Посты с тэгом: inside the box

Making the Most of Your Resources With Task Unification

Published date: January 27, 2014 в 3:00 am

Written by:

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: ,,,

“We haven’t the money, so we’ve got to think.”

—Sir Ernest Rutherford, Nobel Prize winner, 1908

John Doyle certainly knows theater. Over his thirty-year career, he’s staged more than two hundred professional productions throughout the United Kingdom and the United States, mostly in small, regional theater companies. In the early 1990s, while working at such a theater in rural England, the Scottish director came up with an innovative way to produce crowd-pleasing musicals on a tiny budget. Musicals are considerably more expensive to stage than traditional plays, due primarily to the cost of hiring musicians. But Doyle eliminated those excess costs by handing responsibility for musical accompaniment to his actors. The actors onstage doubled as instrumentalists.

This, of course, was classic Task Unification: taking an existing internal resource that is already part of the Closed World (in Doyle’s case, his actors) and giving it a new task (playing musical accompaniment) that had traditionally been performed by another internal resource (musicians).

Doyle quietly opened his production of Sweeney Todd in 2004 at the Watermill Theater in Newbury, England. But as word got out about his unique staging and casting, the show was quickly brought to London’s West End, and, eventually, Broadway.

At first, US audiences and critics were skeptical. Used to expensively produced, high-tech Broadway productions that boasted elaborate sets and twenty-five-piece orchestras, they were shocked when the curtain rose on a bare stage with just ten actors sitting on chairs—actors who doubled as their own accompanists. During intermission, theatergoers were overheard exclaiming to one another, “How dare they do this!”

Doyle explained in an interview that he didn’t set out to break the rules. “It was never meant to be about, ‘We want to get rid of an orchestra.’ It grew out of not being able to afford to have one,” he said. However, being constrained by a lack of money turned out to be a blessing: he realized that he had an opportunity to stretch the audience’s ability to suspend disbelief. “I mean, you don’t often sit with a drink in one hand and a double bass between your legs,” he said. “It doesn’t happen very much in real life. So it kind of asks the audience to take a journey that goes beyond their preconception of what real life is.” Given that Doyle had always been interested in exploring the relationship between actors and audiences, he said he was pleased to have created “an abstraction of reality” that delivered a unique experience to theatergoers.

Doyle made a creative breakthrough, and his “actor-musicianship” method of staging musicals sent shock waves through the international theater scene. Directors at other cash-strapped regional theaters realized that they could emulate his signature style to stage major musicals that were both budget friendly and edgy enough to thrill the most jaded audiences.

Doyle won a Tony Award for Best Director for his actor-musician production of Sweeney Todd in 2006, and one for Best Musical Revival in 2007 for his actor-musician production of Company. Widely hailed as the reinventor of the Broadway musical, Doyle believes that his actormusicianship method turned out to be much more than just an exercise in penny-pinching. “I will do stories that I want to tell, and I will tell them in the appropriate way at the time. What I won’t do is, I won’t use this technique only to make cheap theater,” he said.

 
From Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results

The Partial Subtraction Technique: Betty Crocker’s Egg

Published date: January 20, 2014 в 9:17 am

Written by:

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: ,,,

In the 1950s, General Mills launched a line of cake mixes under the famous Betty Crocker brand. The cake mixes included all the dry ingredients in the package, plus milk and eggs in powdered form. All you needed was to add water, mix it all together, and stick the pan in the oven. For busy homemakers, it saved time and effort, and the recipe was virtually error free. General Mills had a sure winner on its hands.
Or so it thought. Despite the many benefits of the new product, it did not sell well. Even the iconic and trusted Betty Crocker brand could not convince homemakers to adopt the new product.
General Mills brought in a team of psychologists. Something unusual was going on. The company needed to make its next move very carefully if it was going to get this product off the ground.
Why were consumers resisting it? The short answer: guilt. The psychologists concluded that average American housewives felt bad using the product despite its convenience. It saved so much time and effort when compared with the traditional cake baking routine that they felt they were deceiving their husbands and guests. In fact, the cake tasted so good that people thought women were spending hours baking. Women felt guilty getting more credit than they deserved. So they stopped using the product.
General Mills had to act fast. Like most marketing-minded companies, it might have considered an advertising campaign to address the guilt issue head on, for example. Imagine a series of commercials explaining that saving time in the kitchen with instant cake mixes allowed housewives to do other valuable things for their families. The commercials would show how smart it was to use such an innovative product.
Against all marketing conventional wisdom, General Mills revised the product instead, making it less convenient. The housewife was charged with adding water and a real egg to the ingredients, creating the perception that the powdered egg had been subtracted. General Mills relaunched the new product with the slogan “Add an Egg.” Sales of Betty Crocker instant cake mix soared.
Why would such a simple thing have such a large effect? First, doing a little more work made women feel less guilty while still saving time. Also, the extra work meant that women had invested time and effort in the process, creating a sense of ownership. The simple act of replacing the powdered egg with a real egg made the creation of the cake more fulfilling and meaningful. You could even argue that an egg has connotations of life and birth, and that the housewife “gives birth” to her tasty creation. Okay, that may sound a bit far fetched. But you can’t argue that this new approach changed everything.
Betty Crocker’s egg teaches us a powerful lesson about consumer psychology. Many other companies sell goods and services that come prepackaged. They too might be able to innovate with the Subtraction technique by taking out a key component and adding back a little activity for the consumer.
 
From Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results

Systematic Innovation at the Consumer Electronics Show

Published date: January 13, 2014 в 3:00 am

Written by:

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: ,,,,,

One way to develop your expertise in SIT techniques is with pattern spotting. A key premise of SIT is that for thousands of years, innovators have used patterns in their inventions, usually without even realizing it. Those patterns are now embedded into the products and services you see around you, almost like the DNA of a product. You want to develop your ability to see these patterns as a way to improve your use of them.

There’s probably no better place to practice pattern spotting than at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). In last week’s CES in Las Vegas, “manufacturers demonstrated a range of previously mundane but now smart, web-connected products destined to become part of daily domestic existence, from kitchen appliances to baby monitors to sports equipment,” as reported in The Independent.

The word, “smart,” should tip you off right away. That’s a tell-tale for the Attribute Dependency Technique. It works by taking two attributes of a system and creating a correlation between them. As one thing changes, another thing changes. It tends to yield products that change or adapt to some changing need of the consumer. Hence, the product appears smart.

See if you can spot the Attribute Dependency Technique is these examples from CES:

  • Smart cars will become so smart they can drive themselves, avoiding congestion or collisions – even finding the closest parking space to your destination.
  • Smart refrigerators will let you know when the milk is on the turn, or when you need to buy more ketchup.
  • Smart toilets will monitor the frequency and consistency of your bowel movements, and tell you whether you ought to book an appointment with a dietitian – or worse, a clinician.
  • Smart ovens will manage mealtimes, cooking different dishes by different methods at the correct time.
  • Smart toothbrushes keep track of your brushing habits – not just the frequency of brushing, but also the technique. It then sends the dental data it has collected to your smartphone, with notes on how to brush better.
  • Smart “onesies” are not only a sleepsuit, but also a baby monitor. It tracks its infant wearer’s temperature, breathing rate, body position and activity level. It can even be paired with a bottle warmer, which starts heating milk when the Mimo senses the baby is about to wake up.
  • Smart tennis rackets record the power of each shot, the position of ball-on-racket, even the amount of spin. That data is then displayed on a smartphone or tablet, demonstrating the details of a player’s game and thus illuminating potential areas of improvement.
  • Smart beds track your heart rate, breathing, snoring, movements and surroundings, building a comprehensive picture of your sleep patterns which it then sends to your smartphone, offering suggestions for how to sleep better the following night.

With enough experience using SIT, you’ll use pattern spotting automatically. You will see some new product or service and instantly your mind will try to search which of the five techniques applies. When you get to that point, you have what we affectionately call the SIT “virus.” It means you are well on your way to mastering the method.

The Top 10 Most Underappreciated Inventions

Published date: December 30, 2013 в 3:00 am

Written by:

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: ,,

The end of the year is a popular time to publish lists of all sorts. A quick glance at CNN, for example, revealed lists such as “75 Amazing Sports Moments,” “The 50 Best Android Apps,” “8 Very Old Sites in the New World,” and many more.
Here are The Top 10 Most Underappreciated Inventions. The criteria for making this list are: 1. the invention has to be of high value, 2. we take it for granted; we just expect it to be there, and 3. it would be hard to imagine life without it; the substitute for the invention would be unacceptable.
1. Eyeglasses: My favorite invention of all time is also the most underappreciated.  75% of the US population wears corrective lenses, and 90% have some form of vision impairment. Without this lowly little invention, our lives today would be dramatically different. Imagine what our society would be like without the ability to read. Without reading, learning would be much more difficult. A drop in overall learning would reduce advances in science and every other area. A world without glasses would also drop human mobility as we would be unable to drive safely or even ride a bicycle. See what I mean?
2. Hair color: This invention is a close second in my opinion because of the importance it has had on all societies through the ages. Women have been coloring their hair for thousands of years to make themselves look better in the eyes of men and, most importantly, themselves. The world is a much better place when women look good and feel good. I didn’t appreciate this invention until one of my clients, a global cosmetics firm, taught me the importance of hair color to all women in every society on earth. Just close your eyes and imagine what it would be like if virtually every woman over thirty had gray hair.
3. Brakes:  What part of your car is most important to be able to drive really, really fast? The engine is what most people would say. In fact, it is the brakes. Without brakes, humans could not rev it up in planes, trains, automobiles or any form of mechanical motion. To go, one must be able to stop. Humans are mobile creatures, and a world without brakes would keep us all very close to home.
4. The iPhone: I’ve never seen a new technology become so widely adopted, so fast, and so quickly taken for granted as the smartphone. The iPhone started it all, and competitors immediately copied it to make the smartphone a ubiquitous part of our lives. People treat a smartphone as though it has been around forever. Kids know no other world than one with little handheld devices that do just about everything. Yet, this versatile invention integrates so many aspects of our lives that we would be lost without it.
5. Currency: Brother, can you spare a dime? Money is one of the most efficiency-generating inventions of all time as it facilitates trade between anyone, for anything, anytime, anywhere. Life as we know it would be very different and difficult without currency. Money lubricates an economy, and it provides a way to save and invest. Money is so important that a new form of money has emerged to facilitate its exchange – the Bitcoin.
6.  Keys: People value their privacy and security. Imagine how you would feel if you couldn’t lock your door at night. What if you couldn’t lock up your possessions? Lots of people want to get at your stuff, including your government, so keys and locks, even digital ones, have earned an essential place in our lives.  The alternative? You could learn to hide your stuff like dogs burying their bones. Not likely.
7. Roads: People love their cars, but they never think about the roads that allow them to drive them. Roads have been around a very long time, since the first “beaten down pathways.” But a system of roads delivers tremendous value to individuals and societies. Roads connect economies, families, and business partners. A mobile species would be lost without them.
8. Calendars: Clocks are certainly important, but they are replaceable. People have a general feel for the amount of time that has lapsed in a day. But what about a month or a year or longer? Not possible, even with seasonal changes. Calendars allow efficient coordination of so many aspects of our lives, it would be hard to imagine life without them. The calendar system is one of the few things universally agreed upon.
9. Water towers: Next time you brush your teeth, say thanks to the people who built your local water tower. Though water towers speckle the landscape, they are “out of sight, out of mind.” We ignore them when we drive by. Unless you have a well, the alternatives to getting clean water (under pressure) are unacceptable. Watertowers are simple inventions. They hold water above the ground so that the tremendous weight of the water forces water through pipe and into your home.
10. Elevators: Elevators carry millions of people every day, yet we never think about the alternative to these old machines. They have been around since the ancient Romans, which may explain why Italy has the most elevators of any country – a whopping 900,000. We would all be living in a virtual flat land of low rise buildings, only tall enough to climb by stairs. And it’s not just people that use elevators. Freight, vehicles, raw material, aircraft..you name it. Most human made objects have been lifted up in the air with some form of elevator.

How to Target Your Innovation

Published date: December 23, 2013 в 3:00 am

Written by:

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: ,,,

Companies get better results from innovation by targeting initiatives at the right places. Here are six areas to focus on:

1. Your Value Drivers:  What activities across your business model create the most value? Is it operational or commercial? Who is involved and what departments make it happen? Use a systematic innovation method like S.I.T. to reinvent the value driver as well as the resources that deliver it.

SensoryEffects, a food and beverage ingredient manufacturer, delivers customized products that help food companies compete in a more diverse market. It is moving away from commodity production and focusing on its potential in downstream emulsification powders – where the value lies.

