Author Archive for Roni Horowitz

Roni Horowitz
March 8, 2010

Killing a joke softly with SIT (with apologies to Shirley Bassey)

     When I started writing for this blog one of my goals was to show that SIT principles are universal and can actually be found everywhere - in brilliant solutions to problems of all kinds, in stories, movies, scientific theories and in…


… jokes.

Humor and creativity go hand in hand, so it stands to reason that we’ll find SIT principles in jokes (the good ones, at least).

Many people believe that analyzing jokes actually kills them, so if you’re one of those, I’m about to kill one for you…

I’d like to thank Don Young for sending in this story a few years back.

So here it is:

A wealthy man decided to go on a safari in Africa. He takes his faithful pet dog along for company. One day the dog starts chasing butterflies, and before long he discovers that he’s lost. So, wandering about he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the obvious intention of having lunch.

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Posted in Problem Solving categories |
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Roni Horowitz
February 15, 2010

Creative thinking in times of war: a part of Military Basic Training?!

It’s a sad but true fact that battles and wars stretch man’s creativity to the limit.

The Nazi steel industry needed about 8 tons of water to produce one ton of steel.

Most of the water was taken from three artificial lakes that were created by massive dams. The allies knew that by demolishing these dams they could create a bottleneck in the Nazis’ war machine.

But the dams were massive structures (one was 40 meters wide at the base, 8 at the top, and 50 meters high). A 30-ton bomb would be needed to create significant damage to the dams.

Unless…

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Posted in Creativity and Problem Solving categories |
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Roni Horowitz
December 25, 2009

What do cloud watching and new product ideas have in common?

When’s the last time you did some cloud watching?

Now there’s a creative, relaxing activity to do with the kids! Think about a kid who looks up at the sky and sees a cloud in the shape of a camel. The shape of the cloud is, of course, determined before the child attributes it with the function of being a camel.

How does creativity change in the transition from a process that begins with a function to a process that begins with a form? The cognitive psychologist, Finke, examined this in an interesting experiment:

A test group was given the task of creating an idea for a new product. The invention had to be made up of 3 items (or forms) out of a collection of 15 items that were presented to them. The items included a circle, a cone, a rod, wheels, string, and … additional 10 shapes.

Each person was asked to create a new, useful, product out of 3 items.

To keep the thinking process more focused, a general category was chosen - toys, for example, and their invention had to fit in to this category.

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Posted in Creativity and Ideation categories |
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Roni Horowitz
October 13, 2009

Betting on Leaves


One of your boastful friends makes a bet with you that he can tell you in no time at all exactly how many leaves there are on a tree at any given moment. Of course you agree to the bet - it seems like the quickest way to earn a free meal in your favorite Italian restaurant. As soon as you’ve made the bet, you figure out the catch: how the hell can you prove him wrong?

I’ll give you a few minutes…

.

.

.

… Did you come up with something?

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Posted in Problem Solving categories |
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Roni Horowitz
September 30, 2009

In a Squeeze? Think Your Way Out

The following story shows how Inventive Thinking can help us to negotiate and get out of tricky situations.

A few years ago I took a ride to an SIT workshop with one of my colleagues (he was driving). On the way, we stopped to drop off his computer that needed fixing. We parked near the entrance of the shop and started marching towards the entrance.

“I wouldn’t park there if I were you,” said the doorman, “you’re likely to get parked in”. We were in a hurry, so we answered, ‘It’ll be OK,’ even though we had a nagging suspicion that it wouldn’t be. Anyway, when we came out of the building, our suspicions were confirmed - a truck had parked us in, and the driver was very busy unloading.

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Posted in Innovation in Everyday Life categories |
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Roni Horowitz
September 9, 2009

License to Invent

Everywhere in the world, and especially in countries that are still not fully computerized, the law enforcement authorities are faced with huge problems regarding unpaid fines, and this is especially true for parking fines. Do you pay your parking fines? You don’t have to answer that… let’s continue with the story.

Because of this problem, the law enforcement authorities have devised an excellent way to force us to pay our dues immediately - they simply tow the car away. However, towing is a clumsy and expensive process.

I once heard a novel solution to this problem from the city of Kiev, in the Ukraine.  It appears to have been taken right out of the school of Systematic Inventive Thinking.

What do the authorities there do when they come across an illegally parked car? They simply remove the license plates from the offending vehicle and take them to the depot.

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Posted in Innovation in Everyday Life and Problem Solving categories |
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Roni Horowitz
August 5, 2009

“Dad you won’t believe what happened to me at school today?” A tale of father, son and SIT

Those of you who have kids in school have experienced the following phenomena. You want your kids to tell you about their day when they come home from school, but they have completely different intentions. When you ask how their day was, they usually say, ‘It was OK’ and go back to staring at the TV.

I, too, have been faced with this situation. I’ve often felt frustrated that I don’t share a big enough part of my son’s experiences throughout his day. One day, while we were eating a meal at Macdonald’s and my son was trying to put the toy together that he got from the kids meal, I decided to try my luck again and ask how his day at school had been. As predicted, I got the usual, ‘It was OK’ answer.

But this time I was determined not to give up. I’m often asked if SIT can be used to solve day-to-day problems or family issues, and my reply is always a confident yes. Here was an opportunity for me to put my money where my mouth is!

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Posted in Innovation in Everyday Life categories |
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Roni Horowitz
June 11, 2009

The importance of being innovative

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:

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Posted in Insights categories |
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