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Innovation Sighting: Subtraction in Commercial Aircraft Cabins

Published date: August 25, 2014 в 3:00 am

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Can you imagine flying in a plane without windows? A design team from Technicon Design in Paris created an interior that displays 360-degree views that are simulated on internal screens from external cameras that capture the surrounding environment in real time. The images displayed in the interior cabin—including the walls and even the ceiling—give passengers the feeling of flying through the air in an invisible vessel.

It’s an excellent example of the Subtraction Technique, one of five techniques in Systematic Inventive Thinking.

As reported on Fox News:

For business minded clientele, the screens can also be used for video conferences. Or if you’re in the mood for a some entertainment, kick back and relax with a state of the art in flight movie. For claustrophobic passengers, the screens can also be used to project relaxing landscapes like a tropical beach. Technicon Design created the design for a National Business Aviation Association and has since won an award at the International Yacht & Aviation Awards in the exterior design category.

“I challenged the team to break out of conventional thinking with regards to a business jet exterior and interior,” Gareth Davies, design director at Technicon Design’s studio near Paris, told the Daily Mail. “We quickly settled on the controversial yet interesting idea of removing the windows from the cabin and using existing or very near future technology to display the exterior environment on flexible screens.”


To get the most out of the Subtraction technique, you follow five basic steps:\

  1. List the product’s or service’s internal components.
  2. Select an essential component and imagine removing it. There are two ways: a. Full Subtraction. The entire component is removed. b. Partial Subtraction. Take one of the features or functions of the component away or diminish it in some way.
  3. Visualize the resulting concept (no matter how strange it seems).
  4. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values? Who would want this new product or service, and why would they find it valuable? If you are trying to solve a specific problem, how can it help address that particular challenge? After you’ve considered the concept “as is” (without that essential component), try replacing the function with something from the Closed World (but not with the original component). You can replace the component with either an internal or external component. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values of the revised concept?
  5. If you decide that this 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 more viable?

Learn how all five techniques can help you innovate – on demand.

Getting Schooled: 5 Ways to Tackle a Challenging Problem

Published date: August 18, 2014 в 3:00 am

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Success in life depends not only on what you accomplish, but also how you overcome everyday challenges. This includes the challenges many college students face during back to school season. Don’t call mom and dad yet: Here are five easy problem-solving tips you can apply to just about any challenge, big or small.
The Example Problem:
One of the scariest back to school challenges many students face each year is physically moving away to college for the first time. You might find that you’re moving somewhere without a lot of space or resources and you have too much stuff to take with you. Let’s tackle this problem in 5 steps. You’ll find that these steps can also help you in a variety of different challenges throughout your college life!

1. Chunk It: Break big problems into smaller, more solvable problems.

How do you swallow an elephant? One bite at a time. The same is true for solving problems. For our moving scenario: Look at the stuff you have to take to school and break it into smaller, more manageable groups (clothes, furniture, electronics, etc.). Then solve the problem for one group at a time. Perhaps ship some of the clothes, have a roommate take the computer, and so on.

2. Simplify It: Solve an easier version of the same problem to see how it works.

I call this activation – getting your mind on the right path to solve a problem before tackling it. Mentally imagine solving a similar, easier version to let your mind walk through the steps one at a time. This practice helps you see new solutions and resources you might have overlooked. Continuing with the back-to-school problem, imagine having to get your stuff to a next-door neighbor instead of a whole new city. Who might help, what would you take with you, and what tools would you use? Apply possible solutions you discover here to the bigger problem.

3. Draw It: Visualize the problem to see new ways to solve it.

Seeing a problem with all of its component parts helps you put the problem in a new perspective to open up possible solutions. Draw the problem on paper and show how the various parts are connected. How do they affect each other, and which parts are more challenging than others? Organizing your dorm room? Draw it.

4. Rearrange It: List the components of the problem and rearrange them to spark solutions.

We are so used to how familiar objects are structured that it prevents us from imaging other configurations. This tunnel vision blocks our creative problem-solving. To overcome it, mentally break objects into smaller parts and randomly put them in different places. Look for an unexpected benefit. For example, what if you packed some of your school clothes outside of the suitcase — perhaps with other objects, like fragile dishes or glassware? What if you rearranged items in the car in a different way? Move every component of the problem into a new place and see what happens.

5. Challenge It: What if your assumptions about the problem are wrong?

Things change, and what you once thought was true might not be. List the assumptions you are making about the problem and imagine, one by one, what would happen if an assumption were not true. For example, what if the date you need to start school is different than what you had thought? Have you checked your class schedule? Do you need to take all the items back to school right now? What if that’s not true? Challenging, and sometimes reversing, some of your assumptions can give you just the breakthrough you need.
 
 
 
Copyright 2014 Drew Boyd (This post first appeard in Coke Journey on August 11, 2014)

Decluttering Innovation

Published date: August 11, 2014 в 1:28 pm

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People need time to innovate, but corporations tend to “tax” employees with time-wasting bureaucracy. As reported in The Economist, clutter is taking a toll on both morale and productivity.

“Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School studied the daily routines of more than 230 people who work on projects that require creativity. As might have been expected, she found that their ability to think creatively fell markedly if their working days were punctuated with meetings. They did far better if left to focus on their projects without interruption for a large chunk of the day, and had to collaborate with no more than one colleague.”

Endless meetings aren’t the only forms of corporate clutter. Complex organizational design forces people to waste valuable time and energy figuring out how to get things done. Emails overload, especially when employees don’t know how to use filtering techniques. Status reports dull the mind and waste energy by forcing employees to regurgitate old news

To fight through the clutter, I recommend the following:

1. Develop an Innovation Competency: Innovation is a skill, not a gift.  It can be learned by anyone and applied systematic. Innovative companies treat it as just another core skill by creating a well-defined set of innovation competencies and embedding them into employee’s competency model along with other required behaviors such as ethics and leadership.  A innovation method such as SIT, for example, gives an employee the ability to “innovate on demand.”

2. Drive Innovation as a Process: Defining innovation as just the NPD process is too limiting. Leaders need to sponsor cross-functional teams using systematic innovation tools that feed concepts into the NPD process.  This will eliminate the “fuzzy” in the front end to create sustainable process of generating new opportunities.

3. Innovate Under the Radar: In the Harvard Business Review, Paddy Miller and Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg make a great point in their article, “The Case for Stealth Innovation.”  Savvy innovators know how to operate under the radar and nurture innovation programs through complex bureaucracy.  Thomas Bonoma’s classic HBR article from 1986, “Marketing Subversives,”said something similar:

“I found that under conditions of marketplace change, success depended heavily on the presence of marketing subversives in a company.  Subversive marketers undermined their organizations’ structures to implement new marketing practices….And no matter what higher management had decided to allocate to various marketing projects, the subversives found ways to work around the official budget.  They bootlegged the resources they needed to implement new, more appropriate marketing practices.”

The same can be said about innovation.

Copyright 2014 Drew Boyd

How to Involve Customers in the SIT Innovation Process

Published date: August 4, 2014 в 3:00 am

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When describing the SIT method, I sometimes say it’s like using the voice of the product. That’s because SIT is based on patterns that are embedded into the products and services you see around you. If products could talk to you, they would describe the five patterns of SIT.

But there’s another important voice in business innovation: the voice of the customer. After all, that’s why you do innovation – to create new value, directly or indirectly, for your customers. A good innovator understands their needs and wants. Here are four ways to gain new insights from your customers.
One of the first things you should do is listen to what customers are saying about a particular product or brand. It’s especially important to hear what customers say to other customers. That’s when they’re the most truthful and objective, even when talking to complete strangers. If you had a way to eavesdrop on a conversation between two customers, you’ll get new insights about their attitudes.
A great way to do that is to use social media. Applications like Twitter and Facebook let you hear what’s being discussed, almost as if you were standing right there with them. It’s inexpensive and it’s easy. When you listen to customers on social media, pay close attention to the specific words or phrases they use. What emotions do they express? What beliefs do they have about a product and how it works? Whether those beliefs are true or untrue, you need to know what they’re thinking so you can design your products accordingly.
Another way to learn about your customers is to watch them. Using field research, you go into the customer’s natural setting where they use the product or service. You observe their behaviors as they do routine, ordinary activities. If you watch carefully, you’ll see things they could never have described for you in words. They’re not even aware they are doing them.
By watching them, you might learn about a new step in how they use the product. That could affect how you use the Division Technique. Or, you might become aware of a new component in their Closed World, and that might affect how you apply the Task Unification technique. Pay close attention to who else is involved, what information are they using or not using, how they prepare the product for use, and perhaps how they store it or maintain it.
A third way to get customer insights is to ask them. You’re probably familiar with marketing research tools like surveys and focus groups as a way to collect voice of the customer data. But there are two simple techniques you always want to be able to use at a moment’s notice in case you engage a customer.

The first is to use open-ended questions. An example of an open-ended question is: “What’s most important to you when using this feature of our product.”  A closed-ended question would be: “Do you like this feature of our product?” The open-ended question encourages a full, meaningful response as opposed to a closed-ended question, which encourages a short or single-word answer. You’ll get deeper insights with open-ended questions.

The second technique when talking to customers is to use laddering. Laddering means asking a series of questions, one after another, but you base the next question on the answer you received from the last one. Like climbing the rungs of a ladder, you first ask about the functional aspects of your product, then ladder up to the values the customers sees in those features.
Finally, a great way to learn about your customer’s needs is to involve them in the innovation process. Use the Function Follows Form process. Once you’ve created the virtual product using one of the five SIT techniques, you ask two specific questions. The first is should we do it? Does the new configuration deliver some new benefit? Who would want this? I can’t think of anyone better to help you answer these than your customers. After all, they stand the most to gain by a new innovation. When they see something they like, they’ll tell you or they’ll tell you how to modify the concept to make it even better.
Customers might also have new insights about the second question: Can we do it? Do we have the know how or the right material or the right processes to make this? Are there barriers that might prevent us from making this? Your customers might have some critical insight or skills about how to remove barriers or make the concept more feasible.
Listen, watch, ask, and involve. The Voice of the Customer, used along with the SIT Method, will help you become a more effective innovator.

Philips study reveals that most North Americans think they are sitting on the “next big thing”

Published date: July 28, 2014 в 3:00 am

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Philips North America announced the launch of the second annual Philips Innovation Fellows competition, in conjunction with the release of its 2014 North America Innovation Report. According to the report, nearly two-thirds of North Americans consider themselves innovators, of which a majority (72 percent) believe they are sitting on an idea for “the next big thing,”  and just need money and ‘know how’ to develop it. The Philips Innovation Fellows Competition awards mentoring and $100,000 in cash prizes to inspire would-be entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to life by entering the competition.
“Philips is committed to meaningful innovation, and we strive to develop technology that makes a real difference in helping people lead healthy and fulfilling lives,” said Brent Shafer, CEO of Philips North America. “We believe impactful innovation can come from anyone, and we want to celebrate the great ideas that have the potential to revolutionize the way we live, work and play. That’s why we’re encouraging all innovators out there to submit their big idea for the next innovation.”

Philips practices what it preaches. The company is featured in Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results for its use of the Subtraction Technique to create the Slimline DVD player.
Survey Findings
Almost half of respondents feel the best innovations come from individual inventors (47 percent) and startups (24 percent), followed by academics (13 percent) and corporations (11 percent). However, one in two people said financial support from big companies is the key to achieving successful innovation, followed by mentor relationships (47 percent) and government incentives (44 percent).
Top Barriers
Many respondents feel that lack of money and a narrow mindset are the top barriers to preventing people from innovating, indicating the need for collaboration with and support from big companies:
•             Lack of money (70 percent)
•             Narrow/stifled mindset (41 percent)
•             Unsupportive corporate culture (40 percent)
•             Government regulations (37 percent)
Areas for Improvement
North Americans feel that successful innovation has a purpose beyond creating technology for technology’s sake. Sixty-two percent of respondents said successful innovation improves lives, makes daily life easier (57 percent) and meets an unmet societal need (33 percent).
Healthcare (57 percent) was cited as the top area where innovation can improve lives, followed by work/life balance (38 percent), education methods (33 percent), technological solutions for the home (30 percent) and public transportation and infrastructure (30 percent).
Philips Innovation Fellows Competition
Philips is encouraging people nationwide to submit their big ideas for the next meaningful innovation that will help people live healthier, more sustainable lives. Entrants will have the chance to tap into $100,000 in prize money from Philips to help make their innovations a reality. To further promote open innovation, entrants can gain financial support for their idea on Indiegogo.com, a global web-based crowd funding site.
“Indiegogo is dedicated to helping innovators make their ideas a reality by connecting them to individuals from around the world, who can endorse their innovations through financial support,” said Slava Rubin, CEO and co-founder of Indiegogo. “Corporations need to be more involved in helping everyday innovators succeed and we’re thrilled to partner with Philips on this competition to bring new ideas to fruition.”
The grand-prize winner will be announced this fall and will receive a $60,000 cash prize from Philips, in addition to the funding raised through Indiegogo, to help make their innovation a reality. Along with the monetary prize, the winner will receive mentoring from Philips executives around their “next big thing” idea. Each of the remaining four finalists will receive a $10,000 cash prize.
Last year, Philips named Fosmo Med the grand prize winner of the first Philips Innovation Fellows competition. Philips employees selected Fosmo Med’s Maji Intravenous (IV) saline bag, which creates a sterile solution in the field for patients in developing countries from any water, clean or dirty, as the next big, meaningful innovation in health and well-being.
“We were honored to win the Philips Innovation Fellows competition,” said Ben Park, CEO and founder of Fosmo Med. “Winning has not only helped fund the research and development completion for Maji, but more importantly, validated the idea of our product. Philips helped give us the resources and credibility we need to save lives on a global level.”

Fusion: Linking Your Product to the Message to Create Great Packaging

Published date: July 21, 2014 в 3:00 am

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Creative marketers use a clever little tool called fusion. Fusion links a product to a message in a creative way that communicates the value inherent in the product. Fusion creates a visual connection between the product and a symbol representing the value. When a customer sees that connection, they instantly understand the message and appreciate the value delivered by the product in a more powerful and subtle way.

The packaging of the product is a great, but often overlooked way to do this. Here are examples from a website called Pulpplastic.com. The one above is for a cereal called Beehive Honey Squares. The see through window of the cereal box nicely demonstrates what the product looks like. But the added touch of having the product inside the mouth of a bear is an excellent fusion to the brand message – our cereal has honey so good even bears love it.

Creative-packaging-62 Here’s another great packaging example for NYC Spaghetti. What symbol represents the city better than any? The Empire State Building, of course. By fusing the product to this symbol, the visual connection is complete and clever.

Creative-packaging-4-16-2Packaging isn’t the only way to use fusion. Any element within the retail shopping experience can be candidate for fusion. The trick is to select an element and force it to take on some attributes of the symbol that represents your brand value. Here is an example from a grocery store called City Harvest. They used shopping bags to convey the value of nutritious food they provide by simply cutting out a viewing window in the shape of your stomach. Clear and compelling!

Check out all the examples of fusion and see if you can see the visual link between the product, packaging, or other elements to the brand message.

For an amazing example of fusion to the brand message using just about every element of packaging possible, check out this Coca Cola ad:

To learn more about fusion and other creativity tools used in advertising and marketing, read “Cracking the Ad Code” by Dr. Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues.

Be Fruitful and Multiply: The Multiplication Technique

Published date: July 14, 2014 в 9:34 am

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A common problem in photography is the occurrence of red-eye, like you see here. Redeye happens when the flash of a camera goes into the eyeball. It hits the back of your eye which has a lot of tiny blood vessels. The light picks up the red color from the blood in these vessels, and then it bounces straight back into your camera lens. Your friends get that eerie, red-eye look.

But today’s cameras have a clever and simple way to defeat redeye. They have a dual flash. The first flash causes the person’s pupil to constrict enough so that very little light will get in. At that exact moment, the second flash goes off and lights up the subject matter. Voila! No redeye.
This innovation is a classic example of the multiplication technique. The Multiplication Technique is defined as copying an element already existing in the product or service but changing it in some counterintuitive way.
To use the technique, begin by listing the components of the product, process, or service. You pick one of those components, make a copy of it. You keep the original component as is, but the copied component is changed. That creates the virtual product. Using Function Follows Form, you look for potential benefits, and you modify or adapt the concept to improve it to yield an innovative idea.
NoticeableHere are some examples of multiplication. The consumer products company, Procter & Gamble, used the Multiplication Technique to create the Febreze Noticeable Air Freshener. It’s called Noticeable because it has a clever way to keep you smelling the scent. After a period of time, your nose becomes too accustomed to a smell, and the brain shuts it out. But this product gets around that. It has not one, but two different scents. The first scent pulses out into the room, but then stops right about the time your nose stops recognizing it. Just then, the second scent starts pulsing out into the room. Your nose picks up where the other one left off. Pretty clever.
Trac2Here’s another example. Gillette multiplied the razor blade of a straight edge razor to create the TRAC II Twin Blade Shaving System. The first blade gently lifts the whisker so that the second blade can cut off the whisker for a closer shave. The copied component is different in its location and function. By the way, you may have noticed Gillette and other companies have added even more blades to their razors. They have as many as five blades, but they don’t really do anything differently than the first one. I don’t consider that a creative idea, but rather just a way to improve performance.
Measuring cupLook at this measuring cup. It has two sets of measurements along the side. It has its original measurements, and a second set of measurements at an odd angle around the perimeter of the cup. Why would that be valuable? As you tilt the cup to pour liquid, the second set of measurements allows you to continue measuring the amount of liquid. That’s very convenient.
Multiplication accounts for many new products and services, and it’s straightforward to use. You want to make this powerful technique part of your innovation arsenal.

How to Organize an S.I.T. Innovation Workshop

Published date: July 7, 2014 в 3:00 am

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You can use an innovation method like S.I.T. on your own. But there are times when you want to use it in a group with your colleagues. After all, innovation is a team sport. Innovating in groups lets you harness the brainpower of others. Here are some tips and techniques to get the most out of your S.I.T. ideation session.

Perhaps the most important step is to select the right participants. The ideal number of participants is between 12 and 16. These people should be from diverse, cross functional areas of the company. About one third of the participants should be marketers from different parts of the marketing organization – market research, brand management, and so on. About one third of the participants should be technical – mechanical engineering, software engineering, operations, and so on depending on the project. And finally, about one third of your participants should be customer oriented. These are people that advocate for the customer. They include your salespeople, packaging, and customer service.
It’s also important to have gender diversity. An equal number of men and women is the ideal. Be sure participants are fully committed to participation in the workshop. Avoid letting people drop in and out as it suits their schedule. Otherwise, it interrupts the flow of the workshop.
When you begin your workshop, start by identifying the constraints around the exercise. Without constraints, the ideation will lack focus. You’re likely to generate ideas that are too wild to be considered viable.
Next, make sure you and the participants define the closed world around the problem. The closed world principle states there is an inverse relationship between distance from the problem and the creativeness of the idea. The farther away the solution, the less creative it will be. Where you define this imaginary space around the problem will have a big impact on how you apply each technique.
Once you select the techniques, create a list of the components and attributes by writing them down on a whiteboard, a flip chart, or a pad of paper. With Division, it’s a good idea to put these on sticky notes. Make sure you number the list. That helps keep the workshop more organized as you work through the lists.
When you apply a technique, be sure to work in smaller teams of two or three people, not as one large group. Working this way has many advantages. Pairs give each other their undivided attention. Working in pairs is also more efficient. As you apply a technique, assign each pair a different component from the list. That forces them to really focus, and it increases their chance of coming up with a creative idea. Be sure to set a specific time limit, say 3 minutes. This further constrains their brain to think inside the box.
When ideas are generated, try not to identify ideas with a specific person. Otherwise, people may bias the idea depending on who generated it. A simple way to do this is to have people write down their ideas. When giving credit for the source of an idea, make sure it’s from the pair of colleagues, not just one person. You have to find ways to strip ideas of their identity. This will make sure ideas don’t get thrown out prematurely.
A typical workshop can be anywhere from an hour in length to several days. Innovating is hard work, so be sure to manage the group’s energy level. Take a lot of breaks during the workshop, and mix up the activities to keep people engaged.
The S.I.T. method works because it channels people’s ideation and it regulates their thinking. You and your colleagues will generate many great ideas, so be sure the team has a process in place how you will capture and collect those ideas throughout the workshop.

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Innovation Through Task Unification

Published date: June 30, 2014 в 3:00 am

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The famous inventor, Thomas Edison, lived in a beautiful home. But something was unusual about the gate that led into his house. His visitors had to push the gate very hard to open it, and then again very hard to close it. It seemed odd that such a successful inventor like Thomas Edison wouldn’t fix his gate. Rumor has it that Thomas had attached a pump to his gate so that every time someone opened or closed it, they were pumping fresh water into the plumbing system of the house.

This is a great example of the innovation technique called Task Unification. Task Unification is defined as the assignment of additional tasks to an existing resource. That resource can be a component of a product or service. Or it can be something in the immediate vicinity of the product or service.

Think back to the story of Thomas’s gate. The gate has its primary job of letting visitors through, but it also has the additional job of pumping water. That’s not all to the story. The guests coming to visit Thomas are also a resource. They have their primary job of being friends of Thomas. But now they have the additional job of activating the gate to open and close it.

To use Task Unification, begin by listing the product’s internal components as well as the external components, the things right around where the product is being used. You select a component and assign it an additional task. That creates the virtual product. Using Function Follows Form, you look for potential benefits, and you modify or adapt the concept to improve it.

There are three ways to apply Task Unification:

One way is to have an internal component take a job of another internal component. Think of it as that component is stealing the function of the other component. Here is an example.

  • CmWhat you see here looks like an ordinary coffee maker. In fact, this product has a clever little innovation inside. The coffee maker’s filter has the additional job of measuring just the right amount of coffee to use given how much water was put in. It gives you the perfect brew every time.

You could also have an internal component take the job of an external component.

  • EasyfillNissan, the Japanese auto maker, has a nifty idea to make it easier to fill your tires with air. The car’s horn will beep to let you know when you’ve reached the right tire pressure. It’s called the Easy Fill Tire Alert. In this example, the car horn steals the job of the tire pressure gauge.

You could also have an external component steal the job of an internal component.

  • SubwayHere’s an example from a grocery store in Korea. They placed billboards in train and subway stations that show their products on the shelves just the way you would see it in a store. Commuters use their smartphones to scan the products they need. That shopping list is sent to the grocery store so the commuter can stop by on the way home to pick up the groceries. In this example, they assigned the subway billboards the additional task of becoming the point-of-sale. Very convenient and it saves times.

PlaypumpHere’s another example of an external component being assigned the additional job of an internal component. It’s a concept called Play Pump. It’s a child’s merry-go-round, the kind you would see on a playground. They don’t know it, but as they play on it, they’re also turning a pump to pump fresh water out of a well and into a holding tank. It’s used in small villages in sub Sahara Africa where finding and pumping water is difficult. The kids of the village have the additional job of providing water to the community.

That almost sounds a lot like Thomas Edison and his water pumping gate! And that’s why Task Unification can lead you to some pretty clever ideas.

LEARN the entire S.I.T. Method at Lynda.com…

How to Adjust Your Creativity Lens

Published date: June 23, 2014 в 3:00 am

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One of the most important principles in the SIT Method is the Closed World principle. It states that there is an inverse relationship between the distance from the problem and the creativity of the solution. The farther away you have to go to find a solution, the less creative it will be. So it’s important where you set the boundaries of the Closed World as you apply the SIT Method.

Think of the closed world as an imaginary space and time around your problem. It’s like drawing a circle around where the product or service is being used. The circle forms a boundary. Anything that is outside the circle, you don’t have access to. If you wanted something from outside the circle, you’d have to figure out a way to import back in. But everything inside the circle is a resource that you can recruit into how your product or service is used.

Therefore, every time you change the size of that boundary, larger or smaller, you change a lot about the resources you have access to. That also changes how the SIT Method will work. It’s a process I call zooming in and zooming out.

Think of it like the lens on a camera. The photographer sees a completely different view of the subject when the lens is changed by zooming closer in or by zooming far away. With each new position of the lens, the photographer sees a different set of components in the picture. Changing the view triggers new insights on how best to take that shot. You can do the exact same thing when trying to generate new ideas for your problem.

Here’s an example. Imagine you are trying to come up with ideas on how to improve a refrigerator. You would start the ideation process by making a list of the major components like the shelves, ice maker, light bulb, door and so on. You would also include components that are not attached to the refrigerator but are in the immediate vicinity such as food items, and family members who use the refrigerator. In this case, our closed world is a fairly tight circle right around the refrigerator,

But now you want to zoom in. Do this by focusing on just one component such as the door. To use the SIT Method in this case, you make a new list of just those components of the door – the handle, the edges, the rubber seal and so on. By zooming in and making the closed world even tighter, you will see the problem very differently. Using the SIT techniques here will produce entirely different types of ideas than in the previous example.

But you can also zoom out and give yourself a completely new closed world definition. You do this by imagining the refrigerator as just one component of a larger system, which in this case is the kitchen. Your new component list starts with the refrigerator. Then you add in all the other components around it like the oven, the pantry, the kitchen floor, family members, and so on. Just as before, each SIT technique used in this closed world definition will yield a whole new class of ideas.

So which closed world do you start with? A good rule of thumb is to start with the main product and its immediate vicinity. Use the SIT techniques at this level until you start to run out of ideas. Then try zooming in on a component, especially a component that is most important to the product. Finally, I like to try zooming out when I want to explore how the product interacts with its environment.

Zooming in and out helps you discover a breakthrough idea to a new problem you didn’t know you even had.

(This post first appeared on PsychologyToday.com on April 30, 2014)

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