Посты с тэгом: systematic innovation

Innovating Through Partnerships

Published date: May 16, 2016 в 3:00 am

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Have you ever heard the expression, “Riding on the Coattails of Others?” What it means is – achieving success by associating with other people or groups. In sales and marketing, it’s another great way to create opportunities and improve your sales revenue. Let’s look at how.
To achieve success through others, you have to form partnerships, or what we sometimes call a joint venture. Each partner in the venture does something that benefits the other partner. That way, both sides have a good reason to be involved. In sales and marketing, there are many ways companies can help each other.
Just sharing information such as marketing research can be of value. For example, if your company collects information about consumer preferences and a non-competing company has different information about those same customers, you could swap the data and learn more about your customers.
A partnership can be formed to share sales leads with each other. When one company makes a sale, they give that lead to the other company so they can go in there and make a sale. This opens up a whole new source of leads to put into your sales funnel.
Co-marketing can become much more aggressive than just sharing information and sales leads. For example, each company in the partnership could promote and sell the other one’s products and services. If you sell real estate, you might want to co-promote with moving companies. Once you’ve established a strong relationship with your customer base, selling other company’s products can increase your revenue by taking commissions on those sales.
Finally, another great way a partnership can work is when the partners share resources like channels of distribution or training resources. The secret is to give your partner something that is inexpensive for you to provide but of great value to them, and vice versa.
The key is to pick the right partner and strike the right deal. A good partner is someone who does not compete with your company, but is closely related enough that customers would understand why the two of you are associated. Think about the profile of the customers you want to reach.
Ask yourself, what companies out there also sell to these people? What companies have insights about their buying habits and needs? Do they have a relationship with these customers, and do they have sales channels to reach them? If so, you’ve found an ideal candidate to partner with.
Now here’s a tip. You want to be careful that you don’t create a situation where your reps are distracted selling the other company’s products to the point where they miss forecast on your products. A simple way around that is to bundle the products together. That means putting two or more products together so the customer buys all of them at the same time. For example, if you sell vacation packages, you might bundle travel insurance with it.
So take a look at potential partners given the types of products and services you sell. Give them a call and discuss the possibilities. You’ll be surprised at the many advantages of riding on the coattails of others.

Innovation Sighting: Coca Cola’s Green Billboard

Published date: February 22, 2016 в 3:00 am

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The Task Unification Technique is great because it generates novel ideas that tend to be novel and resourceful. It’s one of five techniques in the SIT Innovation Method.
Task Unification is defined as: assigning an additional task to an existing resource. That resource should be in the immediate vicinity of the problem, or what we call The Closed World. In essence, it’s taking something that is already around you and giving an additional job.
Here’s a great example – Coca Cola’s green billboard functions as a traditional billboard by communicating its brand while filtering the air with live plants. From AdWeek:

Advertising doesn’t get much greener than this: Coca-Cola and the World Wildlife Fund have unveiled a new 60-by-60-foot billboard in the Philippines that’s covered in Fukien tea plants, which absorb air pollution. Each plant can absorb up to 13 pounds of carbon dioxide a year. “This billboard helps alleviate air pollution within its proximate areas as it can absorb a total of 46,800 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, on estimate,” says botanist Anthony Gao. The rest of the billboard is just as environmentally friendly. The plants are contained in 3,600 pots made from old Coke bottles and designed to help the plants grow sideways. The potting mixture was made from industrial byproducts and organic fertilizers. And a drip irrigation system was installed, which saves water and fertilizer by allowing water to drip slowly to the roots of plants, through a network of valves, pipes, tubing, and emitters. “We are proud that we have brought to life the first plant billboard in the country,” says Guillermo Aponte, president of Coca-Cola Philippines. “It is an embodiment of our company’s ‘Live Positively’ commitment to making a positive difference in the world by incorporating sustainability into everything that we do. With this, we hope to inspire Filipinos to join us in our journey, because we know that together, we can make a positive impact.” 


To get the most out of the Task Unification technique, you follow five basic steps:
1. List all of the components, both internal and external, that are part of the Closed World of the product, service, or process.
2. Select a component from the list. Assign it an additional task, using one of three methods:

  • Choose an external component and use it to perform a task that the product accomplishes already
  • Choose an internal component and make it do something new or extra
  • Choose an internal component and make it perform the function of an external component, effectively “stealing” the external component’s function

3. Visualize the new (or changed) products or services.
4. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values? Who would want this, and why would they find it valuable? If you are trying to solve a specific problem, how can it help address that particular challenge?
5. If you decide the new product or service is valuable, then ask: Is it feasible? Can you actually create these new products? Perform these new services? Why or why not? Is there any way to refine or adapt the idea to make it viable?
 
 

Creating New Products With The Division Technique

Published date: February 9, 2015 в 3:00 am

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You can frequently make groundbreaking innovations simply by dividing a product into “chunks” to create many smaller versions of it. These smaller versions still function like the original product, but their reduced size delivers benefits that users wouldn’t get with the larger, “parent” product. This is “Preserving Division.”
Les Paul used Preserving Division to produce his multitrack recording by taking a single piece of media—a tape—and dividing it into multiple smaller tracks that perform the same function as the original large piece of tape.
We see this all the time in the technology industry. For years, computer makers kept increasing the capacity of hard drives (the devices within PCs on which programs and data are stored). Then an engineer had a brilliant idea to use Preserving Division to create mini personal storage devices. Today many people won’t leave their desks without placing their “thumb” drives in their briefcase or pocket. These mini storage units are designed specifically for people who must carry electronic versions of documents with them but don’t want to be burdened with laptops or other computing devices. They simply transfer documents from their PCs to their thumb drives, and walk away from the computer.
Many food manufacturers use the Preserving Division technique to create more convenient versions of popular products. By taking a regular serving or portion of a product and dividing it into multiple smaller portions, manufacturers allow consumers to purchase food products in more convenient and cost-effective ways. Consumers buy only what they need instead of a larger amount. Recently, manufacturers have even used Preserving Division to help people curb their calorie intake by providing popular snacks in smaller, more diet-friendly packages. Kraft Foods’s Philadelphia Cream Cheese brand does this by offering individually wrapped single-serving-size portions of its flagship product for people to put in their brown-bag lunches or take to the office with a breakfast bagel.
The time-sharing arrangements that many hotels and condominiums offer provide more examples of Preserving Division. Under timesharing, a year of “ownership” of a property is divided into fifty-two smaller units of a week each. Each unit is then sold to a different owner, who has the right to live in the property for that week. Each smaller unit preserves the characteristics of the whole. Ownership has been divided over time.
Likewise, when you make payments on a loan, you are sending small amounts of money created by dividing the larger, principal amount of the loan. Like the time-sharing condos, the division is based on time.
When doctors treat cancer tumors with radiation therapy, they have to be sure to kill the cancer tissue without doing too much damage to the surrounding healthy tissue. How? They divide the total dose of radiation into smaller, less lethal doses and aim them at the tumor from many different angles. The smaller beams of high-energy X‑rays, divided in space, converge to hit the cancer cells. But the lighter dose of any one beam does not do enough damage to other tissue that it hits along the way.
To get the most out of the Division technique, you follow five basic steps:
1.  List the product’s or service’s internal components.
2.  Divide the product or service in one of three ways:

  • Functional (take a component and rearrange its location or when it appears).
  • Physical (cut the product or one of its components along any physical line and rearrange it).
  • Preserving (divide the product or service into smaller pieces, where each piece still possesses all the characteristics of the whole).

3.  Visualize the new (or changed) product or service.
4. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values? Who would want this, and why would they find it valuable? If you are trying to solve a specific problem, how can it help address that particular challenge?
5. If you decide you have a new product or service that is indeed valuable, then ask: Is it feasible? Can you actually create this new product or perform this new service? Why or why not? Can you refine or adapt the idea to make it more viable?
Keep in mind that you don’t have to use all three forms of Division, but you boost your chance of scoring a breakthrough idea if you do.

What China Must Do to Innovate

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

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Innovation is an essential ingredient to the growth and success of China’s economy. The use of methods such as Systematic Inventive Thinking will accelerate that growth. But where should China focus its innovation efforts? Professors George Yip and Bruce McKern make the case that China should focus on the following:

  • Cost innovation: Cost innovation occurs when changes in the product design, production or delivery process, technology or materials result in reduction in production or delivery costs. Using Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), the Task Unification Technique tends to produce ideas that are resourceful and cost effective.
  • Process innovation: Process innovation occurs when a company creates a new process for producing or delivering an existing product or service. In China, much process innovation seeks to reduce the cost of production. For process innovation, the Division Technique helps break structural fixedness and create new, transformational processes.
  • Application innovation: Application innovation occurs when existing products (or services) or technologies are combined in a new way to produce a new product. The humble but ubiquitous sandwich, and also the credit card, are classic examples. The Task Unification Technique forces the innovator to consider ways that existing resources can take on additional jobs, leading to clever new applications.
  • Supply chain innovation: While China has become critical in the global supply chains of foreign companies, supply chains inside China still have much room for improvement. Infrastructure is needed to catch up with the country’s very rapid growth. Here, the Subtraction Technique forces the mind to remove essential elements of a supply chain to help see new opportunities and unique replacements for those elements.
  • Product innovation: China has produced relatively few product innovations that are truly new to the world. But based on extensive experience with incremental innovations, Chinese companies are moving from incremental toward radical innovations. The Attribute Dependency Technique is great for taking exisitng incremental innovations and converting them to “smart” products.
  • Technological innovation: China has yet to produce high-impact technology innovations with global significance. But we have seen examples of minor but world class technology being implemented to create innovations. Here again, the Task Unification Technique is especially effective for taking raw technologies and seeking new and novel uses in a wide variety of domains.
  • Business model innovation: In China, most business model innovation has started by taking a Western model, adapting it to China, then further innovating the adaptation. Although Alibaba.com, for example, copied the eBay platform with its competing service Taobao, it quickly overtook eBay, based on its earlier B2B platform experience and innovations to suit the Chinese customer. To innovate a business model, use the Multiplication Technique. It challenges the innovator to consider key parts of the business model in a whole new light.
  • Non-customer innovation: Non-customer innovation occurs when a business is able to serve a customer segment not previously served in this category elsewhere in the world or in a particular country. The so-called “adjacent market” appears attractive as a new source of growth, but these can be distracting. Consider instead applying most or all of the five techniques of SIT to an adjacent space before diving in.

As the professors noted, Chinese companies are adept at exploiting all of these forms of innovation due to their relentless focus on customers, their search for unmet needs, and remarkable speed. Adding in the use of systematic methods of innovation would take China even further.

The Myth of Serendipitous Innovation

Published date: May 12, 2014 в 3:00 am

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In 1891, a physical education teacher named James Naismith invented the game of basketball when he nailed two ordinary peach baskets to the wall of a gymnasium. His students loved the game. But, there was a problem. Every time a player shot the ball into the basket, somebody had to get up on a ladder and take it out. That wasted a lot of time and it ruined the flow of the game.

But then something happened. After many games, the bottoms of the peach baskets became so weak that they eventually broke off, allowing the basketball to fall straight through.
This simple serendipitous invention allowed the game to be played continuously without interruption, and it gave rise to a global billion-dollar industry we know today as professional basketball.
The game of basketball isn’t the only invention created through pure chance. Many successful products you see around you today are the result of serendipity. The Post-it note, velcro, penicillin, x-rays and even chocolate chip cookies were created by chance.
With so many successful products created through serendipity, it makes you wonder whether companies can rely on it to create breakthrough products. The answer is no. Serendipity, as a method of innovation, has a very poor track record. The number of serendipitous products is a tiny percentage of the total of all products. It just doesn’t yield nearly the amount of blockbuster products as you would think.
So why does it seem there are so many of them? That’s because serendipitous products are more memorable than others. We hear about them in the news media more often. Because of that, we recall more examples of serendipitous products than other inventions. So we’re fooled into thinking they must be occurring at a much higher rate. It just isn’t true.
Instead of having to rely on chance, learn a method that you can use proactively to create new products and services.
Let’s look back at our basketball example. What if James Naismith had used a thinking tool that guided him to remove the bottoms of the peach baskets right from the start? Had he done so, he would have seen the benefit immediately.
We’ll never know for sure. But, what would you rather rely on? Pure chance? Or would you prefer to have a method that leads you to these same inventions in a systematic way?
If you’re serious about innovation, I advise you to go with the odds, not the gods. While serendipitous products are fun to read about, don’t let them distract you from using a systematic approach that will increase your creative output.

How Patterns Boost Our Performance…Without Even Knowing It

Published date: May 5, 2014 в 4:59 am

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Humans are creatures of habits, and these habits can be analyzed and codified into rules that help us perform better. Many times, we’re not even aware of the habits that control our choices.

