Innovation does not mean that we need something new! When ever you need to accomplish a new task always try to review existing resources before bringing in new ones.
ArchivePage 3 of 15
September 26, 2010
When innovation isn’t implemented, is it still innovation?
If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?”
This well-known phrase becomes very relevant when we talk about the results of an innovation process in a company. I would like to tell you about an SIT - Systematic Inventive Thinking workshop which had great results but failed the implementation test.
In 1996, SIT conducted a project with a company called Vitco Detergents. At the time, Vitco had a small selection of products, including a perfumed laundry detergent. The purpose of the project was to expand their product line. A project of this sort is called in the SIT language NPD - New Product / Promise Development - in which the target is to expand the company’s product offering.
The inventive thinking tool that yielded the most interesting idea was the SIT Subtraction tool.
Continue reading ‘When innovation isn’t implemented, is it still innovation?’
September 13, 2010
Water cooler talk with robots
The high tech sector has an impressive track record with regards to workplace innovation and efficiency. With the emergence of popular programs such as skype and google video chat, telecommuting has become an accepted reality in the modern day workplace. Employees can now work from anywhere in the world and still have that crucial face-to-face time needed.
This solution seems quite elegant, but the reality is that even with a video substitute there are still a few vital characteristics missing. The telecommuter using video chat software is confined to the computer of the person he is talking to and is not able to be part of the office culture.
The ingenious folks over at Willow Garage (a company that develops open source software for robot applications) have taken telecommuting one step further with the introduction of the telepresence robot. This “robot” allows telecommuters to move around the office, be part of meetings or presentations, and totally freak out the new guy. Check out the video below to see the telepresence robots in action at Mozilla headquarters!
Seeing candidates waiting in the SIT reception area to be interviewed for a facilitation and account management position brought back memories of my very first impressions of the place. So if insights about innovation & the SIT methodology are more your thing, this might not be the post for you…
During the long recruiting process and gazillion interviews I went through way back then, I spent quite some time in the SIT reception area. Having recently left a corporate career at that time, I came to the interview wearing what I thought was an appropriate interview outfit: buttoned up shirt, dress pants and high-heeled stiletto-like sandals. The first indication that I may have gotten it wrong happened as I was riding the elevator up to the SIT offices and was asked: “are you going to see the weirdoes on the third floor?”
Pretty quickly I understood what it meant. The first thing I noticed going in was the shoes or in most cases, the lack thereof. Most of the people in the office were walking around barefoot. This was accompanied, what else, by short cargo pants and plain T-shirts. As I was digesting what I was seeing, examining my own outfit all over again and feeling oh so inadequate, I thought I spotted a woman with shoes on. As she approached, I looked more carefully and realized the one real pair of shoes I managed to spot, except for flip-flops and comfort footwear, was of a bright yellow color.
Continue reading ‘The weirdoes on the 3rd floor (A Loving Look at SIT and its Idiosyncrasies)’
August 17, 2010
Resources at your fingertips, and at your toes
Spring has already passed and the lack of inspiration that accompanies the heat of July and August is upon us. Now is the time to internalize a principle that will help us pass the summer in peace: “Use resources that exist in your surroundings and make new things with them.” Why? Because it is efficient, respectful of the environment, and many times more likely to lead us to creative and surprising ideas.
Take, for example, the Wind Light - a light source system designed by Lior Yisrael that was chosen to be used on promenades and beaches. The Wind Light does not rely on an external electricity source; rather, it makes use of wind energy in order to produce electricity. The energy that is produced by the wind is conserved and stored in the light post, and serves as the post’s sole source of electricity. By doing this, Yisrael found a creative way to harness a resource that exists in abundance – the breeze at the beach – and to assign it an additional task: that of serving as the energy supply for the light post. And if that is not enough, indeed there is another surprise latent in the product: the body of the light post produces light according to the intensity of the sun, so that after the sun sets, the intensity of the light increases.
Continue reading ‘Resources at your fingertips, and at your toes’
August 4, 2010
Betting on Leaves
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…
.
.
.
… Did you come up with something?
July 27, 2010
An Overdose of Creativity
What would you say is the single most important characteristic of an advertising person? Or advertising agency? Or 
advertising campaign? Most people would answer all these questions with the same, single word answer: CREATIVITY.
There is no denying that creativity is important in advertising. It is considered so important that one of the major departments within an advertising agency is named after it. But is it really THAT important? Or could it be that we have taken the reverence of creativity one step too far?
To address this question properly we first need to discuss the roles of creativity in advertising, and as Goose (Anthony Edwards) says in the movie Top Gun – “the list is long and distinguished”:
July 20, 2010
Your Problem might be the Solution
Let’s face it, in most of our daily tasks we don’t need to be creative. All we need is to retrieve from memory ready-made templates and the problem is gone. 
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.
