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How and Why You Want to Strip Great Ideas of Their Identity

Published date: April 7, 2016 в 1:53 pm

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You’ve heard that old adage. Don’t judge a book by its cover. The same holds true in creativity. You want to resist the temptation of judging ideas depending on who it came from. Yet, its very difficult for us to do this. Here’s why. If we like the person who generated it, we tend to like their idea. And if we don’t like that person, well, let’s just say we might see a few more flaws than we might have otherwise.
Now you and your colleagues might not even be aware that you’re doing this. And what this means for you in practice is that you have to find a way to strip ideas of their identity.
You can boost the creative out put of your team just by making sure these ideas don’t get thrown out prematurely. Here’s how you do it. When you’re facilitating a session to generate ideas, announce to the group that there’s a new ground rule and the ground rule is simply this, people cannot put a name to any idea. That means that people are, are going to have to stop saying things like, hey that was my idea or hey, let’s go back to that great idea that Michael had earlier.
People will find this hard to do. So, you’re going to have to be firm about the rule. Another good technique is to tell people that whenever they have an idea, they have to write it down on a piece of paper, again, without putting anybody’s name to it. Every so often go around and collect those pieces of paper, and then pass them out randomly to people in the group, and have people take an idea and read it aloud to the rest of the group. That keeps the ideas anonymous.
And finally, another good technique is to have people work in pairs or groups of three. And whenever they share their idea, they do it as coming form the entire group, not just from one team member. And what this does is it makes it more difficult for other people in the group to figure out where that idea came from. It helps them eliminate that natural tendency to have a bias to that idea. Now these techniques might take a little bit more time and may feel a bit awkward, but trust me it’s well worth it.
You’ll boost you’re creative output at work by making sure good ideas don’t get thrown out too quickly.

Innovation Sighting: Task Unification and the Oombrella

Published date: March 21, 2016 в 1:23 pm

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I love umbrellas and the many versions that demonstrate the five patterns of Systematic Inventive Thinking. Here’s a new one that demonstrates the Task Unification pattern. 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.
Oombrella is a beautiful smart connected umbrella that alerts you before it rains and sends you a notification if you leave it behind. From their website:

What makes oombrella unique is its notification services that alert you before it rains and if you leave your umbrella behind. ombrella’s hyper-local weather data and tracking keep you informed and notified. Yet oombrella is an umbrella. It means that it protects you against the rain, and its ribs make it really wind-resistant.
As an umbrella, it can be adapted to you. This means you can pick the color, go for the Shiny edition, a very elegant White Edition or choose the revisited yet classic Black edition. In terms of size, you can choose too! Go for a classic size or one that fits in your bag.
The good part of oombrella is that you can also track all your activity and see the weather you experienced during your trip. How? Thanks to the sensors that are integrated into the handle: temperature, pressure, humidity and light. We use all this data to create the notifications “Take me with you. It will rain in 15 minutes”


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?

Innovation Sighting: Putting Space Aliens to Work

Published date: March 14, 2016 в 1:30 pm

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The Task Unification Technique is one of five in the SIT methodology, and it produces remarkable clever ideas – the ones that make you slap your forehead and say, “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”
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 of how to find aliens by using a rather resource – the aliens themselves. As reported in the Christian Science Monitor:

A new study suggests that perhaps we should be looking for aliens who are looking for us in the hope of finding each other and communicating.
The idea is to flip our current approach around. NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered more than 1,000 exoplanets by watching for the light of a star to dim as an orbiting planet passes by. Scientists now suggest that we target worlds that could use that same method to spot us in a new paper to be published in the journal Astrobiology.
Here’s how it would work: Earth can be detected using the same methods from only a small strip of space. The dimming of our Sun as our planet passes by could only be spotted from what’s called Earth’s “transit zone.” And that region boasts some 100,000 potential alien habitats.
So if they’re there and they’re looking for us, perhaps they’ve broadcast a signal in an attempt to get in touch with us. And if we listen, we may discover each other.
“The key point of this strategy is that it confines the search area to a very small part of the sky. As a consequence, it might take us less than a human life span to find out whether or not there are extraterrestrial astronomers who have found the Earth. They may have detected Earth’s biogenic atmosphere and started to contact whoever is home,” Dr. Heller explained in another press release.

I love this idea because it is using the object of your efforts as the solution. In our book, Inside the Box, we describe a similar innovation on how to get rid of tsetse flies by using male flies that have been sterilized so they can’t reproduce. Eventually, the whole colony disappears.
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?
 

