Посты с тэгом: innovation method

Innovation Sighting: Task Unification Saves Lives and Money

Philips North America announced Fosmo Med, developer of the Maji Intravenous (IV) saline bag, as the grand prize winner of the first-ever Philips Innovation Fellows competition, revealing the technology as the next big, meaningful innovation in health and well-being. The new IV solution technology has the potential to save millions of lives worldwide from dehydration-related diseases, such as cholera.

Maji is a revolutionary field hydration system for IV use that is shipped without water. Once on site, forward osmosis technology converts local water — even if it’s not clean — to a sterile solution without requiring any electrical power. An estimated 16 Maji bags can be shipped for the same cost as one traditional IV saline bag, saving up to $500 for every 14 units shipped.

Maji is an example of the Task Unification Technique, one of five in the SIT innovation method. Task Unification works by assigning an additional task to an existing resource. In this example, the Maji bag has the additional job of filtering water.

“We’re very excited to be named the winner of the Philips Innovation Fellows Competition,” said Ben Park, chief executive officer and founder of Fosmo Med. “Maji will enable many more IV bags to be shipped for the same cost, stored safely and transported to remote sites. The potential life savings could be in the millions annually.”

“We are thrilled to name Fosmo Med as the grand prize winner and to support them as they work to take Maji to the market,” said Greg Sebasky, chairman of Philips North America. “As a company committed to meaningful innovation, it is gratifying to find a social enterprise that has the potential to revolutionize the medical device industry with a simple, forward-thinking solution.”

Philips practices what it preaches. It is featured in Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results for its use of the Subtraction Technique in creating the Slimline DVD player.

“Maji shows Fosmo Med’s commitment to providing affordable healthcare and well-being above all else,” added Sebasky.
Fosmo Med was selected from among hundreds of entries to the Innovation Fellows Competition. The company secured funding from the public through the crowd funding portion of the competition on Indiegogo, global web-based crowd funding site, and, once named a finalist, the Maji IV saline bag was named the “most meaningful” innovation by Philips employees. In addition to $60,000 in prize money, Fosmo Med will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Philips’ USA headquarters to meet with Philips leadership for mentor and whiteboard sessions to support development of the Maji IV.

Can Blackberry Dig Themselves Out of the Hole?

Published date: November 5, 2013 в 3:00 am

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As Albert Einstein noted, one cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it. That seems to be Blackberry’s predicament as it faces another drop in its stock value. However, with a fresh investment by Fairfax Holdings and a new CEO, Blackberry may have time to reinvent its business model. The new leadership team will need to think differently. It is a perfect time to apply systematic innovation tools to create a new future.
Here’s how.
New Merger Targets:  Use the SIT technique called Subtraction to reframe and see new merger possibilities.  Make a list of the major components of the company (sales force, products, brand, employees, customers, network). Create a phrase like this: “Blackberry has no products, but it has all the other components.  What company has the ideal set of products that would best fit the remaining resources of Blackberry?”  For example, would a company in data-mining or other information-based services find synergies within the Blackberry enterprise? Companies like LexisNexis, Authernative, and Lifelock come to mind.  Continue searching for more insights by doing the same exercise for each component, one at a time.
Reverse Assumption:  Don’t just challenge assumptions. Reverse them. This technique helps “break fixedness” and see new options.  To use it, list all the obvious business assumptions about Blackberry and its industry.  For example:

  • Consumers want more functionality.
  • Blackberry is for enterprises.
  • Cellphones are the dominant form of communication.

Reverse the assumptions one by one.  “Consumers want less functionality.”  Perhaps the new business model is to create stripped down products used by a different market segment.  Perhaps Blackberry becomes a system strictly for young people, not enterprises.
Innovate in Adjacent Markets:  Apply systematic innovation methods to stretch opportunities beyond Blackberry ‘s current business model.  Ask these questions:

  • What substitute products are non-category consumers using to fulfill the need? Where are they buying it?  What complementary products go along with these substitutes?
  • What other products do loyal Blackberry customers buy, perhaps at the same price point or to fulfill the same or similar brand promise?
  • Why do multi-brand customers use several brands?  Is it time-dependent?  Situation-dependent?  Why does it vary?  What other products are used when the competitive brands are consumed?
  • What other category of products do Blackberry ‘s competitor sell?  How do those fit into their product line?  How could they fit into Blackberry’s?