Conside the child’s game, Rock-Paper-Scissors. The odds of winning are one in three. At least, that’s what chance predicts. But people do not play randomly – they follow hidden patterns that you can predict to win more games than you should, a study has revealed.

At a rock-paper-scissors tournament at China’s Zhejiang University, scientists recruited 360 students, placed them in groups of six and had each of them run 300 rounds against their fellow group members. As an incentive, winners were paid for each individual victory.

When players won a round, they tended to repeat their winning rock, paper or scissors more often than would be expected at random (one in three). Losers, on the other hand, tended to switch to a different action. And they did so in order of the name of the game – moving from rock, to paper, to scissors. After losing with a rock, for example, a player was more likely to play paper in the next round than the “one in three” rule would predict.

Humans follow patterns in many other domains including creativity. Research by Dr. Jacob Goldenberg suggests that or thousands of years, inventors have embedded five simple patterns into their inventions, usually without knowing it. These patterns are the “DNA” of products that can be extracted and applied to any product or service to create new-to-the-world innovations.
The five patterns are:

  • Subtraction: Innovative products and services tend to have had something removed, usually something that was previously thought to be essential to use the product or service. The original Sony Walkman had the recording function subtracted, defying all logic to the idea of a “recorder.” Even Sony’s chairman and inventor of the Walkman, Akio Morita, was surprised by the market’s enthusiastic response.
  • Task Unification: Innovative products and services tend to have had certain tasks brought together and “unified” within one component of the product or service, usually a component that was previously thought to be unrelated to that task. Crowdsourcing, for example, leverages large groups of people by tasking them to generate insights or tasks, sometimes without even realizing it.
  • Multiplication: Innovative products and services tend to have had a component copied but changed in some way, usually in a way that initially seemed unnecessary or redundant. Many innovations in cameras, including the basis of photography itself, are based on copying a component and then changing it. For example, a double flash when snapping a photo reduces the likelihood of “red-eye.”
  • Division: Innovative products and services tend to have had a component divided out of the product or service and placed back somewhere into the usage situation, usually in a way that initially seemed unproductive or unworkable. Dividing out the function of a refrigerator drawer and placing it somewhere else in the kitchen creates a cooling drawer.
  • Attribute Dependency: Innovative products and services tend to have had two attributes correlated with each other, usually attributes that previously seemed unrelated. As one attribute changes, another changes. Transition sunglasses, for example, get darker as the outside light gets brighter.

Using these patterns correctly relies on two key ideas. The first idea is that you have to re-train the way your brain thinks about problem solving. Most people think the way to innovate is by starting with a well-defined problem and then thinking of solutions. In our method, it is just the opposite. We start with an abstract, conceptual solution and then work back to the problem that it solves. Therefore, we have to learn how to reverse the usual way our brain works in innovation.

This process is called “Function Follows Form,” first reported in 1992 by psychologist Ronald Finke. He recognized that there are two directions of thinking: from the problem-to-the-solution and from the solution-to-the-problem. Finke discovered people are actually better at searching for benefits for given configurations (starting with a solution) than at finding the best configuration for a given benefit (starting with the problem).
The second key idea to using patterns is the starting point. It is an idea called The Closed World. We tend to be most surprised with those ideas “right under noses,” that are connected in some way to our current reality or view of the world. This is counterintuitive because most people think you need to get way outside their current domain to be innovative. Methods like brainstorming and SCAMPER use random stimulus to push you “outside the box” for new and inventive ideas. Just the opposite is true. The most surprising ideas (“Gee, I never would have thought of that!”) are right nearby.
We have a nickname for The Closed World…we call it Inside the Box.

Inside versus Outside: The Story of the Inside the Box

Published date: April 20, 2014 в 5:25 am

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Go behind the scenes of “Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results”  with co-author, Drew Boyd, who shares insights about the writing of the book and its impact on the creative potential of organizations.

The book has been or will soon be published in the following languages: English/US, English/UK Commonwealth, Dutch, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew, Portuguese, Thai, Russian, German, and Turkish. See all book jacket versions here: http://www.pinterest.com/drewboyd/inside-the-box/.
 

Systematic Innovation at the Consumer Electronics Show

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

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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

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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.

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.

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