Tag Archive for 'sit'

The weirdoes on the 3rd floor (A Loving Look at SIT and its Idiosyncrasies)

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.

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Gravity, Hydroelectricity and the origin of SIT

Gravity was discovered. Hydroelectricity was developed. There is little argument there. The first is a natural phenomenon which does not owe its existence to Newton. The second is a manmade technology that uses that natural phenomenon in a way that did not exist before it was developed (late 19th century – would you believe it?).

When it comes to the human psyche, the picture gets a little fuzzier. Arguably, the unconscious was discovered, while psychoanalysis was developed (also late 19th century). But the boundaries between what existed independently of Freud’s work and what was developed by him and his followers are somewhat blurred.

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What should companies do in order to become more innovative?

Watch a short talk between Amnon Levav, SIT’s managing director, and Alexander Haig.
The show was televised on CNBC, Fox Business News, and local stations nationwide.

In praise of formulas, damn those formulas!

As a budding copywriting student in the Watford College of Advertising, I used to wonder how I too could create ads like Stella Artois’ “Reassuringly expensive” campaign.

No matter how hard I tried to be witty, original and persuasive, few of my concepts ever seemed to quite resemble those magnificent campaigns that graced our screens and magazines. Bruised but not (totally) beaten, I limped off to become an account planner, where from close distance I watched my colleagues in the creative department bash out their wares week in, week out. What was their secret? What was I missing?

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