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The History Corner: How Sliced Bread Became the Benchmark for Future Inventions

Published date: September 8, 2021 в 1:38 pm

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Category: Innovation,New Product Development

Over the past century or so, innovation is gradually becoming a more dominant factor in our world. However, despite the increasing presence and influence innovations have on our everyday lives, none of them made it into our language – save one: sliced bread. We often hear statements like “it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread!” But have you ever stopped to ask yourself how this seemingly simple innovation managed to become the benchmark for future inventions? A closer look at the history of sliced bread may shed some light on this question.

 

 

In the early years of the 20th century, Otto Frederick Rohwedder had a revolutionary idea: why not sell bread that is already sliced?! A Jeweler by profession, Rohwedder had little to do with the baking industry, but living in a small town in Iowa, right in the middle of the bread basket of America, he was no stranger to it.

In 1912, he decided to implement his vision and started to develop a machine that would automatically slice bread. As his project advanced, he soon realized that slicing bread created a new problem – the multiple surfaces of the sliced bread made it hard to keep it from going stale. It was 16 years later that he completed developing a bread slicer that not only sliced the bread, but also wrapped it in wax paper to keep it fresh.

 Source: http://dailymail.co.uk

Overcoming doubts

Although many bakers had their doubts about this strange machine, the first Rohwedder Bread Slicer was sold after 16 years in 1928. And by July that same year, the first loaf of pre-sliced bread went on shelves in Chillicothe, Missouri. Soon after, in 1930, a company called Wonder Bread started marketing sliced bread nationwide.

Sliced bread saved time and effort for consumers and made it easier to reach for a second and third slice, increasing comfort and consumption. It also gave a boost to pop-up toasters, which had been languishing on the shelves since 1926, as well as to spreads such as peanut butter and jam.

Source:http://priceonomics.com

Slice a piece

So, what is it about this invention that earned it its unique place? Was it the unveiling of such a dominant need that was latent for so many years? Was it the fact that even one of the oldest, most basic products in the world can could be reinvented? Was it the immense success of an idea that is so simple it seems almost obvious in hindsight? Or was it the fact that even such an iconic invention still took almost two decades to develop and implement?

Whatever the historic answer may be, there is much to learn from the story of sliced bread. It is a story of a man and an idea – a story that turns out to be far more complicated than you might expect. It paved the path for future inventions. It involved insight, challenge, creativity and perseverance – much like the story of any successful innovation.

So whatever you spread on your bread – peanut butter & jelly, cream cheese or humus – tell us what you think made this innovation resonate so loudly in our collective minds.

We would love to hear what you think.

Houston we have an Opportunity! Qualitative Change and the Inventive Solution

Published date: September 1, 2021 в 4:25 pm

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Category: Innovation,Problem Solving

In a famous Seinfeld episode, Kramer sues a coffee chain after scalding himself with boiling coffee. This fictional lawsuit is based on a true story in which a jury awarded close to three million dollars in damages to a woman who burned herself on boiling coffee at McDonald’s. As a result, McDonald’s took two actions: it chose the knee-jerk, trivial response, and reduced the temperature of the coffee from 90° to 60°C (194°-140°F), thereby eliminating the harmful effect, i.e. the boiling coffee. They also added a warning on the lids of the coffee cups, indicating that the hot liquid could cause burns. Both solutions do protect McDonald’s from future lawsuits. However, they are deficient in two aspects: the first solution spoils our coffee-drinking experience, as the coffee is now not hot, but warm. The second solution is not effective as most consumers do not notice the warning on the lid.

Those of us who like our coffee hot, but prefer drinking it without suffering burns, might search for more inventive solutions.

The SIT – Systematic Inventive Thinking® method contends that there are two sufficient conditions for a solution or idea to be inventive: the Closed World condition, and the Qualitative Change condition. The Closed World condition stipulates that when developing a new product or addressing a problem, one must utilize only elements that already exist in the product/problem or their immediate environment. In this article, however, we will focus our attention on the second condition—Qualitative Change—which stipulates that when trying to solve a problem, we must search for solutions in which a harmful element (one that either creates or aggravates the problem) becomes either neutral or instrumental in the problem’s solution.

This begs the question: is there a way we can transform the harmful phenomenon, i.e. the coffee’s high temperature, into an instrumental factor in reducing the risk of scalding? Smart-Lid Systems have developed such a solution—a lid that changes color according to the temperature of the liquid in the cup. The idea is so simple that one glance at a picture of the product reveals its brilliance. When the liquid is too hot for consumption, the color of the lid changes from black to red, giving a clear indication of the risk.

There are two ways in which the Qualitative Change condition can be satisfied: Reversal—as the intensity of the harmful element increases, that of the undesired phenomenon decreases; and Elimination – the intensity of the undesired phenomenon is not dependent on the [no longer] harmful element. Smart-Lid’s solution uses Reversal. Under normal circumstances, the hotter the coffee is, the greater the chances are of getting burned. Using the innovative lid reverses this correlation—the higher the temperature, the more conspicuous the indication is, which in turn reduces the risk of a burn.

The qualitative change condition is considered, for a good reason, the surprising and elegant element in the inventive solution. When properly implemented, it no longer matters if the previously harmful factor continues to exist. Either we become indifferent to it, or it becomes a corroborating element in limiting or eliminating the problem.

The scorching coffee case exemplifies how the Qualitative Change condition can help in problem solving; but it can also be easily implemented in developing new products and services. Most successful products solve a problem, even if the problem only becomes evident after the solution has been found. All-you-can-eat restaurants, for instance, use the Elimination strategy in Qualitative Change. Post factum, we can report a problem that has been solved: usually, the more food and drink a customer orders, the more expensive and complicated the dining experience becomes (both for the customer and for the proprietor). The Qualitative Change is manifested in the billing process, which is no longer dependent on the number or type of dishes ordered. For many consumers, this solution simplifies the experience and allows them to limit and control their expenses in advance.

Those who are well trained in SIT – Systematic Inventive Thinking®, focus on exploring the space of the problem instead of the solutions’ space (simply because the latter is virtually unlimited). Rather than look for ways to minimize the damage caused by the source of the problem, they concentrate their efforts on examining the relationships between the various harmful elements and other factors in the system. Searching for a solution that will enable us to alter the correlation between the harmful element and the undesired phenomenon, leads us away from the trivial solution strategy, where we simply rid ourselves of the harmful factor, and promotes surprising and inventive yet simple solutions.

Closed World – Inventing Inside the Box

Published date: August 25, 2021 в 1:54 pm

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Category: Innovation,Methodology,Strategy

Legend has it that NASA invested millions of dollars in developing a “space pen” that would perform well in zero gravity conditions. At the same time Soviet cosmonauts simply used pencils.

Regardless of the fact that we now know this story to be a myth, it provides an important insight into the characteristics of inventive ideas and solutions. It is that most of us prefer simple inexpensive solutions over complicated costly ones. This is also true when we address new product development processes. Obviously, we favor ideas that are easy and inexpensive to implement over those that require the introduction of new technologies and heavy investment. All this may sound trivial. Yet the really interesting question is: why do we so often come up with needlessly complex ideas, and how do we get to the inventive, inexpensive solutions?

The Closed World condition – thinking under constraints

Dr. Roni Horowitz, one of the developers of the SIT methodology, indicated in his PhD thesis, that an inventive solution requires two sufficient conditions: the Qualitative Change condition and the Closed World condition.

The Closed World condition stipulates that in

the development of a new product or when

addressing a problem, one must utilize only

elements already existing in the product/problem

or their immediate environment.

This condition forces us to rely on resources

that are already at our disposal

instead of “importing” new external resources

for the solution.

 

The wetsuit

The wetsuit is a simple example of the Closed World condition. It functions in cold water environments, where body heat loss is a problem potentially causing hypothermia. Solutions that call for external resources, i.e. ones that are far from the Closed World, employ added elements such as external heaters embedded in the suit or thicker insulation layers. Indeed, when it comes to extreme diving situations, such as deep-water or ice-water diving, these types of solutions are in fact required. However, they are expensive, complicated and cumbersome. By contrast, the simple wetsuit utilizes a resource that is abundantly found in the scuba diver’s environment – water. The suit’s fabric absorbs water from its surroundings and envelops the diver’s body with a thin layer of water. The diver’s own body-heat warms the water in the suit, producing a layer of warm water insulating the diver’s body from the cold environment. The diver’s body is kept warm using resources from the Closed World of the problem, namely the diver’s own body heat and the water from his or her immediate environment. It is actually an especially elegant example of the condition, since the cold water, the original cause of the problem, is converted into a resource for its solution. This kind of reversal, in which the problem is transformed into a solution, is also an example of the Qualitative Change condition mentioned above.

The meaning of the “Immediate Environment”

The concept of the “Immediate environment” is relative, and depends very much on context. Nevertheless, there are several principles that help one identify elements from a product’s (or system’s) immediate environment:

First we look for resources that have physical proximity, i.e. are actually touching the product or problem system, or are close to them. Next we look for resources that have functional proximity, i.e. their function is similar to that of one of the resources found in the problem system or product. For example a pen and a pencil have similar roles and thus one can say that the pencil is functionally close to the pen. Last, we look for resources that have structural proximity, i.e. their structure is similar to that of resources found in the product or problem space. For instance, one could say that a cellular phone is structurally close to a calculator since they both have a key pad and a screen.

 

Inventing Inside the Box

The Closed World condition often provokes resistance as it runs counter to some of the most common intuitions about creative thinking, especially the ubiquitous notion of “thinking out of the box”. The essential claim of “thinking out of the box” is that in order to produce ideas that are new and different, you need to somehow move beyond normal thinking patterns, to a universe located outside the metaphorical box. The problem is that the imperative to “think out of the box” is not usually accompanied by clear instructions of how to actually do so. The Closed World condition, by contrast, forces the thinker to find a creative solution by heavily limiting his or hers space of possibilities. It forces one to wander down new thinking paths, with the constraint that these paths are found in the immediate environment of the problem, in its closed world. Since the scope of possibilities is artificially limited there is no choice but to reconsider the relations between elements found in the problem or product and pay closer attention to them: their arrangement in space and time; their assigned functions and their necessity. Thus, the Closed World condition sets us on a collision course with our fixedness, allowing us to arrive at solutions which are both innovative (different from the usual) and simple (since based on existing and known elements).

A Closed World brainteaser To round off this introduction to the Closed World condition, we’ll leave you with a problem to solve.

The problem – An engineer working at a metal processing factory encounters a problem. Hard metal pellets, used for processing metal sheets, are accelerated by an air jet in a bent pipe. The systems works continuously and the pellets abrade the pipe at the bend or “elbow”. As a result the bend must be replaced every four weeks. An attempt to install a tougher elbow did improve the situation but as the elbow had to be replaced every seven weeks, the solution was deemed unsatisfactory.

 

Your turn to use Closed World thinking!

Take a few minutes to try and solve the problem. Remember that in order to work within the Closed World of the problem, you must use only elements and resources found in the immediate environment of the problem space.

 

One Closed World solution – The engineer decided to create a cavity or pocket in the elbow (see diagram). Since the pocket is always full of pellets, the collision energy of the flowing pellets is absorbed. The result is that the elbow itself suffers little or no abrasion and is seldom replaced. This solution is an example of an inventive solution in the closed world since no new resources were employed, nor any new technical capabilities that were not easily accessible to the engineer.

Copy with pride: What you can learn from other companies’ innovation programs

Published date: August 18, 2021 в 4:57 pm

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Category: Innovation,Strategy

This week, I received an email from Fast Company offering to propose who I believe should join their list of Most Innovative companies. In fact, every year, Forbes and Fast Company reveal their lists for the most innovative companies. These awards often get people in the non-listed organizations wondering – “How do they do it?” “What are they doing that I’m not?” Or worse – “I’m doing a lot of things like them, why aren’t we up there?” The super-status bestowed upon these companies creates lots of inspiration for trying out new techniques to promote innovation (typically followed by lots of googling and article reading).

Copy and pasting other companies’ innovation methods is not as quick of a fix as one would hope. Think back to when “Idea Boxes” (similar to “suggestion boxes”) first emerged. On the surface, it’s a great concept. And the truth is, its underlying promise still rings true: Anyone can submit ideas. Everyone is invited to take part. But the reality for many companies that tried to implement idea boxes as literally just idea boxes was that it left them with mixed feelings and more stuff on their plate to sift through.

Innovation is not a one-size-fits-all. You have to make sure efforts are customized to your company’s goals, resources, and culture. And so as they say – before you copy from a company, walk a mile in their shoes. Then you will be able to copy them and have their shoes.

Jokes aside, in this day of networking, knowledge sharing, and even co-opetition, there are so many opportunities to investigate firsthand not only what other companies are doing, but how they actually do it. From embarking on an Innovation Journey to another country or keeping it local and visiting companies nearby, there’s much to learn from any organization whether or not they appear on the “Most Innovative List” (they’ll be flattered, trust me). The key here is having a personal interaction and seeing with your own eyes:

  1. New directions that you haven’t thought of – What is the most unique thing the company you visited is doing? It doesn’t have to be a huge, complex mechanism (although it can be). Look for the impact. Understand why it works for them. Did they need to make any adjustments along the way? What changes would you require if you adopted it in your company?
  2. What’s not working #1 – Think what you’d like to improve in your company’s innovation efforts and see if this is something your host company has struggled with as well. Have they found ways to overcome it? Is this something you could approach together and share insights?
  3. What’s not working #2 – Don’t forget to find out (diplomatically) what isn’t working for them. Make sure that you avoid those pitfalls in your company also.
  4. Validation for what is working – Is there something you’re proud of regarding how innovation runs in your company that might work well for your host company too? Based on your visits, are you able to gain confidence in how your company promotes innovation?
  5. Same same but different – Look for similarities in your innovation approaches. Do you share methods or innovation structures? Perhaps small differences can provide a helpful tweak.
  6. Knowledge sharing – Visiting companies offers new vantage points and exposure to knowledge accumulated by others. Traveling abroad provides unique insights that can result from having a different cultural outlook. Staying local offers opportunities for continued personal meet-ups, and ideas for resources you can partake in. You never know what might be going on in your own backyard. Regardless of visiting a company near or far, this is a game of give and take. Extend an invitation to meet back at your company. This will be the making of your own innovators’ network where you can all continue to learn with and from each other.
Getting your company to the “Innovation A-list” and sustaining the position over time is a process of implementing, fine-tuning, and evolving an array of techniques and mechanisms. Finding the right combinations for your company isn’t always a matter of reinventing the wheel, and certainly not successful if just replicated blindly. Get yourself out there, gather intel, and then renovate the wheel to work for you.

How to become a Green Innovation expert by Breaking Fixedness

Published date: August 11, 2021 в 2:07 pm

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Category: Innovation,Methodology,Sustainable Innovation

Green innovation is an everlasting challenge, where many companies are looking for innovative ways to win this eco-marathon. Some industries are more active than others, affected by regulations and natural resources constraints. Sustainability goals provide many benefits to organizations. In addition to a company’s reputation, executives can enjoy an array of other benefits. But what are the best ways of achieving it? Read on to learn about how to achieve green innovation through breaking fixedness:

Cognitive Fixedness, first defined by psychologist Karl Duncker, prevents individuals and companies from creating new configurations in the systems they manage. This often blocks us from seeing potential efficiencies and material reduction, and breakthrough solutions to problems.

Check out these 3 main barriers to sustainable innovation:

1. Structural – The tendency to view products and systems as a complete gestalt. Many SIT’s tools help break this particular fixedness to achieve sustainable innovation. For instance, a water saving toilet was developed by Villeroy-Boch in an SIT workshop. Multiplying the water streams resulted in more pressure in each stream, therefore requiring less water. This product won the ISH Innovation Prize and was chosen by Deutsche Bank in its transformation of its HQ to become one of the most environmentally friendly high-rises in Europe.

2.  Functional – Seeing objects as capable only of fulfilling their original function. SIT uses the Task Unification tool to help innovators find new uses for existing resources, thus forcing them to find new functions for available objects and tackle functional fixedness.

 

3. Relational – The tendency to view relationships and dependencies between variables of a situation as static and permanent. Assif Strategies, our partners in a Greener by Design Conference, described the following case study during the event:

A bus company’s emissions were well above expectations.

They had 100 old buses and 50 new ones, and 400 drivers. Assif discovered that drivers were allowed to select both their buses and their routes based on seniority. Naturally, drivers chose the easier routes (that had fewer stops and shifts) and the newer buses. The relationship that resulted was that the older buses drove the “stop and go” routes on three shifts, while the new ones drove more continuously and were parked at night, obviously resulting in much higher emissions than necessary.

Breaking this relational fixedness required a

major cultural change in the company, and by

creating a new relationship within existing

available resources, the bus company was able

to reduce over 10 percent of its emissions.

Along with some other simple changes,

it achieved a total reduction of 50 percent.

How to overcome fixedness and break innovation barriers?

The challenge of breaking fixedness is threefold.

First, recognize you could be suffering from cognitive fixedness, and not seeing the entire potential “playing field”.

Second, identify underlying assumptions in the system in question and accept that even though “this is how we always did it” or “this is how it must be done” they can still be changed.

Lastly, be flexible about the structure, functions and relationships between the system’s elements in order to generate new forms that can lead to new thinking and new solutions.

 

This concept ties in well with the message of the keynotes in the Greener By Design conference; they all essentially break a critical underlying assumption about our industry or society: from William McDonough (Cradle to Cradle, MDBC) who questions why can’t a building be as smart as a tree, creating oxygen, food and shelter, to Tom Szaky (TerraCycle) who challenges the entire concept of garbage, to the point that he “no longer sees trash, only cash”, and to David de Rothschild, who endeavors to cross the Pacific Ocean on the Plastiki (homage to the Kon Tiki, of course) using the ocean’s most prevalent waste as means of transportation.

The green line

So what is the key takeaway? Breaking fixedness is a milestone for generating green innovation. Our innovation message for companies working on going greener is to focus on finding and tackling their fixedness.

3 SIT Case Studies to Inspire Your Company’s New Product Development

Published date: July 21, 2021 в 4:19 pm

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Category: Innovation,New Product Development,Strategy

Companies are constantly trying to create something fresh and original, but where do they even start? A common go-to is good ole brainstorming, but as we have repeatedly stressed, this is not an effective way to ideate. That’s when SIT steps in – making ideation more efficient and creative through proven, structured strategies and methods. SIT’s project outcomes are commonly true revolutions in the sector, even though they are based on your existing products or services. Here are some NPD case studies that we are proud to have led, which exemplify SIT’s methodology in practice.

Not Just a Summer Drink

On a scorching summer day, nothing is more refreshing than a nice, cold bottle of iced tea. But what about the wintertime? How can a Business Unit that sells such summer staples like Nestea® also boost sales during the colder months and gain an edge on competing companies such as Lipton, the leader in the industry? 

Nestea’s traditional approach of identifying market trends to develop new products was not generating enough revenue. Moreover, non-compete restrictions from a joint venture of their parent company, Coca-Cola/Nestle, put further pressure on Nestea® to steer clear of soft drinks and hot beverages. Thus, the Nestea® brand team needed to develop a new product that was unique in their own domain. They called in SIT to help innovate under these constraints.

During the process, we applied our attribute dependency tool, which creates and dissolves dependencies between variables of a product, SIT was able to help Nestea reevaluate the relationship between changing seasons and beverages offered. Nestea’s® team challenged the expectation that iced tea is only for the summer and launched a line of iced tea for the winter. Applying their existing strength in flavor innovation to ensure the development of a unique and unexpected product, they landed on a concept that would accompany consumers’ winter drinking habits: a bottled tea that would be even more appealing when consumed at room temperature or when heated (as opposed to being cooled). Here, the industry’s fixedness, i.e. bottled tea is served cold (and is called “iced tea!”) was shattered and replaced with a dynamic, interesting alternative that created a whole new “ready-to-drink tea” product line. The pilot product, Snowy Orange, sold-out within the first week of launch in Germany. The following winter, the product was introduced into additional markets and this expanded “limited edition” sold out before the end of January. 

 It is now an annual staple in their product range throughout Europe, accounting for 10% growth in annual sales.

Achieve Naturally Soft & Radiant Skin

As any beauty consumer will tell you, diligent skincare is the key to radiant confidence and glowing skin. AHAVA Laboratories is a world leader in mineral-based cosmetics: their unique formulas, made of elements found only in the Dead Sea, are the foundation of millions of skincare routines. In a two-year partnership with SIT, AHAVA sought to further their enterprise by developing new products. Even though AHAVA had the power of the Dead Sea on their side, in a market saturated with hundreds of different creams and washes—all claiming one secret ingredient or another—AHAVA needed to create products with a different “wow” factor. 

One product concept came from our task unification tool —a way to assign an additional task to an existing resource. Together, we discovered a way to use the body’s own moisture to dissolve active ingredients in the product upon application to the skin. Usually, this process is achieved by adding water during the manufacturing process. However, using SIT’s creative process led to the invention of the Gentle Body Exfoliator, which requires only the body’s natural moisture. Because the Gentle Body Exfoliator is untreated, it has the additional benefit of a rough texture when applied, which removes dead skin cells. As the product interacts with the body’s own moisture, it dissolves into the skin, nourishing it with Dead Sea minerals. Naturally soft, smooth, and radiant skin has never been achieved like this before.

Which Scents Define Your Home?

We’re all familiar with the Febreze brand, providing a “Breath of Fresh Air” in our homes. But until the work with SIT, Febreze existed only in P&G’s Fabric Care category, removing odors from couches, armchairs, and carpets. Air Care was dominated by strong competitors: Glade (SC Johnson) with a whopping 55% market share, Wizard (Reckitt-Benckiser), and Renuzit (Dial). However, with category profit margins high, and clear right-of-entry into this adjacency, Procter & Gamble had to find a way in. They knew that only a truly different product would stand a chance of stealing any significant market share.

SIT was called in to help leverage P&G’s unparalleled expertise in scent-development (perfumery), while borrowing from Febreze’s brand equity, to identify a concept for a game-changer in the Air Care space. Applying our Multiplication tool, which adds an additional component of a product and then alters it in some way, we imagined a wall plug-in with 2 vials: one with Febreze technology + scent A; the other with Febreze technology + scent B. A novel idea emerged; if there were two separate tanks to hold the perfume, the device could alternate pulsing between scents. This would answer a consumer need that everyone had been aware of, but no competitor could figure out a solution for. The technical term is “habituation”, but we all know it as the experience when you enter a room with a distinct scent (or, more commonly, odor) and several minutes later you no longer notice it until you leave and reenter. The market had been unhappy (but forgiving) of the fact that they were wasting their money on a room freshener that evaporated perfume all the time, but they only benefited from for a couple of minutes each time they entered the room. P&G had solved this through the multiplication concept – every few minutes, the scent changed from one vial to the next – alternating between two pleasant scents and avoiding the customer’s sensory habituation. In classic P&G marketing genius, they sub-branded this disruptive innovation Febreze “NOTICEables” and in less than 4 years after launch, had garnished more than 25% market share. NOTICEables has become the standard for plug-ins, so P&G rebranded it in 2020 as simply Febreze Plugs. 

Turning Constraints into Advantages

 

Through the stories of Nestea, AHAVA, and Febreze, we see three examples of successful innovation that not only changed the game but disrupted their sectors. Instead of brainstorming or following market trends, the SIT methodology converted the companies’ constraints into advantages, innovating new solutions, and unlocking latent consumer needs in the process.

SIT: Israel’s Answer To Design Thinking?

Published date: July 14, 2021 в 2:38 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology

Written by: Giovanni Rodriguez. This article was originally published in Forbes.

Back in college, there was a little button — a collectible — that was popular among the more progressive folks on campus, and it would have been a meme if the age were not pre-digital. It was about the size of a quarter, black type on yellow, with the following words: “Question Authority.” Simple enough, right? But the joke among my friends – a young but already linguistically sensitive crowd, always looking for nuance and/or irony – was that the button could be read in two ways. Either the wearer was claiming to be a question authority – an authority on questions — or the wearer was advocating that everyone should join him or her on the mission of questioning people in power. In the end, we learned that the button worked like a Rorschach test. If you were prone to question authority, that’s the message you received.

I was reminded of the little button last month during a visit to Israel. I was part of a delegation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that spent a week there learning about how a typical – if not stereotypical – Israeli trait is to question everyone and everything. According to the authors of Start-up Nation – the unquestionably authoritative book on the rise of Israelis in the global tech market – questioning authority is one of the secrets to Israeli success. So it was no surprise when we met with the leaders of an Israeli consultancy that is challenging – though not overtly – the status quo in product development and innovation.

I’m talking about a methodology called Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) that was not quite invented in Israel, but has taken root here and is spreading worldwide. It is different – though perhaps complementary – to design thinking, but it’s what they have in common that, from my perspective, makes SIT worth watching.

Patterns

Inspired by the work of Russian engineer Genrich Altshuller, at the core of the SIT methodology is that there are known patterns behind all invention. SIT focuses on five principles based on these patterns. Perhaps the most instructive is the principle of subtraction. The idea here is to take a look at a product or service and ask what might be gained if a component of a product or service were removed? Remove the store from retail, and you get Amazon. Remove the display and most of navigation from an iPod, and you get the iPod Shuffle. These are obvious examples, but there are many others where the SIT methodology has actually been used to spark similar innovation.

Pedagogy

My delegation sat for about an hour with Amnon Levav at SIT’s home office in Tel Aviv. Levav is co-founder and (former ) managing director of the firm (now Chief Innovation Officer) and is also co-developer of the method. One thing that was striking about the meeting was the set-up, unlike any other on our tour thus far. We sat in chairs lined against the four walls of the room, theater-style. The SIT people provide us with nice looking pads and pens. It felt like we where getting ready to do an exercise based on design-thinking, a popular approach to ideation that encourages the inventor to co-create with the user. Instead, we got a great debrief on the principles. The fact that the principles for SIT and design thinking have both been codified is interesting. So is the fact that both have been grounded and supported in academia. More interesting is that they can both be taught, and are being taught, to a broad universe of laypeople – leaders in business, government, and the NGO world. That they are teachable, and are designed to be teachable, helps to expand their global footprints.

POV

But most interesting, I think, is that each feels like an expression of the culture from which it advanced. Even though you see it everywhere today, the design thinking brand feels like IDEO, and Stanford University, and Silicon Valley, a place that quickly comes to mind when you think about the genius of the user (the customer is king). Systematic Inventive Thinking got its big start in Israel, a place that quickly comes to mind when you think about the genius of the inventor, a person trained to question everyone and everything.

Truth is, the genius of both are everywhere, and there’s no shortage of genius inventors in the Valley. And the two methods are not mutually exclusive. But at a time when Israel is becoming known as the second most vibrant start-up economy, it’s refreshing to see a new take on thinking rise with so much authority. Message received.

A musical perspective on the origins of S.I.T.

Published date: July 7, 2021 в 2:58 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology

Written by Drew Boyd and Prof. Jacob Goldenberg, co-authors of Inside The Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results (Simon & Schuster, 2013). An except from the book:

The most highly creative humans use

templates to produce extraordinary results.

Once they discover a pattern that is successful,

they stick with it.

Consider one of the most successful musicians in history, Paul McCartney, and his songwriting partner in the Beatles, John Lennon. In one of his biographies, Paul confided how he and John wrote music early in their careers: “As usual, for these co-written things, John often had just the first verse, which was always enough: it was the direction, it was the signpost, and it was the inspiration for the whole song. I hate the word, but it was the template”.

Paul and John discovered successful patterns in music and created a sophisticated set of reusable music-making templates that allowed them to generate one hit song after another. Guinness World Records calls McCartney the “most successful composer and recording artist of all time”. He has recorded gold records, with sales of more than one hundred million albums and one hundred million singles.

McCartney was not alone in using templates for music. The composer Igor Stravinsky used them. Writers and poets use them, only they call them forms – sonnets, for example. Poet Robert Frost, the artist Salvador Dali and Michelangelo – they all learned that templates boosted their creativity output. Mystery author Agatha Christie used them too: a dead body is discovered, a detective examines the crime scene, collects clues, interviews suspects, and only at the very end reveals the killer – the person you least suspected!

 

Once she had a plot, she filled in information and facts from the world around her – places, character names, and so on – all fitted within the same template. One would think that sixty-six murder-mystery novels using the same template would be dull and lose their appeal. On the contrary, Christie’s template constrained her in a way that made her more creative, not less. She is the best selling novelist of all time.

None of these achievements was an accident. Templates “limit” us in a way that boosts our creative output. Agatha Christie confined her stories to a similar sequence. Paul McCartney worked within his self-defined musical structure. Why don’t most other people know about templates? Perhaps because creative people didn’t realize they were using one. Perhaps they kept it a secret, worried others might steal it. Using a template, after all, might seem to lessen one’s creative genius. Either way, those templates exist, and there is nothing to stop others from using them. Imagine using the best and most productive creativity templates through the ages to invent something new!

This concept of templates is the foundation of the Systematic Inventive Thinking method, providing both the framework and clear instructions for how to work within the framework to create truly innovative ideas for just about any topic using resources close at hand.

Can you identify patterns or templates that work for you?

Common Innovation Myths & Blind Spots

Published date: June 2, 2021 в 4:45 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

Innovation is a nascent discipline and, as such, very few of its “truths” and tenets have had the opportunity to mature and to brave the test of time. Less diplomatically, one can say that much of what is said about innovation is not worth the flip-chart paper it is written on. Strangely enough, even though the topic is so new, some common views have already attained the status of myths, which makes it a bit difficult to unseat them and thus avoid some of the damage that these beliefs cause in organizations.

Becoming aware of their existence and their effect is an important first step in ridding oneself of their effect. For each of the 7 Elements, we share one related myth that needs to be busted. (Link to the 7 Elements’ article below).

SKILLS

Myth #1: Artists are creative. Engineers, accountants and bureaucrats are not.

Alternative: Look around you – most innovations you will see were invented and designed by engineers.

It is commonly assumed that some of us have the innovation gift while others simply don’t, rendering them incapable of innovating. This is incorrect and, in addition to academic research, we have 26 years of experience in the field to prove it. The truth is that skills and processes that lead to innovation can be taught. Everyone can significantly improve their skills, regardless of their baseline.

GOVERNANCE

Myth #2: Innovation cannot be measured

Alternative: ROI – Return on Innovation, absolutely must be measured, otherwise no serious innovation effort will be sustained in the organization.

To many, innovation is amorphous and mysterious and thus can be difficult to measure and monitor. There is even a fear that measurement itself can stifle innovation. This is true, but only if the wrong indicators are used at the wrong time. That’s why it’s important to clearly define what the organization means by innovation. Once there is a clear definition, it is possible and crucial to measure your ROI, although the way to do it is not always intuitive.

OUTCOMES

Myth #3: Innovation is mostly about creating products or services.

Alternative: Innovation can and should be applied to every aspect of your business.

We advocate an innovation mindset, not merely to create new products and services, but to “innovate in what you do”. If applied in a structured way, using appropriate tools, any task or process can be innovated on, to achieve your goals. Apply the right innovation tools to your productivity efforts, your digital transformation initiatives, and supply chain challenges to improve results.

RESOURCES

Myth #4: Top Management’s only job is to launch the innovation program and budget it.

Alternative: Without ongoing management commitment, the effort cannot be sustained.

Top Management very often makes a brave decision to launch an ambitious, company-wide innovation effort, and even budgets it generously. But, very quickly, responsibility is relegated to lower ranks in the corporate hierarchy, and executives impatiently adopt the role of demanding quick tangible results. Instead of supporting the effort for the long haul, management becomes impatient to either celebrate prematurely or move on to the next “management-flavor-of-the-month”.

PROCESSES

Myth #5: Brainstorming is the best way to come up with new ideas.

Alternative: It has been proven time and again that BS is not effective in generating truly novel ideas.

Brainstorming has many advantages but, as research and corporate experiences have shown time and again, creating novelty is not one of them. By placing constraints on your thinking and using a structured approach, you can consistently achieve success.

BEHAVIORS

Myth #6: Innovation and creativity are always fun.

Alternative: Dabbling in innovation, as enrichment or mental exercises can be lots of fun, but true innovation, in the sense of challenging your deep assumptions and firmly set ways of working, mostly involves hard work and requires discipline. There is much in the process that one can enjoy, but true change of beliefs and habits cannot be all fun and games. That is why very often a facilitated team effort with clear deliverables is required to achieve impactful innovation.

 COMMUNICATION

Myth #7: Those who oppose innovation programs are wrong. They are simply “resisting”.

Alternative: Very often, those who “resist innovation” have an important point to make.

Resistance to innovation often emerges from the “wrong” motivations: fear of change, turf wars, oversized egos, etc. But, this opposition doesn’t always need to be “overcome”, rather, it is often very useful to listen carefully since those who oppose change often do so for valid and solid reasons that need to be dealt with if the results are to see the light of day. Resistance can also be a sign of the strong potential for novelty, pointing at valuable dig-sites.

These are only several of the common myths and traps that organizations deal with and fall into when embarking on innovation journeys. Talk to us, and we’ll be happy to hear/read your thoughts, and also to acknowledge – when relevant – that we ourselves are as vulnerable as anyone else to being wrong(:

What are some myths that you’ve been trying to bust in your organization?

A Glimpse into SIT’s 7 Elements Model

Published date: May 26, 2021 в 4:42 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy

In today’s article we continue with insights, content, and learnings shared before, during, and after our Behind the Scenes of Corporate Innovation meetup, co-hosted with our friends at 3M.

SIT’s “7 Elements” Model for Organizational Innovation was briefly introduced at the meetup as a framework to address the main challenges voiced by participants. Since then, we have further developed the model to serve as a robust strategic planning tool for cross-organizational innovation programs.

We use this article as a medium to share how the model allows organizations to take their Innovation Pulse: analyze their current state to plan a focused and customized innovation strategy with clear metrics. The model is the brainchild of our 26 years’ experience working with over 1400 companies in 75 countries. Over time, we formulated what parameters need to be taken into account when developing and managing a sustainable practice of innovation diffused throughout a (multicultural) organization.

Working with the 7 Elements Model brings you three significant results:

1)     Assessment of your current situation in respect to innovation (“the Innovation Pulse”). Create a baseline measurement for where you are at the start of the process.

2)     Definition of your objectives for how the innovation program will help your organization achieve its strategic business goals

3)     A roadmap for achieving these objectives.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

I. ASSESS & VISUALIZE

The first step is to assess and plot on a diagram, the organization’s current efforts according to the 7 distinct—yet extremely interconnected—elements needed for a sustainable innovation capability in the organization

 

II. DESIRED STATE & MAP THE GAP

The assessment allows you to view a clear picture of current state of activity and satisfaction in the organization along with areas that could/should be improved. A second diagram, an ideal model of your desired state in terms of innovation and how it can serve your business’s strategy will be created in parallel. The gaps between these 2 states will dictate objectives for creating the action plan.

III. DEFINE YOUR PLAN OF ACTION

Strategic discussions regarding the gaps and resource allocation will determine priorities, speed and scope of implementation, as you move closer to the desired state. SIT assists in building the plan and delivering the transformation through a variety of formats including:

  • Facilitation
  • Consulting
  • Training
  • Outsourcing

The task of transforming into a highly innovative organization is, without a doubt, a demanding journey, yet one that is worthwhile and can be made simpler, clearer, and better-managed using the 7 Elements Model.

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