2. Your Core Competency: What skill sets create strategic assets? Strategic assets are those that deliver a sustainable competitive advantage. By re-inventing these skills and how they are sourced and maintained, companies sustain their advantage.

AkzoNobel, a maker of specialty paint, has a unique ability to color match to near perfection thanks to their skills in chemistry and spectroscopy. Applying innovation methods to the color matching process would uncover new skills or complementary skills to fortify its strategic advantage.

3. Your Potential Acquisitions: Growth through acquisition is expensive and risky. Acquisition stifles innovation and distracts management as it focuses on integration. The answer is to use innovation methods ahead of the deal-making to clarify and enhance valuation.

Google’s acquisition of Boston Dynamics gives it another foothold in robotics. By applying a systematic innovation method to the target's core products before the offer would uncover new or hidden sources of deal value. Pre-deal innovation either makes the deal more valuable or creates intellectual property to leverage against other suitors if the deal falls through.

4. Your Customer's Processes: How does your customer use your product or service? Observe and map out the detailed steps of what customers do when they use it. Use innovation methods to re-invent the way consumers seek and derive value. This will lead to new product concepts that address these new customer behaviors.

Johnson & Johnson’s medical device unit creates detailed heat maps of how surgeons perform complicated procedures. The maps reveal the amount of time for each step, the product used, the degree of difficulty and risk to the successful outcome. Innovation is targeted at the high difficulty/high risk aspects of the procedure where the most value will be created from breakthrough ideas.

5. Your Brand Reputation: What are you most known for in the industry and in the minds of your customer? Is it superior products, great service to your distributors, fabulous advertising, top people? Use innovation methods on how consumers perceive your brand to strengthen and reinforce brand loyalty.

L’Oreal’s professional products division leads its industry through servicing salons with product support, training, merchandising, and market insights. The use of structured innovation methods of how salons operate and service their customers would create new insights and product development opportunities. Innovating where L'Oreal is regarded as the best in the industry would reinforce its leadership status.

6. Your Strategic Capabilities: How does your company win in the marketplace? What is its "source of authority?" By innovating the way a company competes, it surprises and outmaneuvers the competition.

Barry Jaruzelski and Kevin Dehoff from Booz & Company describe three strategic orientations: Need Seekers, Market Readers and Technology Drivers.  “The most successful companies are those that focus on a particular, narrow set of common and distinct capabilities that enable them to better execute their chosen strategy.”  These strategic capabilities can be innovated using systematic methods of ideation.

 

*This article first appeard in Industy Week.

Innovation in Practice: Six Year Anniversary

Published date: December 16, 2013 в 3:00 am

Written by:

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: ,,,

This month marks the six year anniversary of Innovation in Practice, and I want to thank my readers and supporters who follow it.

2013 was a special year for me. Jacob Goldenberg and I launched our book, Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results (Simon & Schuster, June 2013). The book is nominated for Innovation Book of the Year in the U.K., and it is spreading throughout. We are very pleased with the outcome of this project as it is the first detailed description of Systematic Inventive Thinking, a creative process that works for everyone.

Writing has become a way of life for me. Not only do I write this blog every week, but I am also now a regular contributor to Psychology Today, Industry Week, and Coca-Cola Journey. I want to thank the editors at these sites for inviting me.

Teaching continues to be my number one passion. I just completed the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) offered by the University of Cincinnati. The course, Innovation and Design Thinking, was the largest course ever taught at UC with over 2550 participants from 90 countries. I taught the SIT method along with my co-faculty, Jim Tappel who taught design thinking. It was fun experience.
I’ve become a teaching “author” at the online learning company, Lynda.com. I’ve produced a short course in facilitating creativity. Next month, I will be taping a full course called Business Innovation Fundamentals that teaches the SIT method.

My goal is to make this blog different from other innovation blogs and websites.  Instead of focusing on why innovation is important, I focus on how innovation happens.  The themes of this blog are:

  • Innovation can be learned like any other skill such as marketing, leadership, or playing the guitar.  To be an innovator, learn a method. Teach it to others.
  • Innovation must be linked to strategy.  Innovation for innovation’s sake doesn’t matter.  Innovation that is guided by strategy or helps guide strategy yields the most opportunity for corporate growth.
  • Innovation is a two-way phenomena. We can start with a problem and innovate solutions. Or we can generate hypothetical solutions and explore problems that they solve.  To be a great innovator, you need to be a two-way innovator.
  • The corporate perspective, where innovation is practiced day-to-day, is what must be understood and kept at the center of attention. This is where truth is separated from hype.