Innovate the Core Competency: Blackberry cannot compete with iPhone and Google on functionality (apps) and design.  Instead, it needs to innovate around its core competency of privacy. Privacy is highly valued in today’s environment of government snooping.  The trick is to extend the idea of privacy management beyond just data and voice communications.
First, re-frame the problem as: “How do we give our customers more privacy?”  Notice the problem statement is devoid of technology, process, product, or anything that implies how to do it.  Next, apply the SIT technique called Task Unification. This technique forces you to assign an additional job to an existing resource, usually in some counterintuitive way. For example,

  • Applications:  Create a list of all key functions and applications now on a Blackberry handset such as email, phone, maps, GPS, SMS texting, weather, contacts, calendar, photos, and so on.  One by one, create a phrase like this:  “The maps function has the additional job of delivering privacy to the use.”
  • Daily Routine:  List the parts of an everyday routine:  wake-up, shower, dress, take medication, eat, drive to work, check mail, have meetings, call clients, go shopping, drive home, watch TV, eat dinner, go to bed.  One by one, take each activity in the day and make the statement:  “Blackberry gives me privacy about (fill in the blank).”
  • Entities: Create a list of people and organizations you want to keep out of your affairs: family members, neighbors, co-workers, strangers, government, banks, employers, stores, churches, and so on.  Once again, take each component and create the phrase, “Blackberry will protect my privacy from (fill in the blank).”
  • Information:  List the types of information to be protected: financial, political, religious, demographic, employment, educational, relationship, etc.  One by one, create the hypothetical scenario: “Blackberry protects all my (fill in the blank) interests.”

Treat each of these phrases as a hypothetical solution and test whether it delivers a new consumer benefit.  Only then would Blackberry seek a technological approach to deliver the benefit.
Blackberry can remake itself, but the key will be to innovate its brand promise and be relevant in every part of the consumer’s life. If Blackberry focuses just on innovating its technology, it will succumb to the same thinking that got it in this mess.
 

Innovation and Design Thinking: Picking the Best Ideas

Published date: November 4, 2013 в 3:00 am

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Systematic methods of innovation and design will help you produce a pipeline of ideas. But this creates a new, maybe tougher problem for the practitioner: How do you pick the right ideas to work on? Filtering ideas is an essential part of the innovation process. You want to make sure you spend your time only those ideas with the most potential.
Here’s a sample of opinions from our student/practitioners on how to do it:

  • Francis Milbower:

“The benefit that the idea brings forth must be evident from the onset” along with “an idea that is viewed as something that is more simplistic than the current product, process, or service.” This generated many examples of overly complicated solutions that failed.  In other words, the solution worked, but there were more elegant solutions to be found.”

