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

Roni and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to help you innovate.

Click here to contact us

There are however situations in life or work when the known routines don’t seem to work.

Sometimes we need to do something that simply seems impossible - we need to double the throughput of a production line within two weeks after several years in which all we were trying to do and managed to do was to increase the production by no more than 20 percent. (In one of my consulting projects we did exactly that…).

Often a problem seems very simple, but after several attempts to solve it, it turns out that the routine methods fail.

On yet other occasions, we do have a working solution, but for some reason we are not satisfied with it. We just don’t seem to find a better one.

In all these situations SIT can help us find a simple solution that for some good reason our brain could not produce.

SIT is based on the simple observation that many creative solutions in different domains fall into a relatively small number of distinctive categories.  If we know these categories, we can use them to find new solutions.

“Out of the box” solutions, it is claimed, fall into their own boxes.

Consider the highly creative idea of vaccination. We need to generate antibodies against polio. We do this with weaker or dead polio viruses.

The pattern is clear: if you have a problem with X, try to solve it using a slightly different version of X (In SIT parlance, this is the Multiplication tool).

There are numerous problems that have been solved using this very template.

But why can’t the human brain produce these kinds of solutions without SIT’s help? Well, to be sure, sometimes it can. I don’t think that Salk used SIT to develop his polio vaccination. But more often than not these kinds of solutions (solving X with X) are missed (and when discovered, arouse a feeling of surprise).

I think that the answer is quite simple. To be efficient, our brain quickly creates a categorized view of the world. If X is categorized as a problem, any idea in which X is the solution is inaccessible to our brain.

SIT simply forces us to consider this possibility.

As you read this it may seem quite logical to you, and you may say to yourself, “Next time I have a problem with something I’ll try to use that something to solve the problem”.

If you’re thinking this way, you may be underestimating your habits. Your brain is stronger than you…and will return to tried and true procedures in real time.

Therefore a very important part of learning SIT is practice. You must experience using SIT time and again to be able to take control over your brain’s automatic pilot.

The Multiplication tool is just one of SIT’s five tools. Together the five tools form a simple but powerful method for solving problems.

SIT is a software for the mind that will help you find a needle (creative solution) in haystack (your problem environment) provided that one exits.

See you all in my next post,

Roni

Roni and the rest of us at SIT would be happy to help you innovate.

Click here to contact us

Visit Roni at the start2think website

You probably know the little riddle about the dog, the carrot and the rabbit that need to be transported to the other side of the river. The problem is that their owner can take only one of them on each trip across the river (it was a very big carrot! )
When the dog and rabbit are left unattended, the dog devours the rabbit. And when the carrot and the rabbit are left unattended, the rabbit eats the carrot.

How can the rabbit, the dog and the carrot be transferred safely to the bank on the other side of the river?

If you haven’t heard this one, take a few moments to try solving it before you read on.
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The solution is to take the rabbit on the first trip, go back and take the carrot. Then take the rabbit BACK to the original bank, leave it there and take the dog. On the last trip, the rabbit is taken to the other bank and the owner can continue his journey with all three.

People find it difficult to solve this problem because of the fact that the solution involves giving up on something already achieved (the fact that the rabbit is already in the desired location). To solve this problem we need to perform an activity that seems to be counter-productive, i.e. bring the rabbit back to the starting point.

There are many situations in games and in life that require sacrificing what seems to us to be our most important asset. The most brilliant moves in chess are those that a player wins by letting his opponent take his or her queen.

There’s had been a famous soccer team in Israel that hadn’t done very well for a few years although they had the best players in the league. This was costing the owner of the team a lot of money.

Coaches were frequently replaced, but nothing helped until a new coach decided to remove the team’s star from a match  - the best and most expensive player.

The team won! Furthermore, it was their best game of the season. In the following matches the coach did the same thing, and the team won all their matches and had a good chance of winning the championship.

Sometimes what seems to be the most important asset is actually an obstacle. SIT recognizes this and offers the Subtrraction tool in which a list of important objects or system features is made and then removed one by one to see what happens.

In many cases there are surprising results!

