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.
Archive for the 'Ideation' ChannelPage 3 of 3
December 31, 2008
Energy solutions with an SIT twist
October 13, 2008
On accidents and business cards
It makes sense that accidents often lead to good ideas, such as Post-it notes, Viagra and chocolate chip cookies. During ‘normal’ thought processes in search for ideas, we are locked in fixedness, beliefs, habits and criticism. Accidents easily bypass these obstacles. They just happen.
The first challenge, therefore, is intentionally causing accidents; and the second, no less complicated, is identifying them as opportunities for innovation and not as failures. We’ll start with the second challenge.
Let’s take, for example, business cards. Those usually white rectangles, usually 2X3.5 in., with the name of the card’s holder, his/her position and contact information. The font is ordinary, the color scheme – common – and the practice is gray and predictable.
At conferences or meetings with multiple participants, I often receive a bunch of such cards and by the next day (or even an hour later) I cannot remember who gave them to me. All the cards look the same.
September 23, 2008
Innovate like a chameleon
Last semester I assigned my class at university the following project: to develop “virtual products” around the concept of
the gym. Applying some of SIT’s tools, my students came up with some very interesting ideas, including a room-less gym, where all the equipment was portable, and could be set up where needed, for instance, in an office or at the beach; a gym with themed rooms, where each theme is expressed visually and in music, based on the physical exercise involved; and a bus that had a gym built in it, instead of seats, and which serves both for transportation and as a fitness centre (so over worked employees can get some exercise on their daily commute).
August 26, 2008
Innovating the innovation conference
This time I have a question. Albeit not yet concrete, my question offers a promising direction for cooperative exploration.
First, please close your eyes (…then open them fast so you can continue reading). Now, try and think of an innovation conference in which you’d like to participate.
As a reader of this blog and an obvious innovation-phile, I imagine that conferences crammed with speakers from 9-4 are not exactly to your style. You’re looking for something a little different; a conference that’s, well, a work of innovative itself. From the moment you get the invitation to the moment you go back home, a conference that feels different - new, interesting, effective and is informative to boot.
Continue reading ‘Innovating the innovation conference’
August 14, 2008
Please invent a new product
Let’s begin with a small exercise.
©iStockphoto.com/deliormanli
Please invent a new product.
Yes, really, go ahead and invent a new product…
.
.
Stuck ha….?
.
.
I’ll tell you why.
Paradoxically, when a problem statement is too broad, our mind finds it quite difficult to recruit all its creative powers.
Scientific studies have proved time and again that we tend to become more creative in a constrained thinking environment.
I’ll let you see it for yourself.
August 4, 2008
Why we call something interesting?
Irving Biederman, USC psychology and computer science professor, tries to explain why we find one thing more “interesting” than another.
©iStockphoto.com/tomml
According to his theory, we tend to be interested in things that are new to us but at the same time still connected to what we already know. New, but not too new…
Biederman proposes a simple mechanism by which the brain seeks to “maximize the rate at which it acquires new but interpretable information.”
July 29, 2008
Think About a Shirt!
©iStockphoto.com/maica
It suddenly occurred to me just how far shirts have come since the nightmares from the 80’s–just how much innovation has been packed into one simple shirt!
So, I figured that “shirts” would be a good subject to address–to ideate about.
Let’s see if we can come up with some cool ideas for novel shirts (it’s a pity I’m not a seamstress!).
Here are some first thoughts:
- A shirt that’s made entirely of pockets – stitched one next to the other, the pockets are the shirt.
- A patchwork zip-shirt – the shirt is made of many different patches, each attached to its neighbors by a zipper. Each time you wear the shirt, you can choose which parts to wear and which to remove (sleeveless, one-sleeved, mid-drift, collarless, etc.). The opportunities are endless! Continue reading ‘Think About a Shirt!’
July 2, 2008
“Happy Equality Day, darling”
Several years ago a friend of mine, who runs an Internet site selling wedding gifts, asked for some ideas to help him differentiate his site from the rest, and thus improve sales.
To find ideas, I decided to apply SIT’s Breaking Symmetry technique with the “wedding day” as the starting point.
© iStockphoto.com/fenykepez
One simple symmetry that came to my mind is the obvious fact that the husband and wife celebrate their wedding day at the same time.
This helped me come up with the virtual idea or pre-idea (something that is not an idea in itself, but triggers a thinking process that leads to an idea) of having some kind of wedding day that the husband and wife don’t celebrate on the same day.
Here is more or less my line of thought from there: Continue reading ‘“Happy Equality Day, darling”’
