… jokes.

Humor and creativity go hand in hand, so it stands to reason that we’ll find SIT principles in jokes (the good ones, at least).

Many people believe that analyzing jokes actually kills them, so if you’re one of those, I’m about to kill one for you…

I’d like to thank Don Young for sending in this story a few years back.

So here it is:

A wealthy man decided to go on a safari in Africa. He takes his faithful pet dog along for company. One day the dog starts chasing butterflies, and before long he discovers that he’s lost. So, wandering about he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the obvious intention of having lunch.

The dog thinks, “Boyo, I’m in deep doo-doo now.” (He was an Irish setter)…. Then he notices some bones on the ground close by, and immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat.

{Roni killing the joke: 1:

Notice SIT in action here. The dog had a problem and instead of looking at the threat - the leopard - he looked around for some resource that could help him.}

Just as the leopard is about to leap, the dog exclaims loudly, “Man, that was one delicious leopard. I wonder if there are any more around here?”

{Roni killing the joke for the second time:

2. Sometimes a bit of courage helps too…}

Hearing this, the leopard halts his attack in mid stride as a look of terror comes over him, and slinks away into the trees. “Whew”, says the leopard. “That was close. That dog nearly had me.”

{Roni killing the joke x 3:

3. A message for leopards: Not everyone standing near leopard bones has actually devoured a leopard.}

Meanwhile, a monkey who’s been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree figures that he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So off he goes. But the dog sees him heading toward the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up.

 The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The cat is furious at being made a fool and says, “Here monkey, hop on my back and see what’s going to happen to that conniving canine.”

 Now the dog sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back, and thinks,” What am I going to do now?”

{Now Roni is REALLY killing the joke! Think about what the dog should do now…}
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But instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers pretending he hasn’t seen them yet. And just when they get close enough to hear, the dog says, “Where’s that monkey. I can never trust him. I sent him off half an hour ago to bring me another leopard, and he’s still not back!!”

A great example of SIT’s Qualitative Change principle: Instead of thinking why X is a PROBLEM, think of X as a necessary condition for the solution.

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

One of your boastful friends makes a bet with you that he can tell you in no time at all exactly how many leaves there are on a tree at any given moment. Of course you agree to the bet - it seems like the quickest way to earn a free meal in your favorite Italian restaurant. As soon as you’ve made the bet, you figure out the catch: how the hell can you prove him wrong?

I’ll give you a few minutes…

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… Did you come up with something?

Here is the solution -

After your friend tells you the number of leaves (say 5678) you tell him it is wrong. “Prove it,” he will tell you happy about his victory. OK you’ll tell him: “please don’t look for a few seconds and I’ll take a few leaves off the tree
and then you tell me once again the exact number of leaves on the tree. If you can really count them it will be no problem for you”.

OK let’s see what  SIT tools are involved here:

Multiplication:  since you invite your friend to count twice

Division: Since we divide the leaves into two groups (those on the tree and those in our hand).

Subtraction: Since we remove leaves from the tree

This is a good opportunity to remind you - Systematic Inventive Thinking works! and the most important element in putting it to use is … to make the decision to use it for solving a particular mproblem.

So pick up a problem, any problem, use SIT find a great idea…

Than tell us all about it - we would love to hear everything about your success in using SIT.

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.

While my wife and daughter (clearly post-modern women as made obvious by their choice of mobile phones) began pressuring me to get rid of the device and replace it with one of a more advanced generation, I kept considering what could possibly be done with a screen-less yet functional mobile phone. The idea that flashed through my mind, spiced with a bit of black humor, was “Why not sell it to a blind person?”

But now a little more seriously… Any SIT New Product Development (NPD) workshop addressing mobile phones would inevitably, in a structured and systematic manner (by applying the Subtraction tool), reach the potential product: a mobile telephone for the blind. The end product would have no display screen (the subtracted component), but would have supporting functions appropriate specifically for a blind user.

Due to the family pressure, I found myself with the screen-less device, seated in front of the cellular company’s sales rep, taking an interest in a new device which, of course, has a SIM card (absent from my old phone). “I’ll take the deal,” I told him, “but with the condition that you transfer all of my memories from the old phone to the new one”. The sales representative (who is supposed to be well-versed in the secrets of cellular devices) shook his head with some skepticism. “I’m not sure I can do it,” he said. “In order to transfer the information from the old device to the SIM card in the new device, we must connect the old phone to an appropriate contraption, and then perform a series of actions (pressing keys on the old device) according to instructions that appear on the screen… Since the screen is not intact, I’m not sure I will succeed in pressing the keys in the proper order.”

This is a classic problem, definitely worthy of a Problem Solving (PS) workshop in SIT methodology…. If only I had the time, I would map out the problematic situation, define undesired phenomena and possible routes to attack the problem, choose a route, formulate a specific problem, write down the components of the Closed World and systematically apply one tool after another on each of the components to examine whether the problem can be solved…. But I don’t have the time and I’m not in a workshop.

Intuitively and spontaneously I told the sales rep: take a working phone of the old model – you must have dozens of those in storage – hook it into an identical contraption, and apply whatever instructions are showing on its screen to my old device also “. Ten minutes later I left happy and content, with an advanced mobile phone, equipped with a SIM card containing all the memories I have accumulated in recent years.