Marketing Innovation: Chicken and the Absurd Alternative Tool

Published date: March 7, 2016 в 3:00 am

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Jacob Goldenberg, in his book, “Cracking the Ad Code,” describes eight creative patterns that are embedded in most innovative, award- winning commercials. The tools are:

  1. Unification
  2. Activation
  3. Metaphor
  4. Subtraction
  5. Extreme Consequence
  6. Absurd Alternative
  7. Inversion
  8. Extreme Effort

One of my favorites is the Absurd Alternative Tool. It works by offering exaggerated alternatives to using the product or service to highlight the benefit. But the key is to make the alternative truly absurd. Otherwise viewers can get confused.
Here’s a great example fromTyson Chicken that is so simple and effective:

To use the Absurd Alternative Tool, first identify the key benefit you want to promote in the advertisement. If your product or brand is already well-understood in the marketplace, you should select a secondary benefit to emphasize instead to get more value for your advertising budget.
With the benefit in mind, think of an exaggerated or ridiculous way the customer could obtain the benefit instead of using your product. Then communicate the message by juxtaposing the two alternatives (yours and the absurd one) in the advertisement. Here’s an another example in a print ad:
Volvo

Innovation Clusters: Why companies are better together

Published date: February 29, 2016 в 4:16 pm

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  • Innovation clusters require six key ingredients: skills, accommodating policy framework, infrastructure, low cost structures (in early stages), a good lifestyle offering and serendipity.
  • Clusters are like the companies they host: they change over time, and their long term success depends on how well they adapt to the challenges of success, like congestion and increased rents
  • Clusters are strongly reliant on an open immigration policy at the national level – tightening borders reduces a cluster’s access to global talent

Innovation is often associated with triumphant lone inventors. The likes of Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur or Bill Gates are the central characters in this narrative. But all innovators spring out of a specific context. The environments that foster their individual and collective success are very often ‘innovation clusters’: ecosystems that stimulate and nurture the best ideas and attract the brightest talents.
Clusters emerge when a network of companies co­exists within a geographic location, allowing each of them to collaborate – and compete – in a way which delivers greater productivity gains than they would achieve in isolation. Silicon Valley is the most famous, but there are countless others across every continent.
Clusters attract innovative people. They network, leading to the cross­-pollination of ideas. Companies benefit from each other’s success: What one invents, rivals can access – think of a productivity­boosting tool like Dropbox. And what one firm invents, others can build on. Think of the ‘sharing economy’, led by trailblazers Uber and Airbnb, in turn giving rise to an army of start­ups taking the same idea to new applications. The sharing of knowledge, the spill­over effects of innovation and the networking that densely populated spaces enable are all key ingredients for start­up success.
Yet for all their benefits, innovation clusters are not straightforward to build – and many do not last, even with the ‘magic ingredients’ seemingly there. To prosper, clusters need six key success factors: skills and talent, accommodating policy frameworks, infrastructure, low costs (especially in the early stages), a good lifestyle offering to draw talent, and finally ­ good luck, whether geography (proximity to key markets), historical accidents or even good fortune.
The ‘big 6’ success factors
EUI-BriefingPaper-Dubai-v2-r2_graphic-1
These six factors are necessary conditions, although they are not always sufficient. Many places in the world lay claim to these six, but never give rise to a successful cluster. These factors are best seen as the necessary conditions for clusters, but not – on their own – the silver bullet. Cluster success depends both on individual factors, but also the interplay between them. Good universities are little use if there is no connectivity with industry. A high standard of living is not helpful if immigration policies prevent global talent from moving to the cluster.
There are clearly many that have done it well, are still doing it well, and some that have tried and struggled.
– See more at: http://destinationinnovation.economist.com/part-1/#sthash.iRIxQ9vD.dpuf
 
 
WRITTEN BY THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT (with permission)
 
 
 

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?
 
