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

If the exact same stairs, however, made fun sounds when climbing them, would that make a difference?

You will find the answer to this question in the following clip which demonstrates that assigning stairs a new task of “convincing” people to climb them can result in a fun, innovative and perhaps unexpected situation.

The SIT pattern, by the way, that we see in this inventive idea is called “Task Unification”.  When using this pattern, we assign a new task to an existing component – in this case, we assigned the (existing) stairs with the task of convincing people to climb them (a task they didn’t fill before).

What other task could we assign the stairs? Any ideas?

The belief that “madness” is related to creativity is not limited to artistic creativity. Consider for example the movie, “A Beautiful Mind”, which tells the story of Nobel Laureate in economics, John Nash, who suffered from Schizophrenia.

Scientists have known for years that truly creative individuals have a much higher rate of manic depression, or bipolar disorder, than does the general population.

Stanford researchers Connie Strong and Terence Ketter, MD, have taken the first steps toward exploring the relationship.

Using personality and temperament tests, they found artists to be more similar in personality to individuals with manic depression than to healthy people in the general population.

Is it simply that manic depressive people have a wider spectrum of emotions and different points of view that enable them to sense the world in higher granularity?

Another theory is that people with bipolar disorder generate a great number of ideas during their mania period and then highly criticize them during depression, leaving only the most promising ideas, which are then further evaluated during the next manic period.

During episodes of mania, bipolar patients experience being in a good mood and their self-esteem is elevated. They sleep less and have abundant energy; their productivity increases.

Manic-depressives frequently become paranoid and irritable. Moreover, their speech is often rapid, excitable and intrusive, and their thoughts move quickly and fluidly from one topic to another. They usually hold tremendous conviction about the correctness and importance of their own ideas as well.

Studying the speech of hypomanic patients has revealed that they tend to rhyme and use other sound associations far more often than do unaffected individuals. They can also list synonyms or form other word associations much more rapidly than is considered normal.

Or perhaps it’s the other way around? Perhaps people who are highly creative and intelligent tend to develop bipolar disorder? After all most manic-depressives do not possess extraordinary imagination, and most accomplished artists do not suffer from recurring mood swings.

Consider the quote by Henrik Tikkanen who said that, “Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence”.

See you all in my next post,

Roni

Visit Roni at the start2think website

These vehicles are decorated by the farmers themselves. They caught my eye because they are the only colorful objects in an otherwise arid landscape. I was curious why a poor farmer would invest time and money to decorate, sometimes elaborately, what is merely a functional vehicle. What are the origins of this phenomenon? Cultural? Commercial? Something else?

I asked around but no one had a good answer. So I decided to flip the question: if the farmers are spending this much money, what is the benefit that they get? This reminded me of a technique we use in SIT ideation processes, where we first manipulate a product in some unexpected way, and only then ask ourselves what the new version could be used for.

Here are some of the ideas that we came up with on the road to Petra:
1. Efficiency – the decorative element increases the height of the side railing of the pickup, which means that the farmer can carry more goods on each trip. (While this might explain why the railing is added, it does not explain the investment in the decoration.)
2. Branding – perhaps it helps the farmer create a recognizable image in the farmers’ market.
3. Symbol of success – maybe decorations are like notches on a belt; the more successful the farmer, the more elaborate the decorations on his truck.
4. Identification – what better way to find your truck in a big parking lot?

Once I came up with some possible benefits, additional ideas for new products came forward quite quickly, suggesting benefits also for other players in the market (such as the manufacturers or distributors of the trucks):

1. It is a great differentiator in the market. If all vehicles of a certain brand were colored and decorated, it could give them an interesting edge. And if we further develop this direction, the manufacturer could provide local types of decoration for each area in the world (Chinese, Indian, Latin American, Middle Eastern, Balkan etc.). By this, the car manufacturer / distributor can support a position in the market as the brand which understands best the local culture and actively supports the desires of local customers.

2. A company which sells other types of products for farmers (seeds for example) could give away a “decoration kit” to their loyal customers to send out a message such as – “with us, your yield will be so much better that you will need the extra storage space in your pickup”.

3. Vehicle manufacturers that offer such add-on kits actually enable their consumers to purchase a vehicle with extra storage space at a lower cost than a truck (creating an in-between size). Yes, we know we all want to sell bigger for more, but smaller with higher margin is also good.
So, can you think of other benefits of this product for the various players in this market? Any ideas for new offers or products?

Of course, if you are familiar with the local Jordanian culture, you are welcome to share with us your knowledge. Just don’t let the “real answer” stop your creative thinking…

In the article, Drew Boyd (Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson, one of SIT’s close friend and colleague), delineates some of the drawbacks of traditional brainstorming as it many times generates low quality ideas. Drew offers SIT’s method - a systematic method that combines creativity with a structured and predictable process as a more effective alternative for getting results.

Brainstorming according to Drew: “is the most overused and underperforming tool in business today… Among the problems are these: Throwing in an idea for public consideration generates fear of failure, and workers looking to advance their own interests often keep their best ideas to themselves until a more opportune time.”

One of the biggest challenges of brainstorming is filtering quality from quantity. At the end of a brainstorming session you are often left overwhelmed with too much information to sort from. Some of which are not relevant, others are too raw, and some are just not implementable.

My own experience as a facilitator in SIT taught me that our process is focused on generating qualitative data. At the end of an SIT process you are left with a much shorter, manageable, and easy to implement idea list. This is being done by incorporating two filters in the thinking process: the “should we do it” - market filter and the “can we do it” - feasibility filter. The filters force you to ask (and answer) for each pre-idea considered, what are the benefits of the idea (making sure it has a market) and check initial direction for implementation (making sure it can be done). Pre-ideas that fail any one of the filters are not furthered considered and do not mature to become ideas.

So how beneficial or implementable do you think the ideas in the Budget Brainstorming commercials?

To read the entire article that was published on the New York Times simply click here: