In developing new products, people intuitively tend to add new features to an existing product. Try to apply the opposite approach: instead of adding features. remove them, particulary those that seem desirable or even indispensable.
Tag Archive for 'subtraction'
October 12, 2010
Innovation Tip:
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?’
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…
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… Did you come up with something?
May 31, 2010
Take a step back to move forward
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! 
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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.
May 24, 2009
Do we really need inventive thinking tools?
Despite the innovative, inventive image I am accredited with (for no substantial reason), the mobile phone in my possession until two weeks ago was of one of the very first generations, and it certainly fulfilled my basic communications needs. However, during my last family trip to Ein Tamir (a water-filled spring tunnel in Nahal Kziv) I accidentally left my 
phone in my pocket and as I emerged from the water, soaked through, I found that the instrument had ceased to function. About an hour later, at home, I deconstructed the device and, using my daughter’s hair dryer (”utilization of existing resources”, or in SIT lingo – implementing the rule of Task Unification) I succeeded in making the phone functional again… with the exception of the display screen that could not be revived.
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. Continue reading ‘Do we really need inventive thinking tools?’