Introducing: Innovate! Inside the Box

Published date: October 31, 2013 в 3:00 am

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Authors Drew Boyd and Jacob Goldenberg announced the launch of a new app that supports the innovation/creativity system outlined in their groundbreaking work: Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results (Simon & Schuster, 2013).
Innovate! Inside the Box enables users of Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) to employ the method more productively. The new app places SIT’s five innovation techniques – Subtraction, Division, Task Unification, Multiplication and Attribute Dependency – at the user’s fingertips to quickly generate creative ideas and new-to-the-world innovations. In addition, users can document their projects as they build their pipeline of ideas and inventions.
“Creativity is about what people do to make the world a better place,” said co-author Boyd. “Innovate! Inside the Box lets people use creativity techniques in a seamless and organized way.”
Co-author Goldenberg concurs: “Systematic Inventive Thinking is rooted in research that inventive solutions share a set of common patterns. This app coalesces the process of using patterns to innovate and supports the use of proven tools to invent systematically.”
“In short,” said Boyd, “Innovate! Inside the Box packs all the power of our book into an easy-to-use app. Everyone can create and innovate, using these tools and this process.”
To use the app, users select a product or service they want to innovate. They type in the components and attributes of that product or service. Innovate! Inside the Box then creates hypothetical configurations based on each of the five techniques. Users take these configurations and try to imagine new benefits or problems addressed. If they discover a new idea, they enter a description of it in the app that they can share via email or social media.
Innovate! Inside the Box is the first app of its kind to facilitate a systematic innovation method. It is priced at $8.99 and is available for iPad2 and iPad3.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results (Simon & Schuster, 2013) provides corporate executives, engineers, marketing professionals, organizational leaders, and creative people of all types with a practical, working guide to begin innovating in everyday life. You no longer need to wait for a crisis to consider creative solutions. You don’t have to wait for inspiration, for the muse to descend, or otherwise depend on some sort of unusual spark of brilliance to create something. By following Boyd and Goldenberg’s inside-the-box method, you can create new and exciting things – or conceive new and exciting ideas – on demand.
To encourage readers to begin using the method right away, the authors present scores of examples where these techniques have been used across a wide range of industries, products, services, and activities. Many are real-life cases from Goldenberg’s international consulting and training company, also called Systematic Inventive Thinking.
Boyd and Goldenberg write: “Our goal for this book is to make the inside-the box approach accessible to anyone in any field and in any part of life, personal or professional. Together we hope to show you how to work inside the box to use your brain in a different way, and produce innovations that you would never have imagined otherwise. And here’s the almost magical thing about inside-the-box thinking: the more you learn about the method, the more you will start to see how it can be applied to solve tough problems and create all sorts of breakthroughs in the world around you. You’ll find your eyes open to a whole new world of innovation.”
Simon & Schuster; Publication Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 9781451659252
E-book: 9781451659306
Price: $28.50
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Innovation and Design Thinking: The Challenges Ahead

Published date: October 28, 2013 в 3:00 am

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Innovators have a rough road ahead. Despite the mandate for growth and the pleas for a more innovative culture, innovators face a lot of challenges from both inside and outside the organization. That was the major theme we explored this week in “Innovation and Design Thinking.”
One of our 2200 students, Francisco Javier Zambonino Vázquez, led off the discussion with this comment:

“In my opinion the lack of real commitment is the most important barrier to deal with when innovating. I think that continuous communication with management line is vital for ensuring they are in the loop. Skepticism must be kept under control so that it does not spoil our bet for innovation.”

What happens to an innovation pipeline without a strong commitment from senior management? It dries up because it lacks the resources in both dollars and people. But why does this happen, especially when every senior leader knows that innovation is the only true source of long term sustainable growth?

Innovation and Design Thinking: The Best Practices of Teams

Published date: October 21, 2013 в 3:00 am

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October brings the start of the U.S. baseball championship called the World Series. Baseball, like innovation, is a team sport, and success demands best practices out of the players and team managers. We thought it might be useful compare innovation and baseball given this week’s focus on teams.

Baseball is a diverse sport played in many countries The U.S professional league (called Major League Baseball) has 1200 players from 19 countries.  Innovation also requires diversity. A best practice is to make innovation teams diverse in several ways: cross-functional, gender, experience, and cultural. Diverse teams harness the unique perspectives of the team members when applying the innovation and design thinking tools taught in this course.

By the way, how does this MOOC compare to Major League Baseball? We have over 2100 participants from 55 countries! Evidently, diversity is also a driver of learning.

Innovation and Design Thinking: Week One Final Thoughts

Published date: October 14, 2013 в 3:00 am

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The terms innovation and design thinking are used so often in so many different contexts, often interchanged, and sometimes misused. What do they really mean? More importantly, how do they relate to each other?

