Methodology

USING DESIGN THINKING? 5 PITFALLS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

Published date: May 12, 2022 в 4:26 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology

Most versions of DT have these components:

1) Empathize     2) Define      3) Ideate      4) Prototype      5) Test

A key benefit of DT is that it is a full process. Embrace it to structure some innovation activities, BUT beware, while parts of the process are highly conducive to innovation, others are useless or even harmful. These are 5 major pitfalls, and the corresponding advice on how to avoid them:

1)     WARNING: The crucial flaw of DT is in stage 3 – Ideation. You are required to create ideas, based on insights and observations, which you then proceed to prototype and test. But HOW do you come up with these ideas? DT doesn’t provide any tools beyond variants of Brainstorming, which do not work.

1)     TO DO: Embed a structured method for breaking fixedness for stage 3. (We obviously recommend our method – SIT – but others can serve as well, provided that they are not BS variants).

 

2)     WARNING: DT assumes that you first conduct ethnography and insight-hunting and relegates the “creative bits” to the next phase. Mistake! If you search for insights without first breaking fixedness you are searching with blinders and will rarely find novelty.

2)     TO DO: Combine ethnography with tools for challenging assumptions. You’ll be surprised at the results.

 

3)     WARNING: DT assumes that creativity and ideas are needed only until the end of stage 3. In reality, even more creativity is needed in adapting your ideas to reality, overcoming emerging challenges and selling your ideas internally (stages 4-5 and beyond).

3)     TO DO: Build in problem-solving sessions and fixedness breaking exercises into prototyping and testing.

 

4)     WARNING: Designers do great stuff and have a cool job. But it’s their job. Not yours. What sense does it make to try to think “like a designer” if you’re not one? Doctors save lives, farmers grow food – lots of professions do useful stuff, but what has that got to do with your task as innovators?

4)     TO DO: Don’t try to emulate designers. Stick to your professional knowledge and use robust techniques for challenging your concepts and breaking your fixed ways of seeing. Use methods that work, not stuff that’s “cool”.

 

5)     WARNING: “Having fun” is a distraction. It’s cotton candy. Innovation requires challenging one’s thinking. When done properly – it’s painful.

5)     TO DO: People can and should enjoy innovation sessions, as you enjoy a tough workout in a gym, or a 5-mile run. Spend minimum time and efforts on getting people to have fun, just enough so they are motivated to collaborate until deeper satisfaction emerges from feeling the results of one’s hard work.

In sum: DT has powerful features and serious bugs. Pick carefully from the former while avoiding the latter.

More on Design Thinking: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6777325214293405696?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_updateV2%3A%28urn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A6777325214293405696%2CFEED_DETAIL%2CEMPTY%2CDEFAULT%2Cfalse%29

31 Chances to Make a Discovery

Published date: March 2, 2022 в 8:03 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology

What if you had a huge discovery in front of you but missed it?

Imagine the world today if Fleming would have glanced at the mold on a culture plate, said “Gross!”, and thrown it away. Or if Spencer took the melted candy bar from his pocket after standing in front of an active radar set, and thought to himself – darn, every time I work on this project I lose my snack!  And went to the vending machine for pretzels or chips instead.

History is full of inventions triggered by “lucky” accidents. Post-it® notes, chocolate chip cookies, X-rays, Teflon – the width and breadth of these discoveries demonstrate that stumbling upon these opportunities could happen to anyone, but the key really is in their recognition. It’s been said that Spencer wasn’t the first to notice the heating phenomenon, but that he was the first to investigate and experiment.

Accidental inventions share a common storyline: First, a bizarre, unexpected situation is imposed. This is followed by “What the heck?” or “What am I supposed to do with this?”. Then, there’s an Aha moment where a new functionality is found.

In innovation terminologies, this sequence is coined ‘Function Follows Form’

Ten-second historical overview: In the late 19th and early 20th century the architectural Bauhaus movement gained popularity for its Form Follows Function design approach – first understand the desired function and then create the form to deliver it.

Then, in the early ’90s, a group of psychologists[1] made an interesting discovery. When it comes to creating, people are innately better at uncovering the potential benefits of a given form rather than creating a new form to satisfy a given need. Meaning, it’s easier for us to come up with a new use for something that we already see, whereas we struggle to imagine a totally new design. This discovery spurred a reverse thinking approach: Function Follows Form. This approach encourages us to first create a virtual situation (form) and then explore its potential benefits (function).

In all honesty, unlike Fleming, I would have chucked that culture plate. Or distractedly looked at my phone while salvaging my melted candy bar. Let’s be honest, things go haywire all the time. But the point is when they do – how do we respond? Do we shelf things or do we take a second look to assess its potential value (perhaps different than originally intended, but value nonetheless)?

I invite you to join the FFF March Challenge (FFFMC). For each day of the month, there is a bizarre form on which to practice finding value and turn it into a real invention. By adopting FFF as an innovation mindset we can have our minds trained not to brush an opportunity off our lap when it falls in it.

[1] Finke, R.A., Ward, T.B., Smith, S.M. (1992). Creative cognition: Theory, research, and applications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Green Eggs, Viagra, Constraints and Creativity

Published date: February 17, 2022 в 3:30 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology

There is little argument that Dr. Seuss is one of the world’s most popular and loved writers. His name is associated with imagination, creativity, talent and originality – and on a personal note – he is one of my favorite writers as well.

In 1954, after reading an article about the shortcomings of books used to teach reading to first-graders, Dr. Seuss was challenged by his friend, William Ellsworth Spaulding, to write a book that first graders “can’t put down”. But there was one additional constraint – he was to write that book using no more than 225 words out of a designated list of 348 words that every first grader should know. Dr. Seuss ended up using 236 words, of which 221 are monosyllabic (!!), to write The Cat in The Hat – a book that has been one of the most successful children’s book ever since.

As if that was not enough, Dr. Seuss’s publisher bet him that he would not be able to write another book using as little as 50 different words. As impossible as that may sound, Dr. Seuss not only won the bet – he did so with a bang. In August 1960 he published Green Eggs and Ham – the book that would become his most successful, and the 4th best-selling English-language children’s hardcover book of all time!

So what’s going on here? How did the unreasonable constraint of writing a book using only 50 different words become the catalyst for one of the world’s most successful and admired books? After all, when we try to be creative we usually go through considerable trouble to break the constraints that limit us, and certainly do not choose to embrace new constraints. Can the explanation simply be the extraordinary talent of Dr. Seuss, or is there something else at play that could be relevant to mere mortals like you and me?

Before we try to answer this question, please take a look at these Viagra TV commercials:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMhv_wCx5ug

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o8_JjiLpw0

In both these commercials, and for fairly obvious reasons, the advertisers had to avoid describing in detail what their product does, or enables… This constraint is not unique to these specific commercials. What makes them unique, though, is the way the advertisers chose to deal with that constraint.

In many similar cases advertisers have tried to bypass this constraint in various ways, such as portraying men in “the morning after”, filled with energy and joy. But in the examples we just saw there was something very different. They do not contain an attempt to avoid the constraint – quite the contrary. If you think about it, what the advertisers did in both cases is to use the constraint – and in a central and conspicuous manner!

And look at the results: two commercials that are based on a unique element, and are therefore interesting, distinct and memorable; dialogues in which the use of “censorship” leads us to imagine the exact same things you just cannot show on primetime television; a central role for the product itself, as an integral part of the commercial; and last, but not least, a Cannes award for the campaign. All in all not too bad for an idea that was paradoxically inspired by the inability to do what initially seems to be so essential (yes, you can read this sentence again…)

It is interesting to compare this campaign with another Viagra campaign that also uses the same constraint in an unusual manner. Take a look:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExQKZKnk6rA

In this amusing commercial (that is even funnier the second time you see it) we witness a different way to address the constraint. Here, too, the advertisers are not running away from the campaign using something like “the morning after” approach. Rather, they are facing it head on by replacing the medium which is the object of the constraint – the language itself. The advertisers decided to go ahead and do exactly what they intended to do originally – constraint or no constraint. This “stubbornness” forced them to explore options and alternatives that would never come up were it not for the constraint.

Let’s summarize what we had so far. We saw a few examples in which we recognize a surprising connection between the presences of significant constraints and the ability to develop original and creative ideas. We can even go further to say that in these examples the creative ideas were not developed despite the relevant constraint, but rather because of it.

