A long time ago, in my very first SIT blog, I wrote about my nephew, Rani. Don’t worry though, it is not like I expect you to rememberJ. Anyway, a lot has changed since then but I’ll mention here just two relevant points: my nephew is now five years old and for the last 37.5 days he has been living in China with his parents and baby sister but unfortunately, without moi.

His move to China was accompanied by many concerns on my part, one of them being how do we manage to maintain our close relationship despite the formidable distance. I was reassured by friends saying that in today’s world, keeping in touch is much easier due to technology such as skype, but I kept wondering nevertheless how that would work when it comes to a 5-year old kid with the attention span of a… 5-year old kid.

37.5 days later, I can tell you: it works! I have between two to four weekly video calls with my nephew, each lasting something like 45 to 90 minutes.

The first time we had a skype video call, it was more of a Q&A type of thing but then I looked around and realized we are surrounded by a lot of elements that can be used to make our chat more interactive, more fun, more captivating and eventually last longer.

Let me give you a few examples of those elements identified and which activities we did using them:

Books: When I was home I noticed some of Rani’s favorite books left behind so I read to him. I just put the book itself close to the camera so he could see the pictures while he heard me reading it to him.

CDs: What I also had at home were his CDs so I put one of his favorite CDs on and we started dancing or actually more like going wild together (not recommended when you have an audience..)

Video camera: Moved the camera around and asked Rani to identify what he sees. He did the same thing and it became kind of a game with points gained for each item identified correctly.

Covered the camera with my hand, made a noise and asked Rani to identify the noise he heard.

Messages:

As Rani is just now learning his ABCs, I sent him one or two-word messages and asked him to read what I sent.

I asked him what he wanted me to write and sent him a message with this text.

Timer: for a kid as fascinated with numbers as this one, simply asking for a reading of the numbers, watching how they advance is considered an interesting activity with Aunt Iris.

Group video: add the grandparents to the chat and to the games. The more the merrier!

Our own faces: a staring competition to see who laughs first at the funny faces the other does. Again, not sure you’d want witnesses for that one…

The movements we do: triggered in me a childhood memory of the game “Simon says”. We added the grandparents to the game, by the way, using the group video which made it even more fun!

I hope that I have made the point about how easy it has been to come up with these practical ideas above simply by using what we have around us or as we call it at SIT our “Closed World”*.

By the way, our chats have become so successful that my sister- in-law actually found a substantial benefit for her. She sets up some of our chats herself to keep little Rani busy only so that she can take a much needed nap herself…

*Note: The SIT Closed World principle dictates that, when solving a problem or developing new products (or services or processes), one should strive to use only those resources that exist in the product (or system) itself, or in its immediate vicinity.

Course Collage

From 28th February to 2nd March, SIT held its 5th annual Innovation Suite in New York. 

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“For the past three days and nights my camera shutter was rapidly clicking and adjusting frames to catch moments from this unique innovation course.  I wandered about with my camera on my neck, trying to capture moments that would somehow express the intensive work and passion of both SIT facilitators and innovation leaders and coaches – current and future - over these three days. I found myself at times peeking outside of the frame to make sure that what I saw through the lens was actually real – reconciling the smiling faces of beautiful people, learning and listening with so obvious a passion, involved in learning activities in tight time frames and expressing a strongly felt belief in innovation and creativity.

The participants – and facilitators – who came to New York from five continents, meshed into a landscape of colors, dialects, cultures, outfits and expressions.

I also took part in this event and so was able to corroborate the pictorial story that emerged through the lens by listening to people’s comments and sharing their perspectives and knowledge during the breakout sessions, meals, relaxation and free time.  I was amazed by the power of the team and individuals to create discuss and learn so many new things in such a relatively short time frame.

Through the lens things looked different at the time. But I realized that what I had experienced in my 50mm “closed world” was actually a much more exciting and wider landscape outside.  A constantly changing environment of groups, developing to improve learning and spheres of activity that helped people to become more confident and gain knowledge of innovation with each passing day.

In creating this pictorial mosaic, I tried to select moments over the three days that would create a larger mosaic which would reflect this event of innovation learning, sharing new experiences and making new friendships. I’ll have my camera ready and my heart open for Innovation Suite #6.”

A recent Newsweek article, “Forget Brainstorming”, offers three strategies to foster creativity. They are: exercising, exploring other cultures, and following a passion. These sound sensible – even intriguing – but I wonder what, if anything, the three approaches have in common that makes people creative.

Fortunately I work in an office brimming with creative people. Perhaps I could learn a thing or two from my colleagues here at SIT, to begin to answer this question. An afternoon spent lingering at the water cooler led to the three brief interviews below, and to a surprising conclusion.