SpiralThese questions set the stage for “Innovation and Design Thinking,” the first Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) offered by the University of Cincinnati and the largest course ever taught since it was founded in 1819. Nearly two thousand students from around the world are participating.
The truth is, from our experience, there is no consensus on a definition of innovation or design thinking.  Jim Tappel and I have had many conversations about it with a variety of people through the years. Finding agreement has been elusive.  Perhaps these terms are so broad that seeking a definition is like seeking a definition of leadership. There are many, many ways to approach it.
Consider just a few of the comments from participants in this week’s Discussion Board:
•    From Francis Milbower:

“In my mind, I see innovation as a solution to some sort of need, such as a customerneed, market need, performance improvement, etc. Design thinking is then thesystematic tools or process used in order to make that innovation come to life.Innovation can occur but some sort of design thinking is required in order for thatinnovation to prove to be successful.”

•    From Bernardo Szulanski:

“In my perspective innovation provides value and actually deliver a solution to aproblem, and Design Thinking is a discipline and a methodical way to identifyproblems and analyse the capabilities to create innovation.”

•    From Ashley Moran:

“In my mind, design thinking comes into the process – using tools like the spiralmodel – in order to keep the team on track toward achieving the innovation goal(i.e., solving customer problems). Design thinking is to clearly and thoroughlydefine the problem, think inside the box to postulate ideas to fix the problem andthen see those ideas come to fruition – all while keeping the target audience inmind.”

•    From Paul Reader:

“In discussions around a perceived problem it can often be the case where someonesays “That’s not the problem!” Asking the question “Why is it not the problem?” canelicit either: a solution to that part or perception A. of the problem; B. a more refined definition; and/or C. a discovery of dependence/independence between attributes of the problem. By doing this the focus remains ‘inside the box’, even if we don’t normally think of it that way when we are doing it.”

•    From John Bowen:

“How I am understanding this is that Design Thinking can’t happen withoutInnovation. First you have the Innovation that then leads you to the DesignThinking but the Innovation piece means very little without the Design Thinking.Innovation is the problem being solved with an idea and Design Thinking takes it astep further by thinking about how this idea would be put into action.”

You’ll find even more evidence of this debate when you watch the “Voice of the Practitioner” video in Week One. These five seasoned pro’s have their own unique take on it depending on their experiences and what is working for them in their organizations. (Hint!)
We advise the following. Don’t worry too much about nailing down precise, universal definitions of these terms. We encourage you to use this course as a way to provoke new insight and understanding about the world of innovation and design. Then, use those insights to craft a meaning that is right for the type of company you work for and the culture that exists there. The structure of your innovation and design thinking programs should follow the strategy of your company, not the other way around. In other words, you get to choose what innovation and design thinking mean!
By now, you should have noticed the peer-to-peer interaction in the Discussion Board. Learning is a social phenomena, and we are encouraged how participants are helping each other and debating issues between each other, not with us. As faculty, our job in this course is to provoke you to think in new ways, not to give you definite answers. We see ourselves as equal participants in the Discussion Board along with everyone else. Trust us: you will learn more from the wisdom of this highly experienced and diverse group of MOOC participants. Just look at where our participants come from – 55 countries!
MOOC Usage Map 10-13-10
In closing, we want to thank you for joining us on this pilot program. We hope to learn as much as you, and we want you to know how much we appreciate your engagement and passion for this topic.

Inside the Box: How to Use the Innovate! App

Published date: October 7, 2013 в 3:00 am

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The new Innovate! Inside the Box app facilitates the use of the creativity method, Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT). It explains each of the five techniques (Subtraction, Division, Task Unification, Multiplication, and Attribute Dependency) and allows users to generate creative ideas and innovations. This app is ideal for readers of “Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results.”

The app is available for iPad 2 or 3. Download it at the Apple iTunes Preview.
Here’s how to Use the App: (click screenshots to see a larger image)
1. Go to How to Use the App on the Home page to read about Systematic Inventive Thinking.

App2

2. Go to Learn a Technique to read about each one.

App3

3. Go to My Innospace and look at the sample project, Refrigerator, under Current Projects. Review the Ideas List for examples of ideas generated with each technique.

