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.

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For those who know SIT
For those who don’t

For those who joined our previous webinar
For those who couldn’t make it

For those who are bosses
For those who have bosses

For those who have participated in SIT workshops
For those who haven’t

For those who deal with products
For those who deal with services

For those who think alone
For those who think together

For those who admire symmetry
For those who wish to break it

For innovation in your job
For innovation in your home

For you, for your friends, for your colleagues – for everyone!

Inspired by SIT’s Attribute Dependency tool and Coca Cola TV commercial

Part 2 of our Inventive Thinking series looks at Attribute Dependency - one of SIT’s most powerful and misunderstood innovation templates.  At its heart, the Attribute Dependency tool is about breaking the symmetrical thinking patterns that can block new thinking.

In the webinar we’ll show how you can use Attribute Dependency to create new products and develop new promises on demand.

This webinar is free. Duration: Approx. 1 hour.

The webinar will be conducted by Tamar Alterman and Nurit Cohen from SIT.

About Tamar Alterman

Tamar is an account manager and facilitator at SIT, with an emphasis on New Product Development, Implementation Strategy and Marketing Communications. Tamar studied for two Masters’ Degrees at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in both Cognitive and Social Psychology.

About Nurit Cohen

Nurit is a senior facilitator of SIT workshops for Strategy and New Product Development.  Nurit’s years of experience running innovation projects for Johnson & , Kimberly Clark, Bayer, Pearson Publishing, and many others have made her a specialist in new product implementation and in working with sales forces.  Nurit taught SIT to MBA students at the Ben Gurion University in Israel. She holds an MBA with special focus in Marketing and Organizational Behavior as well as a BA in Business Administration, Anthropology and Sociology, all from the Hebrew University.

Register now by clicking here

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 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.

“Would you please move your truck forward a bit so that we can get out,” asked my friend politely.

Without looking up, the driver replied, “There’s plenty of space for you to get out”.

“Well, yes,” I thought, “we could get out if we had a motorcycle…” but I kept my thoughts to myself.

My friend and the truck driver then started arguing back and forth about whether it was possible to get out or not. I wasn’t in the mood for a heated debate, so I moved to the side and started thinking SIT.

I was having a hard time thinking, because at this stage my friend and the driver were yelling at each other… Basically, the truck driver wasn’t willing to move because he was in the middle of unloading, and as far as he was concerned, we could wait.

So I thought about it and realized that this was the situation: the busier the driver is, the less likely he’ll be willing to move the truck.

Therefore we need to find a solution that will change the situation to this: the busier the driver is, the MORE likely he’ll be willing to move the truck. This is what is called Qualitative Change in SIT.

Do you want to think about it before I tell you what I did? I’ll give you a few minutes…

One,

Two,

Three… Did you come up with something?

OK, so here’s the rest of the story:

After I set myself the goal of finding a solution where, contrary to what one would think, the busier the driver would be the MORE likely he’d move the truck, I came up with the idea very quickly.

I interrupted the heated argument and said to my friend, “You know, I think he’s right. There IS enough space for us to get out”.

My friend glared at me, and all I can say is, if looks could kill…!

I then went up to the driver and said very politely, ‘Would you please guide us out - we don’t want to bump your new truck’.

‘OK, OK, I’ll move the truck,’ was his reaction.

Although he may not have spotted the “Qualitative Change” inherent to the situation, the driver twigged that guiding us out would take a lot more of his time!

So, next time you’re in a squeeze, think how to make a Q.C…

See you all in my next post,

Roni

Visit Roni at the start2think website

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.

The owner of the car has no choice other than to go down to the depot and pay the fine so that he can get his license plates back and continue driving his vehicle.

What SIT tools have been used here?

I’m sure you recognized the Division technique: the license plate is a part that is separated from the rest of the vehicle.
But the Task Unification technique is also involved here. The license plate is the agent of the action that forces the owner of the vehicle to pay the fine.

I invite readers to suggest inventive ways of avoiding getting a fine in the first place.

I do enjoy spending time with my nephew, but the little fella sure knows how to keep me, and mostly his parents, on our toes.

I want to share with you an incident that I am sure all of you who have kids, are related to kids or watched over kids, are familiar with. Bear with me through the description of the incident because, at the end, I would love to hear about your experiences as well.