 

10 Valentine’s Day Surprises Created With S.I.T.

Published date: February 14, 2016 в 1:01 pm

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Today is Valentine’s Day, and to celebrate, here are ten creative ways to show how much you love your partner. I generated some of these for a TV interview yesterday on FOX19-WXIX morning news is Cincinnati. They wanted me to share how to use S.I.T. to be more creative on this special day. So here is my extended list:
1. Flowers are very common on Valentine’s Day, with the most common gift being a dozen long-stem red roses. So to be more creative, apply the Division Technique. Divide the 12 roses into single versions, each in their own vase. Place them throughout your home. That way, you get twelve little surprises instead of one big one.
2. Building on the first idea, place eleven of the roses throughout your home, but hide or hold on to the 12th rose (the Subtraction Technique). When your partner realizes there are only eleven, he or she will wonder where the 12th rose is. That’s the time to place it somewhere strategically (hint: pillow) or give it to your partner directly. Nice touch!
3. I love the Task Unification Technique for challenges like this. I like to pick a component in the home randomly and force it to take on an additional job. These ideas that leverage a resource in the immediate environment (Closed World) tend to create surprising, forehead-slapping ideas that make you utter, “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?” For example, take the garage door. Imagine taking your traditional Valentine’s Day card and taping it to the bottom of the garage door so that when she opens it, the card will dangle invitingly from the bottom. Clever!
4. Here’s another example of Task Unification. Take shaving cream and draw a big heart with the words, “I love you” somewhere fun like the inside of your shower (make sure it’s on the inside or you’ll be in big trouble.)
5. Food is another way to inspire love. Instead of making a plain old salad, try taking tomato and mozzarella cheese slices and make a heart shape on the plate. Easy, cheap, and one of those little touches your partner will appreciate.
6. I found this idea on the Internet, but I love it anyway because it demonstrates the Multiplication Technique so well. Take a bunch of different size envelopes or perhaps boxes and place them inside one another (like Russian nested figures). In the last one, place your favorite love poem. Maybe corny, but it works!
7. We have a computer in our kitchen, and I love to use the screensaver function to surprise my wife with fun and loving things (especially if I’m in trouble from something!!). Try this by placing a big heart shape on the screen, perhaps with an image of the two of you together (wedding photo?). It’s a winner every time.
8. Building on that idea, change her screensaver or background photo on her smartphone to show an old, nostalgic photo of the two of you. (Be sure you have a way to get her previous image on there, though, or you’ll have a problem).
9. Attribute Dependency is a great pattern seen in the majority of innovative products and services. As one thing changes, another thing changes. Here’s how to use it. Create a special smartphone playlist of all love songs. Put it in her library (when she’s not looking). Show it to her after she gets out of the shower where you placed the big shaving cream heart shape. Play it for her. You’re gonna have a good day!
10. Perhaps because I use dry erase markers so often in my work (teaching, speaking, facilitating), that I just love them. You can use them to write on lots of surfaces, and they can be erased just like on a white board. So take a (red) marker, and place loving messages all around the house on glass surfaces – bathroom mirrors, microwave winder, car window – you get the idea.
Have fun and enjoy the day!

Got a Great Idea? Don’t Take Credit For It

Published date: February 8, 2016 в 8:10 am

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You’ve heard that old adage – “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The same holds true in creativity. We want to resist the temptation of judging ideas depending on where it came from. Yet, its very difficult for us to do this. If we like the person, we tend to like their idea. And if we don’t like that person, well, let’s just say we might see a few more flaws than we might have otherwise.
Now you and your colleagues might not even be aware that you’re doing this. And what this means for you in practice is that you have to find a way to strip ideas of their identity.
You can boost the creative out put of your team just by making sure these ideas don’t get thrown out prematurely. Here’s how you do it. When you’re facilitating a session to generate ideas, announce to the group that there’s a new ground rule and the ground rule is simply this, people cannot put a name to any idea. That means that people are, are going to have to stop saying things like, “hey that was my idea,” or “hey, let’s go back to that great idea that Michael had earlier.”
People will find this hard to do. So, you’re going to have to be firm about the rule.
Another good technique is to tell people that whenever they have an idea, they have to write it down on a piece of paper, again, without putting anybody’s name to it. Every so often go around and collect those pieces of paper, and then pass them out randomly to people in the group, and have people take an idea and read it aloud to the rest of the group. That keeps the ideas anonymous.
And finally, another good technique is to have people work in pairs or groups of three. And whenever they share their idea, they do it as coming form the entire group, not just from one team member. And what this does is it makes it more difficult for other people in the group to figure out where that idea came from. It helps them eliminate that natural tendency to have a bias to that idea. Now these techniques might take a little bit more time and may feel a bit awkward, but trust me it’s well worth it.
You’ll boost you’re creative output at work by making sure good ideas don’t get thrown out too quickly.

