Amnon and I presented last week in Greener by Design (GbD) in San Francisco, subtitled “Greener Products for Leaner Times”. Our innovation message for companies working on going greener was to focus on finding and tackling their fixedness.
Cognitive Fixedness, first defined by psychologist Karl Duncker, prevents individuals and companies from creating new configurations in the systems they manage. This often blocks us from seeing potential efficiencies and material reduction, and breakthrough solutions to problems. SIT tools help break 3 kinds of cognitive fixedness:
1. Structural – The tendency to view products and systems as a complete gestalt. Many of SIT’s tools help break this particular fixedness. The following water saving toilet (click to check out the cool animation!) was developed by Villeroy-Boch in an SIT workshop. Multiplying the water streams resulted in more pressure in each stream, therefore requiring less water. This product won the ISH Innovation Prize and was chosen by Deutsche Bank in its transformation of its HQ to be the most environmentally friendly high-rises in Europe.
2. Functional – Seeing objects as capable only of fulfilling their original function. SIT uses the Task Unification tool to help innovators find new uses for existing resources, thus forcing them find new functions for available objects and tackle functional fixedness. My previous post described several such uses of unexpected resources for generating energy.
Continue reading ‘Become greener by breaking fixedness’
Posted in Fixednesses and
Greenovation categories |
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Thomas Alva Edison, the renowned inventor, lived in a house with a large front garden and an iron gate at its entrance. It
is said that friends who came to visit were both astonished and annoyed to discover that they were forced to push hard to swing open the gate. Time and again, they complained to Thomas to fix the creaking, old gate and Edison kept promising to oil the hinges and spare his guests the trouble, but never delivered. It was only after his death, at a ripe old age (84), that the matter came to light: the gate had been connected to a pump, and each time it was opened, water was pumped into the inventor’s bathtub.
Continue reading ‘Energy solutions with an SIT twist’
Posted in Greenovation and
Ideation categories |
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Our latest Innovation Community meeting focused on Sustainability and Innovation.
The Israeli Innovation Community brings together, for networking and enrichment, top managers and individuals with an interest in innovation. The meetings are interactive, informal and down to earth, and always include discussions among the participants and with the lecturers.
Continue reading ‘Sustainability and Innovation at SIT’s Innovation Community’
Posted in Greenovation categories |
Tags:
Amnon Levav,
Assif Strategies,
Darden School of Business,
Dr. Noam Gressel,
Erez Zimhony,
Frost & Sullivan GIL conference,
greener by design,
innovation,
innovation community,
sustainability,
sustainability and innovation,
Sustainable Packaging Coalition,
Yoni Stern
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