A story based on a true case

Itai, head of the final quality control process, made sure that the testing system was properly adjusted. He checked the temperature guage of the huge cooling cell in which the unit had been tested overnight, and nodded to himself satisfactorily - everything was ready for the final testing procedure, the last stage before shipping the product to the customer.

It took only a few seconds for Itai to realize that something was wrong. The rotating sound of the pistons didn’t sound quite right. Instead of a rythmic ticking, he could hear a screeching sound every now and then. Even before he had the chance to decide what to do about it, the system came to a screeching halt and the words “FAIL” flickered in bold red letters across the test screen.

An hour later a similar malfunction occurred in another system… Pandora’s box had been opened!

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Around the discussion table, along with the other factory managers, sat the chief engineer - a rare phenomenon due to the fact that it was a discussion about yet another failure of the system, getting “stuck” at low temperatures.

However, this time there was a real threat to the supply schedule, as it was dangerously close to the shipment date. Failure of the system during the final testing stages was not characteristic of the producton flow. For this reason, the time allocated to the final testing was fairly close to the shipment date, leaving room for only minor, unexpected hiccups.

The system’s engineer described the findings and the resulting implications clearly and concisely:

“Under low temperature conditions, the pistons inside the cylinders jammed, causing a failure in the operation of the system. Intensive investigation has shown that the reason for the system getting jammed is that an incorrect material (too soft) was used to produce about 3% of the 120 cylinders”

“The implications are that about 4 units could malfunction at any time”.

“How long will it take to check all 120 units to find out which cylinder is faulty?” asked the factory manager.

The answer was not encouraging.

“In the engineering world, the most common way to distinguish between a soft cylinder (abnormal) and a hard cylinder (normal) is to use a special machine to check the materials”.

“The tip of a diamond is embedded into the material, and the hardness is determinded by how far the diamond tip is inserted. In order to use this machine, the entire system needs to be dismantled: remove the cylinders, check the hardness, make a selection, put it back together, and then repeat the cold temperature testing procedure on all the sytems.

“Testing each section of the system will take at least two weeks if we work around the clock, and the supply time delay will be more than a week”.

The silence in the conference room was tangible and tense. Everyone was aware of the obvious dilemma: a delay in supply time would include fines and damage to the company’s good name. On the other hand, they could not take the risk of sending a system that may fail at a point when it was most needed.

As a factory that doesn’t compromise on quality, it was obvious that the second option wasn’t really an option, and so it seemed as though the decision had already been made.

The silence was broken by Ron’s voice, the engineer who had been working on locating the failure mechanism in the last two days almost around the clock:

“Maybe we can think about a creative solution to find the faulty system… I mean, some kind of systematic inventive thinking process,” he clarified.

Knowing that they didn’t have much option, the factory manager approved a two day delay for the benefit of this experiment - to find an inventive solution that would save them the time and effort involved in testing the hardness of the materials.

***
Ron cleared the table and erased the calculations from the board.

Gadi, the head of the mechanical laboratory, and Yoav, the metalurgical engineer who was called in to help take care of the malfunction, were both invited in to discuss the problem.

“The facts are clear”, Ron began, “there’s a shipment of 120 tested units in storage. Among them, approximately 3% of the cylinders are made out of material that is too soft. We need to find a way of identifying these soft cylinders as quickly as possible. How can we do this?”

Spontaneously, a Brainstorming session started up where numerous ideas were thrown into the air:

“Maybe there’s a difference in the magnetic or electrical properties between the hard and soft materials”.

“Maybe the luster of the hard and soft materials is different”.

“What would happen if we activated all the units again at a low temperature and see which one gets stuck?”

“Maybe we should replace all the cylinders with the proper cylinders without checking”.

“Maybe the low temperature test was too severe and cannot really be related to real life situations, and therefore we should not expect problems during functioning”.

“Maybe we should test just a sample of the systems”.

“What would happen if we dismantle and check only one covering out of three and decide according to that if the unit is useable”.

“Is there a non-destructive test to check the hardness of a material (ultrasound, laser?)”