Yet with all due respect, the constraints did not do the creative work. That has been done by the individuals that chose to address them not as a force majeure that must be submissively accepted, but rather as raw material for a creative exploration. Not as an “end of story”, but as a starting point for a creative negotiation. And that, my friends, is exactly the insight we can take with us, and the state of mind we can learn to adopt.

Not every constraint, in any situation or creative process, can lead us to the development of an award winning campaign or a successful literary masterpiece; but some might, if we just give them (and ourselves) a chance. The widely accepted notion that constraints harm creativity, in not unreasonable; after all, constraints – by their very nature – limit the options available to us. But if we manage to change the way we view them, we may discover that in many cases they simply stop us from settling for the simple, immediate or generic solutions. And thus, by preventing us from taking the path of least resistance, they force us to explore and consider options we would never reach otherwise.

At any rate, in the complex reality we live in, the submissive approach to constraints is an omnipresent problem. When have you last faced a creative challenge, or a problem that needed a solution, in a constraint-free environment??? Constraints surround us in any task and every challenge, so that the ability to use them as a creative opportunity can come pretty handy in our professional lives (and our private ones, by the way). It does not take a lot of resources or complicated preparations – just a shift in our perspective.

So take a few moments to consider the challenges you are facing today, and ask yourselves what constraints make it difficult for you to face these challenges. Maybe these constraints can serve you in the same way the list of words did Dr. Seuss or the censorship the advertisers of Viagra. In what creative ways can you utilize these constraints? Which ideas can they help you come up with, and why are these better than the ones you came up with so far? It may take more than 20 seconds to find meaningful answers for these questions, but if you give it 20 minutes you might be pretty amazed at what you can come up with…

The original version of this article has been published, in Hebrew, on

http://shivuk.themarker.com

New Dimensions in Cosmetology

Published date: November 11, 2021 в 5:36 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology,New Product Development

What do the following products have in common?

  1. diapers with a wetness indicator
  2. sunscreen with adjustable SPF
  3. a mud mask

The answer “family vacation” may come to mind, but we suggest that these three products share a common underlying pattern. Interestingly enough, research has shown that if you examine totally different innovative products on the market, they tend to share common patterns. And surprisingly, the majority of new and inventive products fall into only five patterns.

However, categorizing innovative products is not enough when trying to come up with a new one. What needs to be done is to find a way to follow these patterns, preferably in a conscious methodical way.

SIT (Systematic Inventive Thinking), is the name both of a company and of a method it developed based on these very patterns. The patterns have been transformed into five “thinking tools” that are applied in a structured process leading to innovative ideas for new products. The method is applied to help organizations and individuals become more innovative, by using these patterns in a systematic process applicable to people’s daily tasks.

This article focuses on patterns evident in the cosmetics industry. A description of the application of these patterns and tools in the field of chemistry can be found in the Journal of Business Chemistry.

Let’s look at the examples presented at the beginning of the article.

Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories worked with the SIT company and method for over two years. Many of Ahava’s recent patent registrations have the imprint of SIT tools resulting from working together.

During a workshop, one of the five SIT tools, Attribute Dependency, was applied. This tool involves the creation of new relationships between the different variables of a product or its immediate environment. Innovative ideas are generated through creating new dependencies, or alternatively, modifying or dissolving existing ones. One of Ahava’s patents, a Purifying Mud Mask, demonstrates this tool. The product is applied as a typical mud mask, yet does not retain that function over time.

The mask undergoes a chemical process that changes it into a “peeling” to remove dead skin. Most 2-in-1 products serve multiple functions at the same time, such as Shampoo and Conditioner in one. The uniqueness of the Purifying Mud Mask is that it provides dual functions but at different times. Since it is physically impossible that the functions of a Mud Mask and a Peeling occur simultaneously, it was the ability to imagine the same product changing its properties over time that allowed the team to come up with this breakthrough idea.

Let us look back at the other examples. By now you may have guessed that diapers with a wetness indicator and sunscreen with adjustable SPF are also examples of Attribute Dependency. How so? The first are training diapers with a wetness indicator embedded in the diaper’s design so that when the diaper gets wet its color fades. This on the one hand encourages the child to “keep” the graphic on the diaper, while on the other hand, keeps the parent abreast of their child’s situation. We can see here that a dependency was created between the level of dampness and color, resulting in raising awareness in a clear, visual manner.