During a game at a play date last week, Rani banged his head against a window and started crying. You know, that type of crying that makes even the iciest of hearts melt. I ran to him, breaking the 2.5-meter world record, took him in my arms, and rocked him against me while murmuring the most ridiculously ineffective things such as “shush now, don’t cry, the pain will go away soon” or futilely getting him to look at the new crayons on the table. While his sobbing continued as strongly, I was thinking to myself that I have to do better – and different – if I want this to work - which led me to the SIT inventive problem solving approach.

I reminded myself that one of the characteristics of inventive problem solving is that the problem is the solution. This led me to the realization that my salvation will not come from bizarre traditional sentences such as “the pain will go away by your wedding day” or external resources like the crayons on the table. Rather, I need to focus my attention on my crying nephew in order to come up with an inventive solution.

I, therefore, looked closer at my crying nephew taking inventory of my available resources such as Rani’s tears, Rani’s clothes etc.

Then, I noticed Rani do the tiniest thing which made me go “Eureka! Got it!”
All he did was blow air heavily on my neck. I instantly had an idea of how to use this fact to solve my problem. The next time he blew air on my neck, I made a big theatrical scene, saying:” Who did that?! Where did it come from?! Someone is blowing air on my neck!”
I then held my breath and waited….and there it was – the tinniest pause in his sobs followed by another, intentional blow of air. I then exaggerated my reaction even more making a whole fuss about it and this time, I got the most wonderful sound - a giggle!
From that moment on, it turned into a game and within a matter of seconds, my nephew was back to his cheerful self, running around the backyard acting as if nothing ever happened.
In case you were wondering about his aunt, well, the fact that I am writing about it in the blog a week later should tell you how far behind me this incident really is…

The whole event got me thinking that if there ever was a place where being innovative is a must, it has to be parenting or in my case, aunt-ing.

Routine, daily activities such as getting my nephew to eat, take a bath, brush his teeth, go to bed while avoiding confrontation and permanent damage to his tender soul (or mine), are definitely areas where one could think and act differently in a useful and
effective way (the SIT working definition of innovation).

Here is an example of parental innovative thinking in a situation with which I am sure you are familiar.

Innovation should be applied to any area where what you do today does not work well enough. No matter how big or small, work or non-work related.

From personal experience I can tell you that it is not easy, BUT the beauty of it is that if one applies Systematic Inventive Thinking regularly and for an extended period of time; innovating becomes one’s second nature.

The example I mentioned above is just a first sign that this is starting to happen to me….

What about you? Has innovation “invaded” your home?

I would love it if you shared examples of how you use innovation (SIT methodology or others) in your parenting, babysitting or aunt-ing.

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!

By the way, it is important for me to point out that in order to activate SIT, there has to be a ‘conscious’ decision to use it. In fact, the decision to use SIT is perhaps the most important stage in the method. After the decision has been made, the thought process almost always changes.

(This is somewhat similar to something that I once read: the most important stage in psychological treatment is the decision to get treatment. Apparently the decision itself reduces considerably the symptoms that cause the need for treatment).

Let’s return to our story.

After I decided to activate SIT, I made a mental list of all the objects: my son, his events of the day, the story of his events of the day, Macdonalds, myself.

I had a feeling that the solution may come about by using the Multiplication technique, and so I decided to duplicate the story. According to the Multiplication technique, adding to the problem world a new story that is different in some way from the original can solve the problem. ‘Aha,’ I thought, ‘I’ve got it!’

So I said to my son, ‘Instead of you telling me what happened to you today, I’ll tell you a story about your day,’ and I started telling the story (as if it were coming from him). The story I told him began like this: ‘As I got off the school bus today, this kid came up to me and started asking me questions…’ This, of course, was a wild guess based on a few details that I had already picked up about his life at school (he once told me about a kid that annoyed him when he got off the bus).

‘No, no, it wasn’t like that’ he interrupted. ‘It was like this: I got off the school bus and then…’ And so he went on to tell me what really happened to him at school. I continued the story and he continued excitedly to correct me as we got into more and more detail. It proved to be successful beyond all expectation! (I could have written a diary, stating minute by minute what happened to him at school)

This is an example of using SIT’s Multiplication technique. The problem was about the story that my son didn’t agree to tell me. It was solved by a story that I invented about his day.

See you all in my next post,

Roni

Visit Roni at the start2think website