Monthly Archive for September, 2010

When innovation isn’t implemented, is it still innovation?

If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

This well-known phrase becomes very relevant when we talk about the results of an innovation process in a company. I would like to tell you about an SIT - Systematic Inventive Thinking workshop which had great results but failed the implementation test.

In 1996, SIT conducted a project with a company called Vitco Detergents. At the time, Vitco had a small selection of products, including a perfumed laundry detergent. The purpose of the project was to expand their product line. A project of this sort is called in the SIT language NPD - New Product / Promise Development - in which the target is to expand the company’s product offering.

The inventive thinking tool that yielded the most interesting idea was the SIT Subtraction tool.

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Water cooler talk with robots

The high tech sector has an impressive track record with regards to workplace innovation and efficiency.  With the emergence of popular programs such as skype and google video chat, telecommuting has become an accepted reality in the modern day workplace.  Employees can now work from anywhere in the world and still have that crucial face-to-face time needed. 

This solution seems quite elegant, but the reality is that even with a video substitute there are still a few vital characteristics missing.  The telecommuter using video chat software is confined to the computer of the person he is talking to and is not able to be part of the office culture. 

The ingenious folks over at Willow Garage (a company that develops open source software for robot applications) have taken telecommuting one step further with the introduction of the telepresence robot.  This “robot” allows telecommuters to move around the office, be part of meetings or presentations, and totally freak out the new guy.  Check out the video below to see the telepresence robots in action at Mozilla headquarters!

The weirdoes on the 3rd floor (A Loving Look at SIT and its Idiosyncrasies)

Seeing candidates waiting in the SIT reception area to be interviewed for a facilitation and account management position brought back memories of my very first impressions of the place. So if insights about innovation & the SIT methodology are more your thing, this might not be the post for you…

During the long recruiting process and gazillion interviews I went through way back then, I spent quite some time in the SIT reception area. Having recently left a corporate career at that time, I came to the interview wearing what I thought was an appropriate interview outfit: buttoned up shirt, dress pants and high-heeled stiletto-like sandals. The first indication that I may have gotten it wrong happened as I was riding the elevator up to the SIT offices and was asked: “are you going to see the weirdoes on the third floor?”

Pretty quickly I understood what it meant. The first thing I noticed going in was the shoes or in most cases, the lack thereof. Most of the people in the office were walking around barefoot. This was accompanied, what else, by short cargo pants and plain T-shirts. As I was digesting what I was seeing, examining my own outfit all over again and feeling oh so inadequate, I thought I spotted a woman with shoes on. As she approached, I looked more carefully and realized the one real pair of shoes I managed to spot, except for flip-flops and comfort footwear, was of a bright yellow color.

Continue reading ‘The weirdoes on the 3rd floor (A Loving Look at SIT and its Idiosyncrasies)’