In contrast, the sunscreen with the adjustable SPF actually breaks a dependency. The existing dependency between skin type and level of SPF has usually caused one of two things when dealing with two people with different skin types: they either buy two different bottles or compromise. However, a new sunscreen on the market eliminates this dependency by allowing the selection of different SPF levels with the turn of a dial.

These examples are just a taste of what the SIT method can offer. Why waste time hoping for an opportune moment to land into one of the five categories of innovative products? By using the Attribute Dependency tool, as well as the four other tools in its toolkit, you can assure yourself of the ability to introduce innovative products of your own onto the market.

Reference:

Stern Yoni, Biton Idit, Ma’or Ze’ev. 2006. “Systematically Creating Coincidental Product Evolution: Case Studies of the Application of the Systematic Inventive Thinking ® (SIT) Method in the Chemical Industry.” Journal of Business Chemistry Vol. 3, Issue 1, 13-21.

eduction as a Key to Innovation

Published date: October 24, 2021 в 11:13 am

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology

Take a second look, please, at the title of this paper. There seems to be something wrong, something missing – right? A possibility that comes to mind is the letter ‘a’, which would turn the words into the perfectly plausible (although somewhat unpromising) title: Education as a Key to Innovation. This solution is, alas, rather less than perfect, for if the mistake were a missing ‘a’, then there is a second, typographic error at the head of the page – the ‘e’ should have been upper case – a capital ‘E’. This seems to suggest a different set of solutions to the puzzle of the faulty title – the missing letter should be upper case, and situated at the beginning of the odd-looking “eduction”. Three candidates can be identified quite easily, just by scanning the alphabet from Aeduction to Zeduction.

Deduction as a Key to Innovation would be, for me, an intriguing subject, all the more so due to the prevalent view that the ability for deduction resides somehow in the “square” left side of the brain, at the remote end from the supposed seat of creativity and its sister – innovation. The title opening this paragraph would lead, in that case, to a hope for content which, if nothing else, would provide a welcome change from the non-deductive mainstream of innovation fostering. In fact, this article is about a method, SIT (Systematic Inventive Thinking) which uses a rather analytical – although not strictly deductive – approach to the generation of innovation. Specifically, the aim in this article is to describe one of a set of techniques used in SIT. The name of this technique is Reduction.

So it is Reduction as a Key to Innovation that makes most sense as the correct version of the article’s title. Note that this option – the ‘R’ solution, has a further advantage. If Reduction is indeed the subject of this article and the first word in its title, then the supposed error is actually an example of the application of the very subject of the article on its own title. Indeed, as you can see below, it perfectly matches the SIT procedure for applying the Reduction tool to the task of inventing a new product (in our case – a new title for an article). Here is the procedure for applying Reduction to an existing product, to come up with an innovative version of it:

1. a. List the product’s internal components.

  b. Mark those components that seem essential.

2. Remove one or more of the essential components and visualize the resulting “virtual product”.

3. Search for opportunities or benefits that can arise from the “virtual product”.

4. Define the new version(s) of your product, the target market(s) and the new benefits.

5. Adjust each new product according to specific needs.

Note that Amazon and the iPhone are prime (oops) examples of Reduction, as are the older ATM and even contact lenses. In our (more modest) case I started out with the obvious and unexciting “Reduction as a Key to Innovation”, dropped the initial “E” and asked myself what benefits you, the reader, could derive from this truncated title. The result is for you to judge.

What about the third candidate for the solution of the puzzle in the article’s title? We mentioned before that there is, as you might have noticed yourself, a third letter that can function well at the start of the title, making it into the hard-to-pass-by Seduction as a Key to Innovation. Not completely irrelevant, it must be admitted, for if you’ve chosen to read these pages, and gotten this far into them, it would seem that some act of seduction has taken place. Our work in applying SIT to the field of advertising suggests that there is indeed a connection between se- and re-duction, to the extent that leaving out key elements of a communication, such as an advertisement – as is often done in the case of teasers – entices the viewer into an interaction with the ad, which usually leads to higher recognition, involvement and retention of its contents.