Dana & Exercise

Certainly Dana is a creative person, and apparently her capacity for creativity increases after an energetic work-out. This fact in itself did not surprise me, but two questions lingered: 1) if physical exercise indeed helps, why? and 2) what does this have in common with the other two approaches? With my curiosity piqued, I continued my field research.

Erez & Culture

Another tip from the Newsweek article is to become familiar with other cultures. Since SIT is a global company, this should be an easy one to check out.

Erez spends a lot of time working in Asia, and he generally agrees that his experience of diverse cultures has made him more creative. How so?

“My whole perception of what is possible and impossible has changed tremendously.” Sounds dramatic, but I wondered in what way this could be true. Continuing the conversation it seemed to emerge, that years of close contact with different lifestyles, varied operating methods and unexpected mindsets have made Erez robust. He is not intimidated by the idea of being original and creative. In fact, his experience has forged a tangible sense of confidence when facing new situations. His confidence struck me. Could it be that for Erez – a famous sports-hater – constant interaction with other cultures was somehow playing the same role that physical exercise was for Dana? Remembering the air of confidence conveyed by Dana’s words, “optimism” and “enthusiasm”, I felt a common theme begin to emerge.
 
Omri & Passion

Going into my third interview, I kept in mind my new hypothesis:  perhaps confidence plays a central role in creativity. The third tip in the article was “follow a passion”. The Newsweek article refers specifically to children, claiming that when kids choose to focus on one single hobby, they become more creative adults. This seemed counter-intuitive to me; I always assumed that well-roundedness was the best way to promote a creative mind. But Omri claimed otherwise.

On Omri’s desk is a photograph of his three children diligently practicing guitar. The kids practice daily and Omri encourages them to focus and excel specifically in this area. He told me, “When we focus on one interest rather than spreading ourselves thin, we become confident in that one area, and are thus able to be more creative within it.” Omri claims that developing expertise encourages creativity; once you are comfortable with your skill, you become more willing to experiment, to test the limits. And when that happens, real creativity can emerge.

I now had an answer to my opening question: what these three approaches share is the potential to build confidence in those who practice them.  

From my new perspective, it’s clear that SIT also inspires confidence. Following the SIT method, creative and non-creative people alike reach impressive results. Why is this? Before today’s discoveries, I thought the SIT method on its own led to creativity, which it does. But there’s another dimension – innovating successfully makes you confident. When you prove your creative power to yourself, you are likely to innovate again.

This is something Adi Marom - a good friend of mine, an artist and a designer from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts in NYU - has been busy working on.   

Inspired by her own personal experience as the shortest kid in class (which at a young age really means the shortest kid in the world), Adi has explored the possibility of making height an interactive variable that can be modified in real-time, in order to reshape interactions between people. 

The result: a project entitled SHORT ++ featuring a pair of mechanical/robotic lift shoes, activated by an iPhone app.  In her promo video (using Randy Newman’s ‘Short People’ track), Adi demonstrates a variety of daily situations where being able to make yourself taller can come in very handy: from the convenience of reaching the top shelf in your kitchen, to the confidence boost of being able to look a 6ft 3 guy on the side-walk directly in the eye.  What makes Adi’s invention robotic shoes unique, is that at the press of a touch screen you’re brought gently back to earth again.   So, thanks to SHORT ++, being short may soon be just a state of mind.

SHORT++ from Adi Marom on Vimeo.

Many of these gimmicks don’t usually help in the long run, and in many cases they damage the chances of those who created them.

As in many other cases, to be effective the idea needs to be within the boundaries of the “Closed World” of the problem.

So when thinking about how to impress their future employers people need to think about ideas that are related to them, their employers and the job they’re after.

Recently I came across such an idea, and will present it as part of a fictive CV that was sent to the company, ABC Advertising, in 2010.

———
The CV starts with the usual stuff, and then…

2010 - chosen from 1000 candidates to work as a planner for ABC Advertising.
2011 - won a tender for Coca Cola’s advertising and introduced an inventive advertising idea…
2012 - promoted to the position of London Branch Manager for ABC Advertising

and so on…

The idea was to write the CV as continuing into the future, and this enabled this jobseeker to express his plans and his confidence.

This example shows, once again, the fixation we have regarding thinking about time. SIT’s view of time is considered to be part of the environment of the problem.

SIT directs us to focus not only on the place where the problem arose, but also on its environment.

In the same way it directs us to pay attention to the time environment of the problem: what happened before the problem arose, and what happens after it arose if we don’t solve it.

See you all in my next post,

Roni

Roni and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to talk to you about innovation.

Click here to contact us

Visit Roni at the start2think website

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…

…the bomb could explode in the water at the dam’s base upstream. Under these conditions, a 5-ton bomb would suffice.

But the Royal Air Force engineers couldn’t figure out a way to drop the bomb from the air so that it would reach its precise destination at the dam’s base in the water. It seemed as though a giant torpedo would be needed.