Grow By Creating New Categories

Published date: February 1, 2016 в 10:59 am

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A clever way to find new growth is to change your market category or create a new one. When you create or change your category, you’re redefining the boundaries of your market space, and that opens your eyes to new targets of opportunity. Let’s look at how to do it.
One way to do this is by zooming up from your current category. That means you dial the category definition up a bit to create a bigger market space.
Here’s an example. Take the McIlhenny Company. It was founded in 1868 on Avery Island, Louisiana, and it makes one of my favorite products – Tabasco Sauce. Today, the company competes in its traditional category definition: hot sauce. But if it zoomed up that definition, it would imagine itself competing in the condiments category, putting it up against companies that make ketchup, mustard, and so on. That simple change in perspective might lead to new ways to communicate their brand or perhaps find new shelves to occupy at the grocery store.
But it doesn’t have to stop there. Let’s imagine the company zoomed up even more to a very broad level of food and beverages. Sound crazy? Well, not really. Viewed this way, the company might imagine creating new food items with its secret hot ingredients inside. Perhaps foods like pizza, or spicy tasting snacks. How about Tabasco chocolate bars. Imagine a new Tabasco carbonated beverage – cold, spicy, and very refreshing. The growth opportunities can seem endless when you zoom up.
Another way to redefine a category is to do just the opposite – zoom down. By doing this, you’re creating a subcategory that helps you focus your sales efforts more effectively to create growth. Let’s go back to our Tabasco example. To zoom down, you start with your current definition – hot sauce – then imagine dialing it down to a more precise definition. In this case, imagine a category called pepper sauce, or perhaps Louisiana pepper sauce. The trick here is to take a unique ingredient in Tabasco, like pepper, and create a new category definition with it. Be careful not to get so narrow that you limit sales. You have to promote this new category definition so consumers see it as a better choice over the hundreds of products out there.
A final way to find new categories is do what I call plotting the market. I sometimes need to see my market as a two dimensional space where I can plot my position versus my competition. This may help me see empty spaces that I can move into. Let’s do an example.
Imagine you compete in the personal computing market. First, I create a x-y plot where the x axis is the main, category benefit. In this case it would be computing power. On the y axis, I use another important benefit that consumers seek. Let’s use mobility.
In the lower right, you find desktop computers – powerful but not mobile. At the top left of the plot, you find smartphones – very mobile, but not so powerful. And in between, we plot laptops and tablets. Now notice the spaces in between these computing solutions. Today, we see companies trying to fill these voids with more powerful tablets, net books, and so on. All of these become potential new category definitions.
So take a look at your current products and services. Then, zoom up, zoom down, and plot your markets to find those new sales growth opportunities.

The Wheel: A Great Innovation?

Published date: January 25, 2016 в 3:00 am

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People who believe that the wheel is the greatest invention ever assume two things: That it was wholly new when it was invented, and that is was so wonderful that people adopted it immediately. Historically, neither is true.
What is true is that three different types of wheels evolved over time, but none of them were as great as sliced bread.
The concept of a wheel emerged a long time ago. Archaeologists uncovered evidence that Olmec children in southern Mexico played with toy dogs on wheels 3000 years ago. But their parents never transferred the wheel idea to carts or wagons. How could anyone who understood the concept of the wheel not have used it for transportation?
Here’s why. Ancient Mexicans lacked domestic animals to hitch to a wheeled vehicle. There was no advantage over human porters. A more important question: Was the wheel such a good idea that building a toy dog on wheels should inevitably have transformed a transportation system?
Evolutionary biologists tell us that modern humans have not improved their basic store of physical or intellectual capacities for 100,000 years. So when we migrated out of Africa to people the globe, we did it without the benefit of wheels. And we kept on walking and carrying the “stuff” that George Carlin would later poke fun at on our backs for the next 90,000+ years. We could divide up our stuff into manageable loads that were light and compact enough to carry. Finally, some 10,000 years later, we started loading some of our stuff onto the backs of animals.
This solution satisfied the transportation needs of most of the world down to the invention of the internal combustion engine, even though by that time some peoples had been using wheeled vehicles for over 5000 years. But carts and wagons weren’t all that common. So long as roads were seas of mud in rainy weather people thought twice about whether to entrust their stuff to a wheeled vehicle.
Wheeled transport is not an obviously good idea. People who insist that it was truly revolutionary ignore the fact that many societies that became aware of wheeled vehicles over the centuries chose not to use them. It took so many other innovations over a long period of time to make the wheel useful.
 
 
Richard W. Bulliet is professor of history emeritus at Columbia University and author of “The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions” (Columbia University Press, January 2016).

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