Methodology

For those of you familiar with SIT’s methodology, last week’s “survival” exercises are perfect examples of one of SIT’s principles: FFF, or Function Follows Form.

We took a deep look at the actions of Academy Award winner, Tom Hanks, playing the character of Chuck Noland in the film “Cast Away”. His limited available resources inspired his creativity, allowing him to survive on a desert island and finally to find his way back home. He did so by first looking at the form of the objects around him and then coming up with new ideas to best utilize them.

But survival on a desert island is not the only example of our principles – though it does make for an incredible story.

In SIT’s terminology, FFF is a leading principle and a structured framework for innovation, precisely because it forces one to examine possibilities that they would not seriously consider within a standard rational process. By applying the non-standard way of thinking, one improves the chances of coming up with innovative ideas that competitors may have missed.

Backwards is the right way for SOS

Trying to think of new applications for physical objects is not the only application of FFF. The principle also helps explain some well-known expressions.

First, let’s go back to our island.

 Last week’s article may have prompted you to watch the movie. If so, you probably remember that, when trying to contact a distant ship, Noland signals both by shouting and with the help of a flashlight three famous letters – a distress signal: SOS.

The famous distress signal, SOS, is itself an excellent example of the Function Follows Form principle.

Contrary to popular belief, the origin of the SOS code is not the acronym for “Save Our Souls” or “Save Our Ship”. The sequence of letters was originally created without any literal meaning; It simply represented the easiest to remember sequence of Morse letters: three dots / three dashes / three dots (…—…).

Germany was the first country to adopt this sequence in 1905. In fact, it was preceded by attempts to use other codes such as SSS DDD, and even CQD. Lucky for us, CQD didn’t catch.

Only a few years later in popular usage, SOS became associated with the words that help us remember the acronym. Can you think of another phrase to attach to the letters SOS?

S.O.S created with FFF mindset

Source

This action, expanding an existing word into the words of a phrase, is called a BACKRONYM.

Have you ever heard of this term? The act itself is a bit more common than you might think. Care for additional examples? Here are some:

If we’re already into movies, the global crime organization “SPECTRE” from the James Bond film series has become the acronym for Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.

The PATRIOT Act is a landmark Act of the United States congress, signed into law by President George W. Bush. It was enacted following the September 11 attacks, with an intended goal of tightening US national security, particularly as it related to foreign terrorism. No wonder, then, that the Act lent itself to the backronym Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.

Even the APGAR score, which is used by doctors to quickly evaluate the health of all newborns, is a backronym. It was named after Virginia Apgar, the anesthesiologist who invented it in 1952. Until today the APGAR score represents the mandatory set of categories needed to assess infant status shortly after birth all around the world. Only after it was adopted, the acronyms were invented to help medical teams remember all the tests included in it: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration.

In fact, APGAR’s surname is such a strong “brand” that acronyms have been created in many other languages to represent tests included in the index, including Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Czech.

It’s time to go back to the basics: Looking for an object (Form) to fulfill a defined Function is fine. But discovering latent needs and benefits, that originate out of an existing Form tends very often to lead to innovation. So, don’t wait for your next flight over the Pacific Ocean. Give the Function Follows Form principle a try right now. You may make waves.

Can you think of some FFF applications from your immediate business and needs? Share with us.

Insights from Jacob Goldenberg and Others

Can creativity be taught? Here are insights from Professors Jacob Goldenberg, Rom Shrift and others on this seemingly elusive topic (from Knowledge@Wharton, August 27, 2014):

“I think there are individual differences in our propensity to be creative,” says Wharton marketing professor Rom Schrift, “but having said that, it’s like a muscle. If you train yourself, and there are different methods for doing this, you can become more creative. There are individual differences in people, but I would argue that it is also something that can be developed, and therefore, taught.”

Wharton marketing professor Jerry (Yoram) Wind has in fact taught a course in creativity at Wharton for years, and says that “in any population, basically the distribution of creativity follows the normal curve. At the absolute extreme you have Einstein and Picasso, and you don’t have to teach them — they are the geniuses. Nearly everyone else in the distribution, and the type of people you would deal with at leading universities and companies, can learn creativity.”

Does creativity need the right conditions to flourish? Jennifer Mueller, a management professor at the University of San Diego and former Wharton professor who has researched creativity, sees evidence that it does. “Every theorist that exists today on the planet will tell you creativity is an ability that ranges in the population, and I think in a given context, creativity can be shut off — or turned on, if the environment supports creativity.”

In whatever the sector or discipline — product development, exploitation of networks, music or education — creativity shares certain traits, experts say. Jacob Goldenberg, professor of marketing at the Arison School of Business at the IDC Herzliya in Israel, says creativity has more than 200 definitions in the literature. “However, if you ask people to grade ideas, the agreement is very high,” he notes. “This means that even if it is difficult to define creativity, it is easy to identify it. One of the reasons why it is difficult to define is the fact that creativity exists in many different domains.” Still, he says: “Most creative ideas share a common structure of being highly original and at the same time highly useful.”

In Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results, Goldenberg and co-author Drew Boyd make the case that all inventive solutions share certain common patterns. Working within parameters, rather than through free-associative brainstorming, leads to greater creativity, the book says. This method, called Systematic Inventive Thinking, has found application at Procter & Gamble and SAP, among others. “We shouldn’t confuse innovation and creativity,” Goldenberg says. “Creativity refers to the idea, not to the system [product, service, process, etc.] that was built around it. For example, online banking is a great innovation, but the idea [of using the Internet to replace the branch] was not creative. It was expected years before it was implemented.”

Similarly, he adds, “cell phone technology is one of the most innovative developments, but the need was defined years before, and we just waited for the technology. In my view, a creative idea that is still changing our lives is the concept of letting users develop the software they need on a platform [that a particular] firm sells: the apps concept. This means that consumers develop and determine the value of the smartphone and tablets.”

This example, Goldenberg says, fits one of the templates for creativity described in Inside the Box: “Where you subtract one of the resources” — such as engineers and marketers — “and replace them with a resource that exists inside a closure (box), in this case your consumers.”

Schrift has used a different template from Inside the Box in his classes: The idea of building a matrix of characteristics of two unrelated products, and creating new dependencies. Such examples, he says, include an air freshener that changes scent every 10 minutes (remixing the concepts of time and fragrance), or a gym with a fee that is structured to increase if you don’t work out enough (fitness and incentive). “A lot of the time, looking for a new dependency gives you a creative idea,” Schrift notes.

 Creativity on demand

Schrift’s class isn’t exactly Wharton’s version of “Rocks for Jocks.” During the semester, students learn different methods for approaching creativity with head scratching titles such as “The Attribute Dependency Template” and the “Task Unification and Closure Principle.” There’s a hefty reading list, as well as a major group project where students take on a real-world problem in partnership with a major company.

“I think I’m definitely more creative than I was before because I just can just think about it in a different way,” says Nicole Granet, a senior majoring in management. “I don’t feel like I need to just close my eyes, listen to some relaxing music, maybe something will come to me. I feel like I’m much more in control of being able to produce these ideas that can really make a big change…sort of be ‘creative on demand.’” Granet is starting a job in consulting after she graduates, where, ideally, she’ll help companies be more productive, and creativity ‘on demand’ will definitely be an asset.

Gerard Puccio hears from employers all the time about how much they value that type of skillset. Puccio directs Buffalo State’s International Center for Studies in Creativity, which, in the late 1960s, became the first school in the country to offer classes on the subject.

He says the discipline has evolved over the years as the challenges we face have become more complex. “Life has become much more complicated, and as a result, we need to enhance the level of complexity of our own thinking, to be able to deal better with complex problems…problems that don’t have easy answers,” says Puccio. He adds that many of these creative skills are actually innate, and perhaps just need a little coaxing.

“It is a human characteristic. It is the reason why we’ve survived through the millennia. It is because…our competitive advantage is creative thinking. We are not the fastest, we can’t fly, we don’t naturally camouflage ourselves, we can only exist in certain climates. So, the human species has evolved to be creative, and in fact, that’s what has helped us to sustain ourselves over time,” says Puccio.

Design it out

Some of us, of course, are still going to be more creative than others.

Example #1: David Ludwig.

He’s a celebrated classical composer and a member of the composition faculty at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, one of the nation’s top schools. He’s the type of guy who gets inspiration for melodies walking around the grocery store. But even with all of his innate ability, Ludwig is completely on board with the idea that creativity can be thought of as a skill to hone, and that understanding constraints and attributes is crucial to creating something new and useful.

“We start out very often with a commission,” he says, “and what I do is, I start making my own constraints. What is the piece about? What motivates it? Why is it meaningful? Then we go from there. We start with the biggest questions first, and go to the smallest.”

Ludwig says he often gets his students thinking about how best to approach creation of a new work by using a simple exercise.

“If I gave you an assignment and said draw a house…on a piece of paper. The first thing you would do, the first thing anyone has ever done when I’ve asked them to do that, is they start with the box and the roof. The frame. Always the frame. No one starts with the window and the TV in the living room in the background. No one starts with the little chimney with the smoke coming out of it. “That is [an] unhindered, creative act. An unconscious creative act and we naturally put limitations on ourselves.” Or, put another way, “We can’t order everything on the menu when we really create something. We have to really design it out.”

But what about just letting your mind wonder? Everyone can point to those random Eureka! moments, either in their work or personal life, when greatness strikes without any effort.

Professor Schrift says he does occasionally get pushback from people who argue the best ideas come when they aren’t pressing for one.

“If for some people, jumping on the trampoline and listening to strange music works? Keep doing that,” he says with a laugh. “But having said that, we offer another tool. We can’t always take a passive approach and wait for us to get this ‘aha moment’ in the shower.”

(This interview first aired on WHYY’S The Pulse.)

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”

Marshall McLuhan

The most challenging aspect about innovating is rooted in a concept called fixedness. Fixedness is the inability to realize that something known to have a particular use may also be used to perform other functions. When one is faced with a new problem, fixedness blocks one’s ability to use old tools in novel ways. Psychologist Karl Duncker coined the term functional fixedness for describing the difficulties in visual perception and problem solving that arise when one element of a whole situation has a (fixed) function which has to be changed for making the correct perception or for finding solutions. In his famous “candle problem” the situation was defined by the objects: a box of candles, a box of thumb-tacks and a book of matches. The task was to fix the candles on the wall without any additional elements. The difficulty of this problem arises from the functional fixedness of the candle box. It is a container in the problem situation but must be used as a shelf in the solution situation.

Roni Horiwitz of S.I.T. puts it this way:  “It’s almost impossible for the human brain to produce a really fresh and unique thought. Every thought, opinion or idea is somehow connected to previous concepts stored in the brain.”  Because of this, we are often unable to see the solution to a problem although it stares us in the face. We are too connected to what we knew previously. We not only can’t let it go, but we try very hard to anchor around it to explain what is going on.

Fixedness is insidious. It affects how we think about and see virtually every part of our lives. At work, we have fixedness about our products and services, out customers and competitors, and our future opportunities. The most damaging form of fixedness is when we are stuck on our current business model. We cannot see past what is working today. We stop challenging our assumptions. We continue to believe what was once true is still true. In the end, it is this perpetual blind spot that is most dangerous to our innovation potential.

Customers have fixedness, too. Customers have a limited view of the future, they have well-entrenched notions of how the world works, and they suffer from the same blind spot we do. Yet we continue to seek the “Voice of the Customer” as though a divine intervention will break through this fixedness so they can offer new ideas.

Fortunately, there is a way to address it. The way to break fixedness is to use structured innovation tools and principles that make you see problems and opportunities in new ways. Remember the classic Will Rogers quote:

“It’s not what you don’t know that will get you. It’s what you know that ain’t so.”

Or was it Mark Twain?

Do you know this feeling, when you learn something new, and you suddenly recognize it around you everywhere?

We recently wrote here about how one can break “Relational Fixedness” using the thinking tool called Attribute Dependency. In the opening of the article, we used the following quote from the episode “The Chinese Restaurant” of the “Seinfeld” series, in which Elaine had a brilliant idea as to re-ordering the queue to the restaurant:

“You know, it’s not fair that people are seated first come – first serve. It should be based on who’s hungriest”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn9EYWG_fOI

Attribute Dependency, as explained, is about modifying existing relations (or dependencies) between the characteristics of a given system, product, or situation.

Soon after publishing this article, I discovered that in “The Old Man” episode, Jerry was using the same thinking tool to suggest a new speed limit guideline for elderly people:

“You know, I think old people should be allowed to drive their age. If you’re eighty, do eighty. If you’re a hundred, go a hundred. I mean, they can’t see where they’re going anyway. Let them have a little fun out there.”

Amazing! This suggestion is very similar to the optical retailer campaign mentioned in the previous article, according to which the number of percentage points of a discount is equal to the customer’s age.

I therefore realized that the writers of “Seinfeld” are aware of the creativity inherent in the Attribute Dependency tool. Their show may be about nothing, but they take it very seriously, so, I figured, there must be something to learn from it.

Although their main goal was the creation of comic situations and not necessarily the development of products or services of economic value and applicability – they perfectly demonstrate the power of the AD tool.

For the sake of research, I decided to binge on a few more episodes (or maybe I was just looking for an excuse to do so). Amazingly, I found quite a few additional examples of Attribute Dependency. Here are some of them.

In “The Pony Remark” episode, Jerry and Elaine arrive at a funeral, where they have a short discussion about the parameter that dictates the duration of the ceremony. Jerry expresses a rather surprising view:

Elaine: How long does a funeral take?
Jerry: Depends on how nice the person was. But you gotta figure, even Oswald took forty-five minutes.

And here is what Elaine suggests in “The Strongbox” episode. While talking to a friend, she states that in the case of executions, the last meal cuisine should depend on the method of execution:

Glenn: “You would choose your last meal based on the method of execution? “

Elaine: “Right. If I was getting the chair, I’d go for something hot and spicy. Thai, maybe Mexican. Lethal injection? feels like pasta – painless, don’t want anything too heavy.”

The creators of “Seinfeld” realize that Attribute Dependency can also be applied by disconnecting or eliminating an existing relation, and not just by creating a new one.

Jerry’s opening monologue of “The Jacket” episode is all about the future of clothing. He envisions that the single characteristic that will determine both the color and the shape of our clothes in the future will be the planet we came from.

I think eventually fashion won’t even exist. It won’t. I think eventually we’ll all be wearing the same thing. ’cause anytime I see a movie or a TV show where there’s people from the future of another planet, they’re all wearing the same thing. Somehow, they’ve decided, “This is going to be our outfit. One-piece silver jumpsuit, V-stripe, and boots.” That’s it. We should come up for an outfit for earth. An earth outfit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceRsfMaQ4r0

The writers of the series even use this thinking tool to make fun of what people perceive as an existing relation between characteristics.

In “The Note” episode, Jerry grins at the “tell the doctor you know me” recommendation:

“Make sure that you tell him that, you know, you know me.”  Why?  What’s

the difference?  He’s a doctor.  What is it, “Oh, you know Bob!  Okay, I’ll give

you the real medicine.  Everybody else, I’m giving Tic-Tacs.”

Last (but not least funny) example uses some bad language but perfectly illustrates one cognitive advantage of creating a surprising new relationship between two characteristics of a system.

In “The Parking Garage” episode, Jerry humorously suggests replacing the numbers and colors of each floor in the parking garage of shopping malls with names that will allow them to be better remembered:

See, the problem with the mall garage, is that everything looks the same. They try to differentiate it. They put up different colors, different numbers, different letters. What they need to do is name the levels, like, “Your mother’s a whore.” You know what I mean? You would remember that. You would go, “I know. I remember, I’m parked in ‘My father’s an abusive alcoholic.’ I know where I’m parked.”

No doubt, innovating by using Attribute Dependency can be a lot of fun! Feel free to share with us your funny examples of applying this technique – surely some of them will not only be funny, but also valuable and applicable.