Посты с тэгом: SIT

Innovation in Practice: Six Year Anniversary

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

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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

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“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

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“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

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“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.

Now, Twitter Must Grow

Published date: November 7, 2013 в 11:32 am

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It’s official. Twitter is a publicly traded company, and it will face constant pressure to innovate and grow. Let’s look at how innovation methods can be applied to Twitter to find new opportunitues.

We’ll apply the five techniques of Systematic Inventive Thinking
to Twitter.  Our goal will be to create new features and innovations
with the main Twitter platform as well as to create completely new
applications related to Twitter.

To use S.I.T., we start with the components of Twitter:
1.    Profile
2.    Photo
3.    People followed
4.    Followers
5.    Hashtags
6.    Tweets
7.    Re-tweets
8.    Groups
9.    Search
10.  Feeds
11.  Client
12.  API

We
apply each of the five templates of S.I.T. one at a time to create new
configurations.  We work backwards to identify potential benefits or new
markets with that configuration.

1.  SUBTRACTION: Removing an essential component

  • Virtual Product: Twitter account without the “tweeter” (person who owns the account).
  • Concept:  Your Twitter account pulls in and aggregates interesting
    factoids from around the social web and creates a tweet automatically.
    It “auto tweets.”
  • Potential Benefits:  Creates a more dynamic Twitter presence, likely leading to more followers.

2.  MULTIPLICATION: Making a copy of a component but changing it in some way

  • Virtual Product: Create multiple Twitter accounts under one user.
  • Concept: An app that allows the Twitter users to compose a list of accounts and
    distribute their tweets, choosing their release in one or more of their
    accounts.
  • Potential Benefits: Broadens re-tweeting as it links to the Follower network of each account.

3.  TASK UNIFICATION:  Assigning an additional task to an existing resource

  • Virtual Product: A Twitter client that automatically fetches content for you.
  • Concept: An app that resides on your desktop, and it pulls in Twitter feeds along with any other feeds of interest (much like RSS).
  • Potential Benefits: Convenient, one place to look for all your social feeds.

4.  DIVISION:  Dividing a product or component either physically, functionally, or preserving (maintaining characteristics of the whole)

  • Virtual Product: Divide your Twitter followers into relevant groups (much like Google Circles).
  • Concept: An app that sends instant messages to groups of friends in
    real-time. You can join in on conversations about topics that interest
    you, or start your own conversations.
  • Potential Benefits: Keeps track of all your social web activity in relevant groups.

5.  ATTRIBUTE DEPENDENCY:  Creating (or breaking) dependencies between two internal attributes or an internal and external attribute.

  • Virtual Product: The information pulled in about a follower depends on what other social networks they belong to.
  • Concept: A browser plugin that allows you to view the social web
    profile for each of your friends simply by mousing over their name in
    your Twitter stream.
  • Potential Benefits:  Better informed about Followers.

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?

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