It often seems that being innovative is a privilege of the wealthy. Those who have the time to invent and innovate are most probably not busy with everyday survival. Or are they?
Constraints enhance creativity. When resources are limited or have been exhausted, constraints have a ball; and so does creativity.
For example, lack of access to safe drinking water is a critical problem in poor countries around the world. Every year, thousands of people die from infectious diseases, brought on by polluted water. PlayPumps International has come up with a successful, creative solution to the problem: a merry-go-round that pumps water into a storage tank, while children have fun riding it round and round. What is so brilliant about this idea is its simplicity. Kids at play spin the merry-go-round anyway, so the system uses an existing resource to achieve a new objective, improving the quality of life for the entire village.
SIT is a great tool to make innovation happen. But why do we need innovation?
I will skip the obvious: innovation is needed to adapt to an ever changing commercial, social and technological environment.
Apart from the above, innovation is needed to generate something that almost every business needs to survive: attention.
Like any other resource that businesses need (e.g. energy, employees, row materials etc.) attention can be purchased in the market in the form of advertising, public relations or even search engine optimization. The problem is that its price is going up every day.
With more than 1000 commercial messages (explicit and implicit) any individual in developed countries is exposed to each day, it’s getting harder and harder to get the message through. .
Innovation can lower the price of getting attention:
