Innovation

When To Innovate

Published date: December 30, 2025 в 3:35 pm

People often ask when is the best time to innovate: early in the pipeline process, middle, or late. Teams tend to resist innovation late in the process when they are busy launching a new product. Teams tend to resist innovating in the middle of the NPD process because they are too busy developing the next generation product. Teams tend to resist innovating early in the process because they are too busy developing franchise strategy.
So when is the best time to innovate? Anytime.
Early in the process, you need innovation to develop a large stock of potential novel product ideas. Tie these early ideas to your franchise marketing strategy. This makes your strategy more robust and believable.
Early in the process, you need innovation to trigger modifications or enhancements to the product now in development. This gives you potential differentiating features that you can still build into the new product.
Late in the process, you need new concepts just when launching a new product to show your company and your customers that you have a sustainable pipeline of ideas behind you. This gives you credibility. Innovating is like putting in golf. Never leave yourself short.

What makes a good idea… well, good?

Published date: October 28, 2025 в 3:11 pm

Written by: SIT Knowledge Management

Category: Innovation,Methodology

At SIT, we don’t subscribe to the notion that “there’s no such thing as a bad idea.”

Because let’s be honest—some ideas really are bad. They’re off-target. Impractical. Unfocused.

And when every idea gets equal airtime, the ones that truly matter can get lost in the noise. Ideas are everywhere, but good ones are rare.

So, what makes an idea good?

Not volume. Not flash. Not wild originality.

A good idea is one that’s relevant, doable, and often—surprisingly—simple. It fits the challenge, is built to work, and makes you wonder, “Why didn’t we think of that sooner?”

At SIT, we help teams arrive at these kinds of ideas by flipping the usual brainstorming model on its head. Instead of aiming for sheer quantity, we focus on precision. Instead of “thinking outside the box,” we work inside a defined innovation space, with clear constraints and focused tools.

This structure creates what we call disciplined creativity—an approach that narrows the search so teams spend less time guessing and more time solving.

We don’t believe in throwing 100 ideas at the wall. We believe in finding the few that are sharp, actionable, and make a real difference.

Finding the good idea isn’t about chaos; it’s about focus. It’s about asking the right questions, applying the right tools, and letting structure guide creativity.

So, what’s your definition of a good idea? And how do you know when you’ve found one?

A Packaging Breakthrough – The Pillsbury Case

Published date: October 28, 2025 в 3:05 pm

Written by: SIT Knowledge Management

Category: Creativity,Innovation,Methodology,Problem Solving

What if the biggest breakthrough wasn’t about adding more, but stripping something away?

Pillsbury’s refrigerated dough cans faced a persistent problem.

Each can required three layers: foil for protection, fiber for strength, and a printed outer for branding. But these layers made changeovers painfully slow and costly.

With SIT’s principles guiding the process, the team shifted focus. Instead of searching for new additions, they asked:

“What do we already have that we can use differently?”

That simple question unlocked the breakthrough. The printed outer layer, once seen only as decoration, became the tape itself. The same adhesive already in use held everything together.

The impact was immediate:

Millions of dollars saved annually
Faster changeovers
Less waste

The solution was so effective it earned a U.S. patent in January 2021—a powerful reminder of what happens when you stop searching for more and start unlocking the hidden value in what you already have.

Innovation, at its best, simplifies.

Why Constraints Make Innovation Easier

Published date: October 1, 2025 в 4:47 pm

Written by: SIT Knowledge Management

Category: Innovation,Methodology

When it comes to innovation, most people assume that more freedom equals more creativity. Blank slates, blue-sky thinking, unlimited possibilities—these are the conditions we’re told foster breakthrough ideas.

But at SIT, decades of experience have taught us something different: innovation often becomes easier when you introduce constraints.

The Paradox of Too Much Freedom

It sounds counterintuitive, but there’s a reason constraint-based innovation works. When teams face unlimited possibilities, they often experience analysis paralysis. Everything feels possible, but nothing feels clear. The problem isn’t a lack of creativity—it’s a lack of structure and direction.

When people tell us they’re stuck, it’s rarely because they don’t have enough ideas. It’s because they don’t know where to focus their attention. And once they start exploring, they get distracted, jumping from one direction to another without going deep enough to find meaningful solutions.

The Power of the “Closed World”

This is why SIT’s methodology intentionally introduces constraints through what we call the “Closed World” principle. Instead of searching everywhere for solutions, we look close in—right within the boundaries of your immediate environment: your existing products, current processes, and available resources.

When you combine this focused approach with structured thinking tools—frameworks specifically designed to stretch your thinking within defined limits—innovation suddenly feels more achievable. Ideas don’t just magically appear; they emerge from a disciplined, focused process.

Better Results Through Better Boundaries

The outcomes speak for themselves. Solutions generated through constrained innovation tend to be:

More relevant to the actual challenge
More detailed and thought-through
More feasible to implement
More original than what typically emerges from unfocused brainstorming

Innovation doesn’t need more room to wander. It needs sharper boundaries to push against.

Innovation Behavior

Published date: February 15, 2024 в 2:41 pm

Written by: Drew Boyd

Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

Innovation is a skill, not a gift. Top organizations drive growth by nurturing and investing in innovation as a competency. One way organizations make it real is by including innovation within formal competency models.

Professor Rodney Rogers of Portland State University defines a competency as a persistent pattern of behavior resulting from a cluster of knowledge, skills, abilities, and motivations. It is the persistence of those behaviors that matter most and help your organization succeed.

Competency models are a useful way to formalize that behavior and make it persistent. They help describe the ideal patterns needed for exceptional performance. They are a blueprint for the type of person needed for a specific job. And they help diagnose and evaluate employee performance. It takes a lot of work to develop one, but it’s worth it.

My approach is to see innovation competencies at two distinct levels: The Innovator, and The Innovation Leader. Here is how to think about it.

The Innovator Competencies:

Generating Innovative Solutions – Systematically innovates using a model with proven efficacy; routinely innovates products, services, processes, and strategies; values and harnesses team diversity; reframes problems in a different light to find fresh approaches; entertains wide-ranging possibilities others may miss; takes advantage of difficult or unusual situations to develop unique approaches and useful solutions.
Seeing the Big Picture – Has broad knowledge and perspective; pieces together seemingly unrelated data to identify patterns and trends and to see a bigger picture; understands the pieces of a system as a whole and appreciates the consequences of actions on other parts of the system; possesses a big-picture view of the situation.

The Innovation Leader competencies are different. It is not necessarily the innovation leader who must generate new ideas; rather, they must understand how to instill innovation according to Penn State researcher, Dr. David G. Gliddon. “Commitment to innovation as a culture is prevalent in organizations as it is commonly woven directly into mission statements. However, leaders still lack the ability to plan, measure and implement innovative programs, products and services. These challenges are enhanced by the pressure to juggle several different and often conflicting roles.” said Gliddon. In a three-year study, Gliddon identified the competencies that underpinned these roles and developed a competency model of innovation leaders. The competency model can be tailored to any organization as part of a competency-based human resource development initiative.

An innovation leader collaboratively interacts with their employees and supports high levels of teamwork, providing opportunities to share innovations. Once an innovation has been shared, employees should be empowered to then adopt the innovation if it is useful. Employees can then support the innovation leader by initially adopting the innovation, and encourage the diffusion of the innovation throughout organization’s social system, Gliddon says. Innovation leaders must also take personal responsibility for and be dedicated to projects that require innovations. Therefore, innovation leaders must establish a trust culture and maintain relationships based on trust. They must display initiative, set challenging project goals, and link those goals to the needs of the customer, department, and enterprise, according to his study. Persistent innovation behavior by the leader and innovator is a recipe for growth.

Should you learn TRIZ? – Yes. ….and No.

Published date: February 1, 2024 в 2:37 pm

Written by: Erez Tsalik

Category: Innovation,Methodology,Problem Solving

Are you in the world of problem solving? Is problem solving a skillset you have to own and master?

If so, you are like many of us, who are working in jobs required us to methodologically solve problems and are tasked with finding solutions to problems on daily basis. Despite the fact that we are expected to deliver good, and sometimes innovative, solutions, some of us are still working without clear, well-established, effective methods. Our success, reputation and KPI’s depend on this ability.

I am fascinated by the way people attempt to solve problems!

As humans, we developed philosophies and models, as well as myths and misconceptions towards handling problems. When you take a closer look at the ways we deal with problems, one of the first things you notice is the fact that most people never learn solving-problem tools… Can you imagine an architect or engineer finding their own way to calculate the circumference of a circle, instead of using the formula? Surely you would offer them the formula (C=2πr) designed specifically for that purpose. There are many tools and methods that help us solve complex problems, yet most of us still choose to rely on experience, intuition, and common sense; all of which are excellent in keeping us away from creative or innovative solutions.

So today I want to share with you some knowledge and thoughts about one of the most robust problem-solving techniques. We are going to discuss TRIZ.

TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) takes a scientific approach to problem solving. TRIZ is designed to understand what kind of contradictions were resolved or dissolved by an invention, and how this had been achieved. Experts analyzed tens of thousands of creative solutions to technical and engineering problems. By characterizing common principles and manipulations, they created a database of 40 principles likely to lead to good solutions.

A systematic approach like TRIZ will shorten the process. It also creates strong alignment and ensures exploring all possible solutions, without cognitive fixedness or other biases.

In order to explain what TRIZ is and when (and by who) it can be applied, I will discuss its main characteristics by comparison: I am assuming that you already know the SIT method or know about it, So I will use SIT as a point of reference when considering the following factors:

Learning time for efficient use: SIT can be learned in 3-10 days, while TRIZ takes about 1 year to learn.
Applications: SIT can be used in a variety of applications, while TRIZ is used for problem solving.
Applicable domains: SIT can be used in all domains, while TRIZ is most commonly used in engineering, technology, and manufacturing.
Utilizing existing knowledge versus Creating new ways of thinking: SIT utilizes ~20% existing knowledge and ~80% new ways of thinking, while TRIZ utilizes ~80% existing knowledge and ~20% new ways of thinking.
Application protocols: SIT has two application protocols: one for solving problems and one for inventing and improving. TRIZ does not have any specific application protocols.
Resource utilization: SIT only utilizes existing resources, while TRIZ can utilize any resources.
Run by / led by: SIT is usually run by a facilitator or coach, and is organic to the company, while with TRIZ you often bring in an external TRIZ expert.
Uniqueness: SIT is designed to break cognitive biases, and therefore is more likely to arrive to unique and differentiated type of solutions, while TRIZ benefits from robust data sets of pre-existing innovative solutions.
Target audiences: SIT is suitable for everyone who is willing to engage in result-driven innovation, while TRIZ is suitable for experts who need a very specific set of problem-solving tools.

Overall, SIT is a less complex and less time-consuming approach to creative problem solving than TRIZ. However, TRIZ is a more comprehensive and systematic in its approach and in finding innovative solutions to technical and engineering problems.

Which method is right for you will depend on your specific needs and goals. If you want a quick, easy, and disciplined way to effectively solve problems, SIT may be the best choice. If you are looking for a more comprehensive and systematic approach to technical and engineering problem solving, then TRIZ may be a better choice.

The best way to decide which method is right for you is to try both and see which one you prefer.

What Lies Ahead in 2024?

Published date: January 23, 2024 в 9:24 pm

Written by: Yael Manor

Category: Innovation,Strategy

5 Data-Driven, Customer-Centric trends we’ve identified

This is not just another conventional forecast. Over nearly three weeks of dozens of conversations with clients and prospects, we have identified some strong trends for the coming year. These trends are congruous with the actual activities on which we supported our customers during the final months of 2023, indicating that they truly are what one might expect to see in 2024. So, without further ado, here are five key trends poised to define 2024:

1. Revival of strategy:

As we bid farewell to three years focused on just keeping one’s business afloat amidst unimaginable global changes, longer-term Strategy is making a comeback. Key initiatives we kicked off for our clients in 2023 will mature into implementation by 2024 and 2025. As 2024 begins, more and more organizations are talking about the commencement of a new cycle, where strategic, large-scale initiatives will once again take center stage.

2. Productivity’s enduring presence:

The conclusion of 2023 witnessed a remarkable 50% increase in “Productivity” being listed as a primary objective even in growth projects. Leveraging existing assets is now recognized as a pivotal factor in nearly everything that an organization does. In 2024, we anticipate witnessing this trend to continue extending beyond operational efforts, manufacturing, and supply chain improvements, making “Margin Innovation” critical in all areas of the business.

3. Consumer Goods flourishing:

After years of hearing from CPG and Durable Consumer Goods companies that they are focusing on creating new services vs launching new products, we witness a return to the core. Truly innovative products are not only being ideated, but actually entering development pipelines, and consumer tests indicate that customers are embracing this direction. Coupled with the increasing applications of AI and Digital, in general, expect to see some cool new features as add-ons to new products that would be considered highly innovative even without them.

4. Integration of new technologies, and Digital Transformation:

Having dedicated the past few years to exploring emerging technologies and dabbling in Digital initiatives most “traditional” industries and companies will transition to true transformation in 2024. Technologies have matured and a deep understanding of how they benefit all areas of the business make this a breakout year. Digital technology, therefore, will be an indispensable component in all our innovation initiatives.

As we mentioned in the Consumer Goods trend, expect to see such technologies embedded even into traditionally low-tech products, so that they will appeal to the increasingly tech-savvy consumer, and provide real value for those who know to use them properly.

5. In-depth, innovative, Innovation Training programs:

2023 highlights significant shifts in our clients’ training needs and requests. Our data indicates that clients are beginning to favor intensive training programs, in which multiple intimate cohorts learn new skills and gain proficiency in them, as opposed to large groups being exposed to an innovation toolkit through seminars, lectures, and mini-courses. Trainings will no longer be uni-formatted, but will include multi-day onsite workshops, live distance learning, and self-paced learning. Emphasis will be placed on translating new knowledge back to the everyday tasks of the trainee, and organizations will build new KPIs and assessment models to understand the ROI (Return-On-Innovation) of such trainings.

Have We Nailed It?

We believe that these five trends will evolve and mature as they accompany us throughout 2024. Have you been seeing indications of these in your organization? Or in others around you?

Fork or Chopsticks – Which Innovation Tools Do You Use?

Published date: January 19, 2024 в 11:19 am

Written by: Erez Tsalik

Category: Innovation,Methodology,Strategy

Imagine a chef, who only uses a spoon.

Imagine a dentist, who only uses a drill.

Imagine an innovation professional, who only uses one method or one tool…

Innovation professionals are expected to have several tools in their innovation toolbox. They are expected to be able to choose the right tool for the job and to demonstrate proficiency in applying it. Hence my surprise, when talking with innovation professionals, to find that most of them focus on a single tool or a method.

This article is a response to that.

The goal is to match the most widely used innovation techniques and tools with the scenarios where they excel. My motivation is to encourage readers to explore and experiment in order to improve and enhance their innovation toolbox.

It is important to say that I have picked the tools and methods that I am familiar with, and that I placed them in the table based on data, essays, and testimonials I found on the web AND based on my own personal experience. Obviously, this is an on-going iterative process that would benefit from more inputs and periodic updates.

Since we are focusing on innovation, I would like to make a distinction between NEW and INNOVATIVE. While all innovations are new, not everything new can be considered innovative. In my opinion, true innovation requires the new idea, product, or service to introduce original processes or thinking that disrupt existing practices in a good way. In recent years there is a growing number of models that help assess and ‘measure’ the level of creativity and inventiveness to help rate the quality of the outcomes of an innovation process. These models are used to help differentiate between new (and good/smart/big/….) ideas and innovative ideas.

The full list of tools and methods I have collected can be accessed here, or write me a note and I will share it with you.

Although we can identify many different types of applications, it is most practical to focus on the following clusters for innovation tools.:

Inventing or improving– when we wish to create something totally new, that will be very different from what we (or others) can invent, without using a tool. It is also true for improving an existing situation (or product or process or system…) – the current situation is working well, yet we wish to make it even better.
Solving a Problem – When something worked in the past but now its “broken”, and we need to get it back to work at least as good as it used to, if not better.
Managing the Thinking Process – we assume that if you group together a team and let them think together, the outcome will exceed results of the same individuals thinking separately. This is, of course, very wrong. People have different thinking dispositions, thinking styles and fixedness. To get optimal results we need to manage the thinking process. There are some tools designed exactly for that. (if you wish to learn more, please read here).

Not included in this article are:

Good PR but not innovation – there are many good and effective methods and processes out there, that proved themselves useful in creating business or organizational value. Many of them are positioned as innovation tools, although have little to do with the way we create original, unique, and effective value. We will list those tools and methods separately.

Innovation Management platforms – most of these platforms are sophisticated Excel sheets or digital repositories that collect and share ideas. Obviously, it has very little effect on the type and quality of the ideas captured by these systems.

After completing the list, I tried to answer the following questions:

In what way it affects the thinking process and/or the results?
How it performs compared to other alternatives?

Out of the 164 listed tools and methods, and based on the definitions, clusters and logic presented earlier, I was able to map, “so far”, 31 tools in the table below. I created the table based on over 20 years of experience, knowledge, and expertise, as well as on inputs and testimonials of clients, colleagues, and competitors.

For me, there are 3 main conclusions from this review:

This table presents a very good and diverse toolbox. I am sure that most innovation professionals would be able to find the right tool combination for their needs.
As you can see above, there are only a handful of tools and methods that meet both with the criteria set above and were tested and compared with other alternatives. I am sure that if we keep evaluating and testing, we will be able to add more tools and methods.
We all have favorites! Some of the tools here are my obvious choice when I need to deliver results, and some are methods that I don’t like to use. Nevertheless, at the end of the day we should be able objectively and professionally justify our preferences.

I would love this article to start a conversation and a communal effort. This table should be dynamic rather than static. Hopefully some of you will join me to turn this into a live project, where we all contribute to create better toolboxes and develop professional standards.

What tools would you add or remove from this list? Why?

Would like to join this initiative and collaborate?

The Moat Mentality: Exploring New Frontiers in Innovation Methodologies

Published date: January 3, 2024 в 11:07 pm

Written by: Udi Yerushalmi

Category: Innovation,Strategy

In investing and business strategy, we often speak in terms of moats. Warren Edward Buffett often uses it, as he loves companies with strong moats. In the book “7 Powers” by Hamilton Helmer, he refers to moats also as “Powers.” There are several types of moats, including cost advantages, economies of scale, brand, network effects, patents, and customer switching costs, which refer to a company’s competitive advantages that make it difficult or costly for customers to switch to a competitor.

All these create a barrier to entry for competitors, allowing the company to maintain a competitive advantage.

Consider the traditional image of a castle surrounded by a moat. This moat acts as a formidable barrier, making it challenging for outsiders to penetrate its defenses. In business, a similar dynamic is at play. A company with a robust moat, metaphorically speaking, is less vulnerable to market fluctuations and competitive pressures. Such a firm can exert greater control over its pricing, business models, supply chain decisions, payment terms, and even the quality of its customer service.

This metaphor extends to our interactions with businesses in daily life. Often, we don’t realize that our ‘independent choices’ are influenced by these invisible business moats, limiting our willingness to seek alternatives. For instance, consider the inertia you might feel when thinking about switching banks, moving from one CRM system to another, or changing cloud service providers. The cost and effort involved in such transitions often discourage us from exploring other options, even when better ones may exist.

So why am I writing about imaginary castles with moats?

Talking with our prospective clients, we sometimes hear that although they are very impressed by SIT Innovation – Systematic Inventive Thinking ® or other methodologies for innovation and strategy, they are invested to their teeth in Design Thinking. They explain that the organization has trained many people in DT, the teams speak the DT’s lingo, and so bringing another methodology in is almost impossible, like switching between an iPhone and an Android device.

They want to have better results, and they know that if they wish to get different outcomes, they need to switch between methodologies, but the moat of their existing investment in Design Thinking is preventing them from exploring new methodologies. They become paralyzed by change. Talk about breaking fixedness.

We all have been there at some point, facing the challenge of letting go of what is familiar and venturing into the unknown.

The lesson is universal: don’t let your investments, whether in methodologies, technologies, or processes, become a moat that hinders innovation and growth.

Look beyond the moat and consider the potential benefits of exploring new solutions that could lead to improved results and outcomes. If you are so attached to your current methodology or technology that you refuse to consider alternatives, you may be missing out on opportunities for innovation and progress.

If you think you have found a better solution to your challenges, go for it. Build your own canoe and paddle across the moat. If you desire to achieve different results than the ones you had, start looking around and see if there’s any other solution that you can try and use.

As we begin the new year, you should consider how this year is going to play out for you and your organization and how much the unwillingness to take action could make 2024 look like 2023 or 2022…

Was it a Breakthrough or an Adjacency?

Published date: December 31, 2023 в 10:56 pm

Written by: Yoni Stern

Category: Brand and Marketing,Innovation,New Product Development,Strategy

This year, P&G’s Febreze celebrates its silver anniversary as a brand. But not all 25 years were a honeymoon. Launched in 1998, the fabric freshener quickly hit $100M in sales, but then slumped. In 2002, the brand was in danger of extinction until the company made a strategic decision: the Febreze brand, with its “Breath of Fresh Air” promise, would lead the company into its expansion into “Air Care”, a growth sector. The challenge was that the Air Care category was already dominated by protective goliath brands who would make entry very difficult. SC Johnson led the way with Glade followed by AirWick (Reckitt Benckiser), and Renuzit (Dial). SIT Innovation – Systematic Inventive Thinking ® was called in to help.

We all know the happy ending. Thanks to a successful entry in 2004, the Febreze brand thrived and, in 2011, joined the exclusive “Billion Dollar Brand” club. It has more than doubled those milestone sales in 2023.

So, what happened in 2002?

That was the year when P&G’s perfume chemists, Febreze brand team, and Innovation function members engaged SIT to help identify what breakthrough concept will help them enter this crowded field with an innovative, differentiated offering whose superiority would be obvious. Marketing already understood that price-of-entry into Air Care would require a spray (preferably not aerosol) which would need to be the first product launched. However, they also knew that plug-in air fresheners were the margin play and this is where they would need to win in order to achieve their business goals.

I was honored to be one of SIT’s experts to work on this project, alongside Amnon Levav, SIT’s co-founder. The SIT team was immersed in Febreze (not literally) for several weeks, including an intensive workshop in Cincinnati. The two highest rated plug-in ideas that the team generated through our approach were merged during convergence to form this concept:

Pulsating Plug-in. Habituation to one constant scent or level of scent is a problem that consumers are keenly aware of. They complain that a short while after beginning to use a Plug-in, they fail to notice the scent anymore and have no way of knowing that it is still working. To counter this problem, we will offer a pulsating Plug-in. Electrical heat will vary in strength or different perfume volatilities will be used in order to systematically and regularly alter the amount of scent emitted by the device.

Alternatively, the form will be dual chambered with two perfumes of different scents. So doing, the habituation to the scent will be delayed or non-existent.

This product, P&G’s first plug-in, was launched in 2006 and branded as Febreze NOTICEables, emphasizing the value the innovation delivered, moving beyond technical descriptors like “pulsating” or “dual-chamber”.

Just 5 years after entry, P&G’s Air Care portfolio had secured an impressive market share of 25%. Shortly thereafter, NOTICEables overtook Glade as the plug-in with the greatest market share. After a few years of sustaining this title, P&G rebranded NOTICEables as “PLUG”. The NOTICEables name was retired after 13 years of hard work, establishing Febreze firmly in the exclusive $1B+ brand club. According to Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) annual report for 2023, Air Fresheners account for 80% of Febreze brand sales.

25 years ago, Procter & Gamble executives realized that the company would miss a market opportunity window if they didn’t act fast. They had many valuable assets in place – strong brand equity, world-class perfume expertise, distribution supremacy, an extremely professional team with senior leadership support – but struggled to find the product expression that would cash in on them. It was a solution that seems simple and obvious in hindsight, but far from intuitive in foresight, so characteristic of SIT’s Closed World-type innovations, that became a blockbuster. It was a breakthrough solution that facilitated entry into an adjacency. Categorize it however you want; just make sure that you have several of them in your portfolio.

Happy Anniversary, Febreze!

Innovation

The Paradox of Too Much Freedom

The Power of the “Closed World”

Better Results Through Better Boundaries

5 Data-Driven, Customer-Centric trends we’ve identified

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