On top of that, the Germans had already considered this possibility and had placed anti-torpedo nets up the river.

Does this seem like ‘mission impossible’? Not if you use Systematic Inventive Thinking! (Or, unless you’re creative enough not to need it…)

Barnes Wallis, a senior aeronautical engineer for Vickers solved the problem brilliantly.

His idea was to use the river water and the dam itself to guide the bomb to its destination.

The bomb, shaped like a barrel, was dropped from a low altitude on the river at some distance upstream from the dam.

The bomb hit the water, shot straight up over the torpedo net, and like a smooth pebble skimmed over the water a few times until it hit the dam and sank to its base.

What SIT elements can you identify here?

Well, first we have the Closed World - no new element was added.

Then we have the Task Unification tool: the water (and the dam) were used to guide the bomb.

Another important SIT aspect is that to solve this problem we must pay attention to the specific environment in which this problem takes place.

Many people facing this problem totally ignore the river when thinking about the solution.

And the river, by the way, helps in another way - the high pressure that water exerts on the dam is added to the pressure created by the bomb.

So maybe Wallis was creative enough and didn’t need an SIT training, but what about you?

See you all in my next post,

Roni

Roni and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to talk to you about innovation.

Click here to contact us

Visit Roni at the start2think website

The PIG developed from the idea of finding a way to use SIT’s thinking methodology to apply innovation to everyday tasks. This new application helps users unleash their imagination and generate original ideas for their next party.

Using a series of fun triggers based on the Subtraction and Multiplication tools, PIG users can “invent” with everyday party items (e.g. Guests, Drinks, Music), transforming them into wild and wacky themes and activities for their party.

Here are two examples of different kinds of triggers generated when the user chooses to work with the “food” item – one is more open and the other is more directional:

a.    “Trigger for Thought: At your party everyone will be eating their favorite food. How can you make this happen?”

b. “Retirement Party- The theme of your party is going to be an elderly party. Everyone will have to come dressed up as an old person, only soft foods will be served and the party will end at a reasonable time…”

“As well as being a useful tool for spicing up your party, we also want the PIG to leave users with the realization that they can be really creative and inventive thinkers”, said a source close to the PIG.

To experience the PIG in action, you can either download it at iTunes App Store or visit the PIG’s website.

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.

Here’s an example: the rod, string and cone could be used to create a mobile. We’ll hold the rod horizontally and tie the string to the rod (not in the center) from which the mobile will hang. We’ll then hang the cone on one end of the rod (the end closer to where the string is tied) and this will balance the other side of the rod when the mobile is hanging up. (OK, I know this isn’t the idea of the century, but I needed an instant example!)

Now let’s get back to Finke’s experiment. According to the usual procedure in these experiments, the test group was randomly divided into two sub-groups. One group was told to choose 3 items out of the 15 items presented to them, and the second group was given 3 items that were randomly chosen by a computer without the individuals themselves having any choice.

As mentioned previously, each individual had to create an idea for a new product. The ideas were to be evaluated by a panel of five judges (who, of course, were not aware of the source of the ideas.) The judges were asked to evaluate each idea according to two criteria - originality and applicability. (The idea was to be considered creative if it had a high score in originality and applicability)

And now the question we’ve all been waiting for: Which group produced more creative ideas? Was it the group whose members could choose freely or the group in which the items were chosen for them? I’m sure you know the answer, but I’m going to keep you in suspense a little longer!

The participants of the first group (those who could choose three items) are in a position to allow themselves to think about an idea (function) and afterwards to choose the item (form) to support this function.

The participants in the second group needed to make do with the three items that were given to them. Most likely, this group played with the items until they came up with a form that seemed to fulfill a useful function.

As you probably realized, but in complete contradiction to the intuition of most people regarding creativity, the participants of the second group (the ones whose freedom of choice was taken away from them) produced more creative ideas by far (almost double).

This is how Finke proved that people tend to me more creative when a form is dictated to them and the function is open. Paradoxically, a more constrained situation proved to be more successful in allowing people to be more productive and creative.

It is also further proof of the importance and effectiveness of the Closed World condition! (Sorry, I had to put this in…)

Incidentally, the producers of the comedy TV show, ‘Whose Line is it Anyway?’ which is based on ‘real time’ improvisation, are well aware of this. That’s why, in one of the segments, the comedians are given an object for which they need to come up with various uses.

For a detailed information about Finke’s experiment and other very interesting experiments related to creativity read the book:

Creative Cognition : Theory, Research, and Applications by Ronald A. Finke, Thomas B. Ward, Steven M.Smith

The book is highly recommended - one of the very few real good books about creativity.

See you all in my next post,

Roni

Roni and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to talk to you about innovation.

Click here to contact us

Visit Roni at the start2think website