2014 will be a year of progress.  I plan to take this blog to the next level with a number of initiatives.  I plan to offer more resources for for teachers and professors who want to include the SIT method in their creativity courses.  I plan to highlight and recognize the practitioners who put SIT to work in their organizations.

I want to thank Jacob Goldenberg, Amnon Levav, Yoni Stern, and the entire team at SIT LLC. I thank Christie Nordhielm and Marta Dapena-Baron at Big Picture Partners, Bob Cialdini and the team at Influence at Work, Yury Boshyk at Global Executive Learning, the Washington Speakers Bureau, Jim Levine, Emilie D’Agostino, Shelley Bamburger, Deepak Mittal, the team at Innovation Excellence (Braden, Julie, Rowan), and my fellow faculty at the UC Lindner College of Business.

A special thanks to my family, especially my father who passed away earlier this year. He was a gentle gentleman, and I miss him.

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.

Innovation and Design Thinking: Getting Your Program Started

Published date: November 25, 2013 в 3:00 am

Written by:

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: ,,,,,


“Nothing is stronger than habit.”

Ovid

 “The key to success is to make a habit of doing the things you fear.”
Vincent Van Gogh

This week, we explored the questions related to how as well as key factors in creating an innovation culture.  From the Pro’s comments:

  • Francis Milbower

“The first thing a company should do is have the full commitment from management”

  • Francisco Javier Zambonino Vázquez

“Since risk taking must be encouraged -innovation is a risky activity-, management must act as guidance an support. Without their initial full involvement and commitment the initiative is doom to failure. Clearly, the responsibility, commitment, and guidance fall on the management’s shoulders.  But what leader, in their right mind, would not publically support innovation in words and actions?  Words like synergy, collaboration, innovation, empowerment, proactive, paradigm shift, and our favorite thinking outside the box have become common vernacular in speeches, memos and annual reports from management for decades. So obviously we have to go beyond the words and look at the actions and behaviors.  If management is not sold on innovation, or at least not to the degree of the rank and file, there are other methods perhaps.”

Innovation and Design Thinking: The Role of Leadership

Published date: November 18, 2013 в 3:00 am

Written by:

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: ,,,,,

“It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.”

— Roger von Oech

What’s the role of leadership in innovation and design thinking? The focus this week’s discussion was the role of organizations, management and business leaders in promoting, supporting and driving innovation. From participants in the course:

  • Frank Auffinger

“It depends on the level of the leader in the organization. At the upper levels, it is the leaders responsibility to define the corporate strategy, which plays a large part in the progress of innovation and establishes the direction of development activities. At the middle level, leaders need to be more active in progressing innovation according to the strategy. When an innovation has potential, it is up to leadership to remove blockers that could inhibit development of the innovation, or to determine if the innovation has merit and deserves contributions of time and resources. These dynamics play a significant role in innovation and design thinking. Finally, leaders should act as mentors and facilitators and should guide the organizational implementation of innovation and design thinking.”

Innovation and Design Thinking: Building Innovation Capabilities

Published date: November 11, 2013 в 3:00 am

Written by:

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: ,,,,,

 

“The world leaders in innovation and creativity will also be world leaders in everything else.”

Harold R McAlindon

How does a company build enough innovation capability to be the leader in its industry? That was the focus of this week’s discussion in our course, Innovation and Design Thinking. Some of our experienced participants said it best:

  • Francisco Javier Zambonino Vázquez:

“A very simple way to innovate is opening your eyes and seeing how others innovate around you. Getting insights and inspiration from others and adapting those innovations to your own world (namely, your business) is as simple as observing. The inspirations make you think about how to transfer that innovation to your particular scenario and how to provide additional value to your customers by copying, modifying and pasting it. That’s also innovation -and not mere incremental one- because you are having the opportunity to enhance your performance and better satisfy your customer by using methods and processes utilized by other businesses or industries. If done, you’re prepared to a quantum leap by releasing new services and features which none of your direct competitors is providing yet. Simple, cheap and efficient.

Get our innovation model that has worked for 1000+ companies.

    No thanks, not now.