Very soon they realized that it wasn’t possible to use any of these ideas in finding a solution.

“I think it’s time for a coffee break”, said Gadi heading for the kitchen.

When he returned he saw that Ron has just finished drawing a piston and a sleeve (covering) on the board.

“I suggest that we try to be more systematic in our thinking,” said Ron. “Let’s try using the SIT technique”.

“If there’s a creative solution, it needs to fulfill two conditions - the  Closed World condition and the Qualititave Change condition.”

Yoav, who wasn’t familiar with the inventive thinking method, looked puzzled. Ron continued to explain.

“In your opinion, what do you think is the ideal solution?” asked Ron.

“Well,” Yoav replied, “of course the ideal solution would be one in which, without investing time or effort, we’d be able to find the faulty systems”.

“Using the Closed World terminology,” Ron continued, “we’re not supposed to add any new type of objects, tools, or any other means to the system to fulfill the function of testing the hardness of the material”.

“So what you’re saying is that maybe the pistons themselves can check their own hardness?!” shouted Gadi in disbelief.

“That’s definitely a possible direction”, replied Ron. “According to the Closed World conditions, everything that exists in the system or its close environment is a possible candidate to do the test for us”.

There was a moment of silence, before Ron asked, “So what about the cylinders checking themselves?”

Silence once again permeated the air as everyone thought about what this meant.

“Wait a minute”, shouted Gadi, “if I’m holding two cylinders in my hand, a hard one and a soft one, I can check one by scratching it with the other. Hard material will always scratch soft material!”

“And how would we be able to test the exact hardness this way?” asked Yoav, who was a metalurgical engineer familiar with and used to controlled quantity tests.

And then he continued in almost the same breath, getting more excited with every word, “But I’m not interested in testing the absolute hardness of the material, only the relative hardness between a good cylinder and a faulty one!”

The only thing that stopped the excitement and noise that followed was angry knocking on the wall from the office next door telling them to quieten down.

The testing method that they came up with seemed to be an excellent solution, but before activating it on the real system they had to prove that it worked under controlled testing conditions.

It didn’t take very long for them to come up with an idea for a controlled experiment:

“If we take a normal sleeve or covering (that has been checked and its hardness approved according to conventional means) and we sharpen it into the shape of a dental pick, we can use it to test the relative hardness of the others. A soft covering will be easily scratched by it, and a covering of the same hardness won’t scratch. This scratch test is easy to do without dismantling the whole system, because the top part of the cylinder is exposed”.

The idea was quickly translated into action. The three team members stood impatiently around the machine  that was making the improvised pick from the hard cylinder.

In the late afternoon hours of that same day, Ron went to the production manager with the chief engineer to inform him about the dramatic progress. Everything was ready for the controlled experiment that would determine the fate of the idea.

***

On the table in the assembly lab was a pile of 42 cylinders marked with serial numbers. Apparently, the cylinders were completely identical. In fact, there were 39 cylinders made of hard material, and 3 of soft material. One of the assembly technicians (who of course didn’t know which were hard and which were soft) volunteered to be the guinea pig as he held the improvised pick in his hand.

After 15 minutes of working in tense silence surrounded by a large group of technicians and managers, the technician separated the original pile into two piles. The project manager compared the cylinder serial numbers in the pile that was suspected of being faulty to the note in his pocket.

“You did it”, he replied without being able to hide the satisfaction in his voice.

That same night, 4 more picks were manufactured and at the same time packages were being opened, and the protective covers removed from the cylinders. Each unit was placed on the “operating table” as the technician scratched each of the three cylinders.

The whole process took less that 10 minutes per unit. After 24 hours the selection process ended. 5 faulty units were found, fixed, and replaced.

Ron looked at the long line of crates waiting for the delivery truck, and he smiled. The SIT method had proved itself yet again!

Dov Tibi is a Senior SIT facilitator and trainer and an Opto-Mechanical System engineer and Reliability engineer in the R&D Department of RAFAEL, Israel. Dov has extensive experience leading creative problem-solving workshops.

Click here to contact us

… 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

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.