 Take the following ad, from a classic campaign created by the fabled Neil French.

 

The text:

“This page is dedicated to those amongst us

who have learned to recognize quality without peering at a label.”

 

For those of you who – like me – haven’t, this is a campaign for Chivas regal whisky.

 

Here is another classic, this time by Ogilvy &Mather Sidney.

 

Shocking to see that this 20-year-old ad could have appeared today, which points to the limited influence of advertising in general, but both ads exhibit several characteristics common to Reduction advertising: 1) curiosity is aroused; 2) there is respect for the viewer, since he or she are trusted to fill in the missing information by themselves; 3) production costs are absolutely minimal, 4) key elements of the commercial seem to be missing, giving the ad a unique feel.

This last characteristic is, of course, the literal meaning of the use of reduction, and is thus common to any application of the tool, whether in advertising, New Product Development, Problem Solving or any other application. Like many creative tools and most SIT tools, reduction helps its users overcome the well known “Functional Fixedness”, by suggesting that some element of the situation can play a role other than its traditional purpose. But reduction goes one step further and liberates thinkers from an arguably deeper preconception which can be called “Existential Fixedness” – the view that things and situations are defined by an inventory of their components. Reduction, then, in some of its versions, challenges not only your view of what things do, but even of what things are. This is the power of reduction, and also the source of the feeling of unease that it often inspires.

 

Reduction, as mentioned, can be applied in virtually any field. Actually, it might be an interesting idea to apply reduction to the structure of an article, say by finishing it with no

 

Historical note: this piece is a slight adaptation to a text written some 20 years ago, for internal purposes, in the days when SIT still used the term “Reduction” for what we now call “Subtraction”. I leave it to the loyal reader to imagine the first paragraphs of an article titled “traction as a Key to Innovation” 😊

 

Bibliographical note: you may want to read more about Subtraction and several additional tools in the article we published years ago in the Harvard Business Review, called “Finding your innovation sweet spot”. It was at my HBR editor’s insistence that we changed the tool’s name from Reduction to Subtraction. He was right(:

Innovation Challenges & How They Can Be Overcome

Published date: October 20, 2021 в 11:33 am

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology

Dr. Gadi Segal, a business partner and a good friend, told me once that “the more therapeutic options you have for a disease, the more likely it is that none of them are really effective.” When I make the analogy to the realm of innovation, I hesitate to conclude that none of the innovation methodologies available are really effective… Let’s just agree that the abundance of approaches and techniques is indicative of the magnitude of the innovation challenges.

Learn about the several types of innovation challenges and how to overcome them

Types of Innovation Challenges 

  Some of these innovation challenges have to do with the process of ideation itself, while others with implementation, some are more relevant on an individual level, and others more on the organizational level. For this discussion, we can define one set of barriers that stop us from coming up with the right ideas (ideation / individual) and another set of challenges involved in the attempt to implement these ideas (implementation / organizational).

Fear of Making Mistakes

Think for a minute about the last time you participated in an innovation session. Think about yourself and about your colleagues. What were the barriers you were facing within that session? Did they have to do with fear of criticism? Perhaps they dealt with the insecurity that comes from not knowing how good your ideas are, or how well they will be received. Were these barriers connected to the fact that some of your ideas might have been a little too innovative? Or was it simply a reluctance to take an active a part in such a public discussion?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you were facing some of the most common psychological barriers to innovation. While some of these barriers are relevant in many types of discussions, others are more innovation-specific. Many of these barriers have to do with our common fear of making mistakes – a fear developed and cultivated by mistake-phobic education systems and organizational cultures.

Cognitive Barriers

There are several innovation methodologies that focus on dealing with these fears and barriers. The most familiar of which is Brainstorming. These methodologies employ various rules and principles designed to mitigate these fears.

You will notice that these barriers are relevant to voicing or sharing innovative ideas that we as individuals have already come up with. These barriers are serious, no doubt, but they have little to do with the actual act of coming up with an innovative idea. The barriers relevant to that elusive phase are quite different. They have less to do with our psychology and more to do with our cognitive capacity.

Structural Fixedness

Let’s take the story of the refrigerator as an example. When this product was introduced to the market (early 20th century), it replaced the previously used ice-box. This simple device used blocks of ice that were put in a designated compartment at the top (the actual “ice-box” that gave it its name) of its structure. The products kept in the ice-box were organized so that the ones requiring colder temperatures were placed higher (closer to the ice), and the ones requiring more moderate temperatures were placed lower (farther from the ice). Does this design sound familiar?

For years, we have been bending down to take out our veggies from the bottom drawer of our modern refrigerator, while the freezer door (which most of us use much less) is located much more conveniently at the top of the appliance. When you think about it now it seems strange and irrational.

Why didn’t the refrigerator industry offer us a refrigerator with the freezer at the bottom and the main compartment above it? And why didn’t we, as consumers, ask for such a design? The answer has to do with a cognitive phenomenon called “Structural Fixedness.” Engineers and customers alike have created a strong link between the product and its structure. We have become structurally fixated. That fixedness has survived not only the transition from the ice-box to the refrigerator but also decades of advance in refrigeration technologies that have followed.

Hidden Pitfalls

When we suffer from Structural Fixedness, we do not choose or intend to overlook potential changes in structure. We fail to consider these possibilities and, at the same time, fail to recognize our own failure. That is exactly the problem with structural fixedness and other cognitive barriers to innovation. These sneaky enemies are like stealth bombers – they stop us from coming up with innovative ideas, and we do not even know they are there.

Although we have only discussed innovation challenges briefly, one thing is already clear: If we are to use effective innovation methodologies, they must deal with more than one type of barrier.

Now that you know some of the key innovation challenges one can face, continue to gather insight and read about how to embrace failure.

New Thought for Food

Published date: October 13, 2021 в 12:15 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology,New Product Development,Strategy

The meat analog market in the 1970s was in need of a facelift. At the time, meat analogs were divided into two types of products: soy based and wheat based. The problem was that while meat analog products looked like meat and tended to be healthy, their taste and texture were so unconvincing that eating soy dogs and soy burgers was often likened to chewing on tasteless cardboard. It was a niche market dedicated to “hard-core” vegetarians.

Meanwhile, a young Israeli food technologist, Michael Shemer, was methodically trying to invent “edible” meat analogs. He focused his efforts on three essential attributes: taste, texture, and nutritional value. He experimented for years with wheat and soy proteins and in the early 1980s had a breakthrough when he combined the two vegetable proteins. He quickly evolved his technology into a line of meat analog products and found a home for them at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot. Production began in 1985 under the name of Tivall, later to become part of the Nestlé Corp.

The new products met the growing demand from consumers who wanted nutritional, yet tasty meat substitutes suitable to their dynamic, on-the-run lifestyles. Today, Tivall is a world leader in the industry and renowned for its rapid product development and award winning, innovative products. Many of us may know, or may even be, a food technologist whose fate has followed a similar path. For Shemer, however, this was only the beginning of a life-long quest for a more structured approach to inventing new-to-the-world food technologies—a method he later adopted, called Systematic Inventive Thinking®.

Where Ideas Come From

Traditionally, there exist three sources for new product ideas: (1) surveying competitors, (2) identifying needs through market research, and (3) developing new technologies. Surveying competitors, often known as the “safe path,” cannot result in unique or differentiating products, as they largely offer consumers more of the same, just under a different brand name. Furthermore, research shows that these “me-too” products have an 80% chance of failure, which is the same as (or slightly higher than) “new-to-the-market” products. Catering to identified market needs, although crucial for keeping a company competitive in the market, rarely results in true innovations. Research conducted by Goldenberg and Mazursky (1999) validates that customers are a poor source of quality information when it comes to innovation, since most people find it difficult to imagine things that do not yet exist. Although consumers do have latent needs, they are not fully aware of, it is difficult for them to state them explicitly. Moreover, polling a consumer base that is equally available to all players in the market makes it difficult to identify unique needs and create exclusive products that the competition does not yet have in development. The authors concluded that “There is a clear need for an approach that can lead to exclusive discoveries that can take the marketplace by surprise. Such innovative ideas must be captured before the market submits strong signals to its needs, rendering market research methods (for eliciting ideas) less effective.”

