Publications by

liana

Liana Asuleen

Liana enjoys threading together the worlds of innovation, psychology, and public health. Having studied both psychology and public health, she enjoys discovering patterns that occur both individually and in society. She loves to travel, practice yoga, read, and write.

Innovative Ideas in Smart City Culture

Published on: July 10, 2018 в 2:38 pm

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Smart Cities on the Rise

The market for smart-city innovative ideas could be worth more than $1.5 trillion by 2020, according to a study by business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. With such huge growth potential, do you think your city has what it takes to be The World’s Smartest City?

Israel’s cultural center and 2014 World Smart City award winner, Tel Aviv, is making huge strides in Smart City tech and design. This coastal city is breaking ground by thinking inside the box and using Israeli culture to its advantage.

 

But how exactly did Tel Aviv acquire such a status?

As opposed to focusing solely on new technology, Tel Aviv uses its active and tight-knit community. The Tel Aviv municipality’s utilization of internal resources can be likened to SIT’s Closed World Principle—where the focus is not on resources that lay outside, such as new technology, but on the internal resources that can be utilized inside, such as its tight-knit culture.

In addition, with a high population of young people, Tel Avivians are both more open to trying new innovative ideas and incorporating them into their daily lives.  As Claus Tully from the German Institute puts it: “Young people take up modern technology and incorporate it into their everyday lives more rapidly and more unceremoniously than others.”

innovative ideas

Have you heard about SIT’s transformative work in municipalities?

Bat Yam Municipality

Together, SIT and Bat Yam launched The Center for Entrepreneurship in Education.  The center is made up of a community of 400+ entrepreneurs who meet socially and participate in both courses and one-on-one mentoring with SIT and center staff to help them realize their dreams. The Center recently launched an open innovation competition for new ventures, which received 300 entries. Through educational programs and activities for entrepreneurs, the Center seeks to make entrepreneurship a regular part of the daily educational experience.

SIT’s work with Municipalities in Colombia

SIT’s work with Colombia proved it is possible to change the interaction between local government and citizens without spending vast sums of money or engaging in extensive regulatory change. But how was this accomplished?

SIT trained 26 innovation coaches from various treasury positions who then ran 26 innovation projects in various departments. Initially, the focus was in the area of taxes. However, due to the project’s success and the substantial savings incurred, the participants have decided to extend the process to support other government departments in the future.

The Minneapolis Municipality

Before opening Target Field, The City of Minneapolis asked SIT to help find innovative solutions to traffic challenges the new ballpark would create. Specifically, SIT created an ideation project to address traffic, parking, and challenges to accessing events in the new ballpark. During the project, participants learned and applied SIT’s Task Unification thinking tool. They addressed physical elements (e.g. taxies, cars, traffic lights, skyways) alongside non-tangible elements (e.g. various types of data and information). The process generated several concrete ideas based on collecting, sharing, and communicating real-time information from multiple sources to streamline traffic, parking, public transportation, and pedestrian movement.

The question is: Does it take more than just innovative ideas and technology to create a smart city?

 

By examining Tel Aviv, it seems a smart city’s foundation is not only in new technological development but also in its culture. Similar to start-ups, where company founders refer to company culture as being the key to success, the Tel Aviv municipality also believes Israeli culture is key to their smart city success.

Tel Aviv, the 2014 World Smart Cities Award winner, employed the necessary technology, which took time, participation, and a strong culture. Some of the crucial elements of Tel Aviv’s appointment was the cohesiveness of the people, their curiosity, confidence, and their involvement with their communities. To harness this cohesiveness, Tel Aviv made sure to connect people to news, traffic, and other information, but in a way more personalized than radio or television.

     

Tel Aviv Smart City Pillars  

  • Eco: Including composting programs, community gardens, and water conservation methods.
  • Community and entrepreneurship: Tel Aviv created centers for entrepreneurship, youth centers, and affordable municipal housing, etc.
  • Traffic and parking: Bike paths (however, this still needs some work), paying for parking with one’s smartphone.
  • Smart Food Policies: Policies to increase production and sustainable food consumption.
  • Education: Emphasizing practical education, student initiatives are supported if they provide value. 

Revolutionizing Municipal Technology

 

To put itself in front of the pack, the Tel Aviv municipality installed free public WiFi in almost all public areas, including the beach, while simultaneously leading a digital revolution for municipal services and information dispersal. Implementing a digitalized revolution called DigiTel, they gave each resident the ability to register at a checkpoint and create a personalized digital profile. This innovative idea worked wonders by providing Tel Avivians with “customized information and remote city services,” such as city events, information about roadblocks, or recommendations and discounts for restaurants. With this digital database, the municipality is now better able to facilitate communication between residents and leaders.

The Tel Aviv municipality claims that …

“City-making makes the difference between a space and a place – a space is a physical demarcation, while a real place draws people, tells a story, reflects a community’s values, and is embedded with meaning. A smart city strategy which uses technology in the service of people – is, in short, smart city-making.”

Tech developments and the cohesive Israeli start-up culture helped transform Tel Aviv into the smart city hub that it is today. Equipped with this information – what do you think your city can do to get ‘smarter’?

Share your innovative ideas with us in the comments below!

Innovative Learning: 3 Lessons from SIT’s Online Academy

Published on: June 20, 2018 в 12:58 pm

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How can you take all the knowledge of a company with over 20 years of experience and translate it into powerful, engaging online content that aids the learning process? While no easy feat, SIT was up for the challenge and consequently created its online eLearning venture, The Online Academy.

Prior to its creation, SIT taught its methodology mainly through face-to-face facilitation, but the learning landscape is changing. And the use of eLearning platforms is skyrocketing—in 2017 alone, the corporate eLearning market worth was valued at $12.85B! -The “eLearning Market – Global Outlook and Forecast 2018-2023” by ResearchAndMarkets.com.

eLearning is Hot!

eLearning is receiving more recognition, as our society’s dependence on the Internet grows. The preference for continuous learning and using technology to access content from anywhere are driving this segment’s growth—2017 revenue for the corporate eLearning sector reached almost $13B! According to the eLearning market report, the growing demand for self-paced learning modules from the corporate sector is expected to create new opportunities for vendors in this market during the forecast period and will grow at a rate of 9.76% during the period of 2018-2023 (eLearning Market – Global Outlook and Forecast 2018-2023).

 

Interviewing Nurit Shmilovitz Vardi, Head of the SIT Online Academy, I learned how the team overcame the hardships of adapting SIT’s material into an online format. By identifying three unique challenges, the Online Academy effectively tackled each one and emerged with three unique innovative learning course offerings.

 

1. Translating Engagement into an Online Format

So how can you translate engagement into an online format? Why not use funny videos? By using humor, the Online Academy used a research-backed method. Humor is not only critical in thought, it actually activates the brain’s dopamine reward system, which means, when used correctly, it boosts information retention (The Functional Anatomy of Humor- https://www.nature.com/articles/nn0301_237).

 

The Interactivity of the Exercises

The courses also offer interactive exercises catering to multiple learning styles. And by using a live presenter, artsy animations, and story-telling, users can internalize their learnings.

innovative learning

Animations such as presenting the soapbox dilemma in a Japanese soap factory help to easily demonstrate concepts like the closed-world principle.

Liz Bark, the Creative Director of Optimised Learning, Ltd., explains that animations can be “fun and quirky” and “when designed specifically with content in mind, it enhances the learning experience” (https://www.mindflash.com/blog/how-animation-is-effective-in-elearning).

Innovative Learning On-the-Go

One hallmark of online learning today is the ability to learn from anywhere—whether on the way to work or leisurely lying at the beach, one can learn ‘on the go’. And the micro-learning style the Online Academy applied, which uses bite-sized videos, assignments, and quizzes, ensures one stays focused. This means users can easily process the short information chunks and fit complete videos or learnings into busy life schedules.

 

2. Addressing Learner Diversity

 

Since SIT philosophy is based on the idea that everyone can benefit from adopting an innovative and creative mindset, it is crucial to address learner diversity!

innovative learning

Working in different companies varying in size, industry, and culture, multiple languages,  having different interests, focuses, and learning styles all require variations. With this in mind, the videos and exercises were developed using an adaptable format (including additional multi industry-specific case studies from SIT’s knowledge library if needed), a rich yet simple language, and generic examples that apply to all learners. From individuals to those in large companies, from India to Latin America to the United States, users can easily comprehend and relate to the information regardless of their industry or cultural background.

 

 

The online medium enables the Online Academy to leverage user diversity, i.e. people from various geographies are invited to interact and share their varying perspectives through the discussion forum as well as participate in live webinars.

 

 

3. The Lack of a Live Facilitator

In its over 20 years of business, SIT has developed exceptional facilitation expertise, ensuring workshop participants successfully internalize and relate to the material. It is apparent in SIT sessions that facilitators must help participants break their mental fixedness, and this is where facilitation is especially beneficial.

But how can this be achieved online? Uncoincidentally, to conquer this issue, the Online Academy team had to break their own mental fixedness of what it means to facilitate; facilitation can be presented in formats other than face-to-face and webinar experiences.

innovative learning

Breaking Our Own Fixedness

Providing automatic feedback when possible, through quizzes and exercises, or using peer-to-peer and instructor-led feedback mechanisms for open-ended questions all help support the learning journey.

Additionally, the team realizes expectations must be managed. Innovative learning means learners must understand that since the methodology and topic revolves around innovation and ideation, there are no right or wrong answers! As long as they follow the methodology, work systematically (which is the best way to overcome one’s fixedness), and are happy with their resulted ideas, they score 100%.

 

Blended Learning

Despite the many advantages of learning online, on-site learning should always be considered and used when possible. The “blended learning” format opens up the possibility to enjoy both worlds.

Melissa Saw, Associate Director – Digital Excellence Bayer U.S, says: “I think this could be the first step to any face-to-face interaction/workshop. It was a great, qualitative foundational training, and gave the participants a basic, yet towered overview of the terminology, which was very valuable during the face to face workshop.”

 

The Future of the Online Academy

 

Hardships aside, Nurit explains that “the product has a lot of synergy with everything else that SIT is doing.” By understanding how to properly engage with learners and overcome the limitations of an online learning environment, the doors of possibility are open. Due to the dynamic and versatile format, the material is always being revised as new feedback and interesting additions arise.

The goal is for the online community to grow and to provide more of SIT’s content—beyond just ideation and the SIT tools, but to build on SIT’s experience in innovation management and other innovation methodologies.

 So far, the feedback has been enthusiastic and supportive. The truth is there is nothing more innovative than converting a very focused medium into a completely different format. Stay tuned for future developments!

 

SIT Pick: Top 10 Innovation Bloggers

Published on: May 3, 2018 в 11:12 am

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innovation bloggers cell

The world of blogging is exploding. And innovation bloggers, indeed, have also jumped on the bandwagon. From social media to Wikipedia to ad campaigns, these innovation bloggers are utilizing the information highway to their advantage, positioning themselves as information givers, eager to tell their story, and relentless in their pursuit of knowledge distribution.

We decided to take a personal journey with 10 innovation bloggers to gain a deeper understanding of their vision. After contacting them via social media, it indeed was easy to see how they acquired their “influencer status”.

We did this by posing two broad questions to get a sense of where they see themselves and what their goal is in writing their blog. Their responses gave an enchanting glimpse into their goals and aspirations, how they define “success”, and why it is so important for them to upload their knowledge base to the world wide web.

SIT has a special vantage point in the innovation industry with 22 years of industry knowledge, leading, directing, and helping innovation leaders and managers to help innovate from within, and with our own unique methodology for going about it. This expertise gives us the ability to judge some of the most well-known and highly ranked blogs in our industry. To determine the top 10 innovation bloggers, we considered the quality of content, popularity/reader engagement, and expert authority of the author.

I am pleased to introduce you to SIT’s list of the 10 best innovation bloggers:

 

Top 10 Innovation Bloggers

1. Innovation Blogger: Cris Beswick

Cris Beswick Blog

“My belief is that every organisation has the potential to become truly exceptional if it places innovation at the heart of what it does.”

About Cris:

Cris Beswick, originally trained as a product & industrial designer, is now a successful thought leader in the field of innovation strategy and culture.

innovation bloggers

He believes that “helping ambitious and visionary leaders tackle innovation both as a capability and as a core component of organisational culture is how we’ll all contribute to shaping the future”.  He states “we have systemic challenges that we need to tackle economically, environmentally and societally, and innovation is a key component of how we’ll all tackle those challenges.”

Cris is also a co-founder of The Future Shapers–  www.thefutureshapers.com. “The Future Shapers was specifically set up to provide insight from some of the best thinkers in the innovation space to help in the global drive for innovation and creating a sustainable future. If I can contribute to helping drive that then I’ll have achieved my mission!”

About his Blog:

Cris’s blog reflects his holistic approach to innovation, inspiring you to redefine the way you work. His ideas and insights are based on years of experience as an entrepreneur and innovation consultant. The content of his blogs is mainly in the areas of innovation strategy and culture. Cris hopes that his blog will help “ambitious and visionary leaders tackle innovation both as a capability and as a core component of organizational culture”. Cris’s posts on organizational culture and innovation accurately echo this vision!

 

2. Innovation Blogger: Paul Hobcraft

Paul4Innovating

As it relates to the humble beginnings of his blog: “One person wrote to me and simply said- why don’t you write your own and I was thinking quietly to [myself],  then I can get him off my back!”

About Paul:

Paul “got ‘hooked’ eighteen years ago” on innovation. Since then, he has consistently utilized innovative thinking and applied it to 100% of his business-thinking activities. Paul has lived in numerous countries around the world and worked in senior positions with global corporations. Paul offers innovation coaching and consulting services at www.agilityinnovation.com. Per Paul, “the aim is to support the individual, teams, and organizations, in their innovation activity, applying what I have gained in experiences and knowledge, to further develop core innovation understanding, so clients can achieve positive and sustainable results from their innovating activities.”

About his Blog:

Paul Hobcraft’s blog is a necessity when it comes to understanding the latest trends in innovation, whether it means explaining ‘The Dynamics within Agility’ in his latest post, or “Relating to the New Innovation Era’. He has a technical expertise, which he wisely utilizes to investigate and explore the latest innovation news. He explains: “By taking different viewpoints you can relate innovation to the numerous challenges many of us are facing in understanding [our] work in the innovation space.”

“My blog posts have evolved, in many ways to become my innovation diary.” And an innovation diary Paul indeed writes!  He sees innovation as an evolving entity, in which there are “multiple strands constantly pulling together to build theories, build on the patterns, the signals, the interactions, by extracting from all the different ‘cells’ of knowledge we all possess.”

3. Innovation Blogger: Ralph-Christian Ohr

Integrative Innovation

“My mission is for the most part to challenge deficient or outdated innovation management practices and to provide suggestions for modern, future-proof approaches.”

About Ralph-Christian-Ohr

Ralph-Christian Ohr is passionately driven to help companies establish better innovation practices.  His expertise encompasses innovation management and corporate development. He currently consults on Dual Innovation, Scaling-Up, organizational culture and design as well as ways to increase innovation performance. He has held positions in a wide array of industries such as thin Film/Semiconductor, Energy, and Transportation.  His interesting background, which includes a doctorate in Physics as well as work in a variety of corporate business roles, makes him unique in his approach to innovation.

About his blog:

Ralph-Christian feels inspired to write his blog and identify “pain points of companies when it comes to innovation management.” He uses these pain points as a springboard for coming up with ideas, research, and insight. He wants to “challenge deficient or outdated innovation management practices and to provide suggestions for modern, future-proof approaches.” He draws on research, which he displays in easily digestible graphs to make identifying and measuring innovation processes efficient. Ralph-Christian believes in the importance of crafting company-specific innovation strategies. His blog is curated more for experienced managers.

4. Innovation Blogger: Paul Sloane

Paul Sloane, Innovation Excellence

“I want to inspire people to be more open-minded, to try new things, to use lateral thinking to solve problems and to be more innovative.”

About Paul:

Paul is a professional keynote speaker and leader of workshops. He is a skilled facilitator and course leader, who helps top-level teams achieve breakthrough results in their meetings. He has also published over 30 books! His multiple talents even extend to being a stand-up comedian.

About his Blog:

Paul wants his blog ‘Destination Innovation’ to “inspire people to be more open-minded, to try new things, to use lateral thinking to solve problems and to be more innovative.”

Paul’s use of lateral thinking puzzles is most interesting. He believes these puzzles help us to become open-minded, challenge our assumptions, and help us arrive at well-thought-out solutions. Many of his blogs focus on the history of innovation and lessons we can learn from the past, whether these lessons involve creativity, leadership, or management. His fresh, interesting approach to innovation is stimulating, imaginative, and varied.

 

5. Innovation Blogger: Stephen Shapiro

Stephen Shapiro Blog

“I believe that innovation is the key to solving some of our most pressing challenges, and I hope that my approaches have helped make an impact in the world.”

About Stephen:

Stephen Shapiro has over 20 years of work experience with multinational companies under his belt. After a 15-year corporate career, he realized he no longer wanted to be responsible for other people losing their jobs. Since then, his goal has been “to help companies grow in order to create jobs.” Stephen is consumed with helping companies transform their innovative practices via customized keynote speeches, advisory engagements and other services.

About his blog:

In contrast to some of the other blogs we reviewed, Stephen’s blog ‘Innovation Insights’ is extremely easy to approach. This is because he provides practical, useful tools that anyone can use. His over 20 years of work experience with multinational companies is manifested in the knowledge he shares. Stephen explains that “following someone else’s blueprint for success may not be the best approach for your specific situation.” This is why his blog provides advice, assessments, and exercises that allow you to customize your innovation process.

6. Innovation Blogger: Drew Boyd 

Drew Boyd Blog

About Drew: Drew Boyd is a professor and teacher of the SIT methodology. He has a wealth of experience in the innovation and creativity world. He is a public speaker and award-winning author, having recently written ‘Inside The Box,’ a book that is based on the SIT methodology. He teaches individuals and teams how to creatively solve the toughest problems to create a culture of innovation.

About his blog: As a professor, teaching the SIT methodology, Drew utilizes this expertise in his blog. His blogs that are entitled ‘Innovation Sighting’ refer to new technologies that come out that he can relate SIT tools (division, multiplication, subtraction, task unification, and attribute dependency. He bases his posts and insight on the most recent research in the innovation world. He thoroughly investigates the world of social media, advertising, and new inventions.

7. Innovation Blogger: Greg Satell

Digital Tonto

“That’s probably what I like best, the opportunity to collaborate, share ideas and open up new ways of thinking about things.”

About Greg:

Greg Satell is a bestselling author, speaker, and adviser. Greg says he looks “for connections that would not be immediately obvious. That’s how you can create insights that are truly new.” He says, “Often, I find that the solution to a really really tough problem that people are struggling with can be found in a different field at another time.” Greg has always had a passion to transform big ideas into practical solutions.

About his blog:

His blog began in 2009 as a platform to share his experiences of doing business in Eastern Europe and Turkey. Since then, it has transformed into a wonderful sharing platform, where one can find appealing titles and equally valuable content that brings us insight into the business world of innovation.

Greg approaches his blog holistically. He feels his mission is to explore and that by writing his blog he has “access to world-class experts in many fields, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to materials science and genetics.” Greg seamlessly threads together the worlds of science, business, and everyday life to bring you a blog that is detailed and thoughtful.

 

8. Innovation Blogger: Daniel Burrus 

Daniel Burrus Blog

About Daniel:

Daniel Burrus is known as a futurist, innovation speaker, and global innovation expert. The New York Times has referred to him as one of the top three business gurus in the highest demand as a speaker.  He works with Fortune 500 companies helping them to develop game-changing strategies based on his methodologies regarding technological innovations and their future impact. He is also the author of seven books!

 

About his blog:

Burrus’s blog branches across several fields: strategy, technology, trends, transformation, and leadership. I found his article “Trial & Error: What Thomas Edison Can Teach Businesses Today” particularly interesting, as it related the work of the historical figure to our current technological atmosphere.  His blog focuses on innovation mainly from a technological perspective, identifying disruptive technologies and how they will affect the future of innovation.

9. Innovation Blogger: Soren Kaplan 

Leap Frogging

About Soren:

Best-selling author Soren Kaplan is a leading expert in disruptive innovation, innovation culture, and business model innovation. He works with top companies and organizations like NBCUniversal, Disney, and Hershey. He strongly believes in challenging the status quo and uses his rich background in art and design to catapult him in creating innovation strategy that is unique and revolutionary. He delivers keynotes, consulting and leadership development.

About his blog:

Unlike the other bloggers, Soren has a multitude of videos uploaded to his site in the areas of innovation culture, disruptive innovation, the dynamics of innovation, as well as how to create and lead a culture of innovation. His speaking style is quick and to-the-point, making for an exciting way to learn something new in video form. His vlogs make the information easily accessible and digestible.

10. Innovation Blogger: Owen Hunnam

Idea Drop

About Owen:

Owen is the founder and creator of This Idea Drop, an app used to capture the most prized capital in a company– your employee’s ideas. The clean user interface of the app makes capturing your employee’s ideas fun and easy! The app characterizes Owen’s personal approach to innovation– taking ideas, building upon them, and making them a reality. Despite being the youngest blogger on this list, Owen is firing ahead with bright ideas!

About his blog

Owen writes for both “Innovation Excellence” and the blog for “This Idea Drop.” His posts strive to inspire creativity, as he believes this to be the main source of innovation. Owen believes in using specific creative tools and methods to boost one’s creative potential!

In conclusion…

These 10 innovation bloggers are all passionate about igniting innovative change, whether it be organizationally or strategically. For many of them, innovation seems to have “found them”, as they started writing blogs and working as independent strategists later in their careers. What is particularly interesting is how many of these bloggers have scientific backgrounds, which perhaps allows them to analyze and relate more deeply to the innovation process. By and large, these bloggers use the written word to express new ideas and commentary in the field of innovation. By utilizing their insight, we can gain a clearer picture of the current state of innovation across a multitude of industries.

Thank you all for your contributions to the world of innovation!

 

Now that you’ve explored the world of innovation blogging, read SIT’s post on how to optimize your innovation strategy by making your idea a sweet idea.

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