an identical contraption, and apply whatever instructions are showing on its screen to my old device also “. Ten minutes later I left happy and content, with an advanced mobile phone, equipped with a SIM card containing all the memories I have accumulated in recent years.
In retrospect, it is clear that this case fits like a glove to the SIT Problem Solving methodology, and that the tool I used to solve the undesirable phenomenon “instructions to transfer memories that are not visible on the screen” is Multiplication. The components multiplied in this case were the phone and the transfer contraption. … But is that really what I did?
Every now and then, I get asked by different people interested in SIT whether I apply the methodology in my own work. My reply is neither yes nor no. Very honestly, I respond that often the process of solving a problem seems chaotic, lined with ups and downs, and includes intuitive and random parts. After the problem has been solved (and here I very conveniently mention that this happens in most cases), it is very easy to demonstrate that the process corresponds greatly with SIT methodology. So my conclusion, which is somewhat paradoxical (and possibly dangerous): once you already have an expertise in SIT methodology … you don’t really need it.
It looks like the Schröedinger Paradox: Before opening the bag one cannot say if the cat is alive or not. But after you open it, you can tell very easily. After living the situation and having solved the problem, you can more easily “Oh, sure, I’ve applied SIT tools, or not”. The usefulness of knowing the tools is that of knowledge transfer to new and isomorphic situations. For example, if you happen to unfortunately sink a laptop into water and have your screen become useless, you’d probably would have an initial -SIT Tools nurtured- pattern for helping solving that new problem. The value of this is that you would probably save some time and stress following a pattern rather than embrace chaos withouth nothing at hand. In closing, we don’t really nead them, as people have been solving problems in creative ways for centuries before SIT was invented, but SIT tools are very useful and have a high intrinsic value.
Cheers!
Fabian