Developing a new technology platform can be a strong source leading to proprietary innovations, but it thereby poses a twofold problem: First, it is not a process by which a company can plan its pipeline. When exactly a new technology will be ready for market is a fickle and unreliable phenomenon. Second, creating a completely new technology is often the more-expensive and high-risk option. The only source leading to true innovation—new technology development—must become a process that is more efficient.

New Technology Development

To many, creativity is synonymous with free thinking. It is believed that if only there were no constraints, people could think of the wild, breakthrough ideas for their industry. Yet, studies by Goldenberg et al. (1999) showed that constrained-thinking processes provided superior results to ideas generated by humans thinking without constraints. This idea superiority was apparent for both the creativity and originality evaluations of the ideas. The aura of free thinking for generating innovation nevertheless endures. This is because many constraints truly are stifling for creativity. Thus, it is not enough to say that constraints enhance creativity, rather the proper constraints—those that promote creativity—need to be identified.

 

One of these “creativity-facilitating constraints” is the Closed World principle. This principle posits that the only resources for innovating are those that already exist in the product’s immediate environment (Horowitz and Maimon, 1999). These include the essential elements in the product, including its physical components as well as its variables like color or size. The immediate environment of the product is also inventoried for its components and variables. These elements—and only these elements—lead to finding new ideas and solutions. No new types of resources or technologies are allowed to enter into the idea-generation process. Unknowingly, Shemer utilized the Closed World principle when inventing his product. As opposed to his unsuccessful attempts at using other plant-based materials, the secret to his success was manipulating elements within the two leading meat analog bases—soy and wheat proteins, resources already existing in the Closed World. One of the Closed World’s main benefits is that it relies solely on a company’s existing resources and knowledge base, providing a “leg-up” so that it needn’t start from scratch and can more readily assess the feasibility of the solution.

Shemer, as well as many other developers in parallel industries, realized in hindsight that he had been inventing by applying the Closed World principle all along. Had he realized what he was doing earlier, his development process would have cut down years of research, instead of happening by “accident,” during one of several dozen experiments. Once aware of the Closed World principle and the benefits it provides, Shemer learned a system to more proactively apply constraints to expedite product development processes.

Vegetable Dough Example

A prime example of this is Shemer’s leadership role in the development of Tivall’s latest award-winning product, a revolutionary vegetable dough (Figure 1). As Vice President of Strategic Innovation and R&D, he was assigned the task of innovating an existing Tivall product line: vegetable-filled pastries. Tivall’s core competency—its Closed World—is innovative uses of vegetable materials. With that in mind, Shemer’s rephrasing of his task was already half of the solution: To identify new ways to use vegetable elements in the pastries to generate an innovative food technology platform.

Utilizing his food technology knowledge, he was able to find a way to replace more than 85% of the flour in the product. The technology used to integrate the vegetables into the dough allowed for a completely new line of products consisting of puff pastry dough, yeast raised dough, and short dough, each of which can be made of different types of vegetables, including sweet potatoes, spinach, corn, and cauliflower. More benefits of this proprietary dough became apparent with the realization that it could also be marketed as a separate product for home cooking and baking. The vegetable dough was launched in 2005 and met with instant success. It won an award in the Savory Frozen Foods category at the 2006 Sial International Exhibition of Food Industry.

An Innovation Algorithm

While the Closed World principle identifies the resources that we are allowed to use (and those we are not), it does not dictate enough how to use these resources. This, another variety of constraint, needed to be formulated to guide the developer in a more systematic manner through the thinking process. The solution was found in a body of research begun by Genrich Altschuller, a naval engineer from the former Soviet Union, who studied thousands of patents and found that creative solutions share common patterns. Based on his research results, he developed a method that he called Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ). His students later evolved the method into what is today called Systematic Inventive Thinking and expanded Altschuller’s pattern recognition into the field of product development. It is evident that inventors unknowingly follow patterns when coming up with product ideas. In essence, they impose on themselves thinking constraints that result in innovative outputs. A novice inventor would expect there to be dozens, even hundreds, of patterns that lead to inventions. This makes SIT’s findings that more than 70% of successful new products can be categorized according to only five patterns even more surprising. In contrast, fewer than 20% of unsuccessful product launches could be classified according to these same patterns (Goldenberg and Mazursky, 2002). The following are the five patterns in this approach:

• Subtraction. This pattern instructs the inventor to look at the Closed World and, as opposed to the conventional approach to new product development, subtract an essential element rather than add one. This constraint is unintuitive in two senses: first, we are not adding or improving something to create a new offering in the market; second, the subtracted element cannot be one that was originally detrimental (e.g., fat), but one that was thought to be essential, with no logical reason for being subtracted.