App4

4. Go to New Innospace and create a new project:
a. Enter the Name of product or service you want to innovate
b. Enter a Description of the project
c. Hit Enter
d. Enter the Components and Attributes of the product or service

App8

5. Select one of the five techniques to apply to the new project
a. Select a technique, or “I’m Feeling Lucky.”
b. Read each of the Virtual Products that the app creates.
c. Use Function Follows Form to identify potential innovations

App5

6. Capture new ideas discovered.
a. Enter a name of the idea
b. Enter a description of the idea
c. List the benefits
d. Add notes if needed
e. Hit Done

App6

7. Share your ideas via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

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8. Backup your projects by going to the More link

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For best results, it is recommended that users read about the method
before using this app. We do not recommend downloading this app without
training in the method or reading the book first.

Inside the Box: The Two Rats

Published date: September 25, 2013 в 1:40 pm

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In June, Jacob Goldenberg and I released our new book, Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results. It has since been featured on the front page of Wall Street Journal and numerous other publications and media outlets.

Recently, we each did live webinars talking about the project. Take a look at both webinars so you can learn why I am called "The Street Rat" and Jacob is called "The Lab Rat."

Both titles are well deserved! We hope you find these useful.

Inside the Box: Applying Attribute Dependency to Pinterest

Published date: September 9, 2013 в 9:39 am

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Pinterest has joined the elite group of social apps
along with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, and Google Plus.
Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard that lets you organize and share
all the beautiful things you find on the web.”  How popular is it?  It is the fastest site ever to break through the 10
million unique visitor mark.  A report by Shareaholic claims, “Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.”  As of May 2013, Pinterest was valued at $2.5 billion.

There are many creative ways to use PinterestNew apps are emerging around it much like what happened with Twitter.  But to maintain growth, Pinterest needs innovation.  Let’s apply Attribute Dependency, one of five techniques of Systematic Inventive Thinking, to Pinterest.

To
use Attribute Dependency, make two lists.  The first is a list of
internal attributes.  The second is a list of external attributes –
those factors that are not under your control, but that vary in the
context of how the product or service is used.  Then, create a matrix
with the internal and external attributes on one axis, and the internal
attributes only on the other axis.  The matrix creates combinations of
internal-to-internal and internal-to-external attributes that we will
use to innovate.  We take these virtual combinations and envision them
in two ways.  If no dependency exists between the attributes, we create
one.  If a dependency exists, we break it.  Using Function Follows Form,
we envision what the benefit or potential value might be from the new
(or broken) dependency between the two attributes.

The attributes of Pinterest are:

PinterestInternal Attributes:

  1. size of board (number of pins)
  2. size of the displayed board
  3. number of boards
  4. description of board
  5. subject of pins
  6. number of likes
  7. number of re-pins
  8. number of guest pinners
  9. who following

External Attributes:

  1. time
  2. followers
  3. boards trending
  4. links to other social networks

The new concepts are:

1.  Push To FriendsPinterest pushes a notification to Facebook friends or Twitter followers based on a keyword in the description of the Pin.  This is a bit like RSS feeds into a reader, but different in that the Pinterest board owner gets to decide what gets pushed to friends.  There are some existing links between Pinterest and the other social networks, but an approach like this could make it much stronger and more valuable.

2.  Pin RecommenderPinterest finds and recommends new Pins to you based on keywords in your Pin or Board description.  It is similar to the “You Might Also Like…” feature on many web applications.  A new app called SpinPicks does something similar, but it does not pull from the inventory of images in Pinterest.

3.  Board CloudThe Boards of a Pinner change size depending on Likes and Followers.  This is similar to a tag cloud where each word varies in size depending on how often it shows up on a website or document.  Tag clouds help the reader quickly understand which words are most prominent or popular.  Twitter has a similar feature called Trendsmap.  Given the highly visual nature of Pinterest, I would expect users to be able to turn features like this on or off in their settings to give a more personalized experience.

4.  Twitter TrenderThe boards displayed on the viewers main page vary depending on what is trending on Twitter.  Twitter has become the “eyes and ears” of the world, and hot topics trend all the time.  Pinterest would read these trends and match them to Boards for display on the front page, perhaps as defined by the viewer.

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