In retrospect, it is clear that this case fits like a glove to the SIT Problem Solving methodology, and that the tool I used to solve the undesirable phenomenon “instructions to transfer memories that are not visible on the screen” is Multiplication. The components multiplied in this case were the phone and the transfer contraption. … But is that really what I did?

Every now and then, I get asked by different people interested in SIT whether I apply the methodology in my own work. My reply is neither yes nor no. Very honestly, I respond that often the process of solving a problem seems chaotic, lined with ups and downs, and includes intuitive and random parts. After the problem has been solved (and here I very conveniently mention that this happens in most cases), it is very easy to demonstrate that the process corresponds greatly with SIT methodology. So my conclusion, which is somewhat paradoxical (and possibly dangerous): once you already have an expertise in SIT methodology … you don’t really need it.

Mind bogglers are problems in which solutions are simple and straightforward, but for some reason or other run counter to human intuition.

Today I present to you with two classic mind bogglers. Let’s see what we can learn from them.

The first one is a classic and I’m sure many of you actually know it:

Three travelers go into a hotel and are charged $30 for a room. They each contribute $10. That evening the hotel manager realizes that the men were overcharged. They should have got a group discount and paid $25. So he sends a bellhop up to the room to return $5. The three travelers however cannot equally split the $5, so they give the bellhop $2 as a tip and keep $3 which they split among themselves - $1 each.

Now each traveler has paid $9, for a total of $27. The bellhop has2$. So $29 is accounted for.

Where has the 30th dollar gone?

Instead of telling you the answer, let’s look at the same story, but with different numbers.

Again, the three travelers paid $30. But now they get back say $26) this time it’s a real discount, isn’t it?). Since 26 is not divisible into three, they decide to split $24 among themselves – 8 each and let the bellhop have $2. Now each traveler has paid $2 (10-8), for a total of $6. The bellhop has $2. That makes $8 accounted for… far from the original30 $ they paid.
In other words, now $22 are missing!

Now you can see it. There is simply no reason why the total they paid (be it $27 in the first story or $6 as in the second story) including the bellhop’s tip will come to a total of $30.

In this case, the story (mis)leads our mind to make an unnecessary connection.

In the second story the opposite is true. Here, to solve the problem, our mind should make a connection, but most people don’t make it.

Try to answer the following questions before reading the answer.

Q. How do you put a giraffe in a refrigerator?

A. Simple: you open the refrigerator, put the giraffe in and close the door.

Q. How do you put an elephant in a refrigerator?

A. Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe and put the elephant in. (Don’t forget to close the door).

Q. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All animals attend except one. Which animal does not attend?

A. The poor elephant. It is freezing in the refrigerator and cannot attend the conference.

Q. There’s a river you must cross, but crocodiles inhabit it. How do you manage to cross the river?

A. You swim across. All the crocodiles are attending the animal meeting…

This nice little story shows us the importance of context in problem solving. Indeed, most creative solutions arise when we look at the problem in the correct context, or in other words, make the right connection.

In the first mind boggler we had to break a connection, in the second we had to make one.

Creative thinking, as I see it, is about making and breaking connections. In fact, this is exactly what Systematic Inventive Thinking helps us to achieve.

The Closed World Principle helps us make otherwise unnoticed connections, the Qualitative Change principle helps us break connections.

Visit Roni at the start2think website

I don’t agree with this definition.

We would like life expectancy to be around 150 years (and come to think of it, why not even older?) The fact is that it currently isn’t 150 years, and yet we don’t really (at least not directly) label it as a problem.

So a better (and still not complete) definition of a problem would be, “a gap between a desired situation and an existing one that we have reason to believe we can eliminate”.

This is interesting: some people would regard a certain situation as a problem because they believe there may be a solution, while others wouldn’t see any problem because they can’t even envision a way to a solution.

By the way, I believe that people trained in problem solving tools such as SIT, see more problems around just because they have slightly more confident in their ability to solve them.

There are many kinds of problems. If something used to work and now it doesn’t, then it’s obviously a problem. Or is it? Sometimes things that stop working are a signal to us that something in the environment has changed.

And these environmental changes may also carry opportunities as well as difficulties, but in most cases we don’t see the opportunities because the problems take up all our attention.

Many people think that the first step in solving a problem is in defining it. I think it’s impossible to define a problem. If you look closely at the way people define problems, you’ll notice that most are either so general (such as, “How to make our workforce more productive”) that they are not operable or are much too specific.

Because a problem is a an undesired situation we have to at least have a vague vision of how we can bring to a desired one we tend to define the problem in terms of that vague envision.

This is a trap: in order to perceive a situation as a problem, we must see at least one solution.

SIT’s way of dealing with this trap is simple but powerful. In SIT, instead of a problem definition, there are actually problem definitions. These definitions are never stated in terms of what we want to achieve but in terms of what’s wrong with the existing situation. That’s why we call them “undesired phenomena”.

These undesired phenomena are structured in a hierarchal way in a cause and effect chain. We start with the first undesired phenomena that comes to mind (called the anchor) and develop the chain upward and downwards using the questions “why” and “so what”.

This way we open many new directions for solutions that were never envisioned before.

Watch this short video for a nice demonstration of a chain of undesired phenomena:

Visit Roni at the start2think website