Examples of this pattern are largely seen in the “instant” product category, such as soups or cakes from which the liquid or eggs was subtracted. Although understandable today, it is easy to imagine the resistance to the concept of removing the water (essentially, the soup) from the soup when the idea was first proposed.

• Multiplication. While it is clear how subtracting something essential from a resource-base would be a strong constraint, with the Multiplication pattern it is less obvious. This pattern allows the technologist to add elements that were previously not available. Nevertheless, what is allowed to be added is highly constrained. This pattern is about adding one or more copies of an existing component in the product or system, and then modifying the copy so that it is different according to one of its original component parameters.

Pizza Hut’s Stuffed Crust Pizza is a good example. When looking to innovate pizzas, the most common path is to simply add a different type of topping or to change the organoleptic properties of one of the primary ingredients (e.g., the dough or sauce). However, the stuffed crust was a true innovation and example of Multiplication, since it added more of an existing component (the cheese), but changed its location on the diameter of the pizza (placing it inside the crust). The consumer benefit was readily apparent: the pizza eating experience now facilitated more cheese in every bite, especially toward the edge of the pie, where cheese is not typically sprinkled on top. Not surprisingly, when it was launched in 1995, it became one of Pizza Hut’s more successful products.

• Division. This pattern dictates that all product components remain and none are added, but several are reorganized in time or space. Thus, the product gestalt is broken, degrees of freedom are added to the thinking process, and the Closed World remains confined. This pattern is noticeable in a wide range of solutions for products suffering from short shelf life. Products such as Yakult and Actimel, including functional ingredients like probiotics, are healthy for consumption but have shelf life challenges because their potency deteriorates in a liquid medium.

The Swedish company BioGaia provided an innovative solution to lengthen the shelf life: separating (dividing) the probiotic culture from the yogurt. Its LifeTop straw supplies the consumer with Lactobacillus reuteri in each sip (or through a bolus during the first draft) through the straw instead of being mixed in with the yogurt. The straw allows yogurt producers to keep the probiotic ingredients dry, separate from the yogurt, until the actual time of consumption. The VIZcap™ (www.vizdrink.com) offers a similar solution in the vitamin-enhanced sport drink segment. The supplements are kept separated from the liquid by being stored in a sealed chamber inside the bottle cap. They are only added to the drink just prior to consumption, dropping into the liquid when the consumer twists the cap to open it.

• Attribute Dependency. This pattern relates to the attributes or variables that exist in the Closed World of the product. It involves the creation of new relationships between the variables of a product or its immediate environment. Attributes of a product (Figure 2) can be internal, such as its texture, color, fat content, and temperature; or external, such as consumer attributes (e.g., gender, age) or consumption attributes (e.g., consumption location, eating occasion, accompanying foods).

When SIT Ltd. was invited to conduct a project with Nestlé Corp., the chosen topic was flavor solutions. Salad dressings were chosen as the Closed World starting point for generating ideas. The internal attributes were systematically paired with external attributes to identify interesting new relationships. When working with “texture” and “accompanying foods,” the developers posited that the product’s texture can be changed according to the food on which it is being used. A list of typical accompanying foods was hastily created (e.g., lettuce, tomatoes, sandwiches, chips, burgers, etc.) to make the process as systematic as possible.

An idea began to emerge as the developers imagined a thicker-textured dressing for sandwich usage. Marketing saw the emerging opportunity and suggested that it could be a spreadable dressing for sandwiches, similar in texture to mustard or ketchup. To that point, people had been observed pouring Nestlé’s existing Thousand Island dressing onto their sandwich bread to add flavor, trading sogginess for taste. The spreadable solution would solve this contradiction. As a result, Nestlé launched in Israel a line of sandwich spreads, including Thousand Island and Garlic flavors, positioned for sandwich consumption (Figure 3).

• Task Unification. In this pattern, an additional task is given to an existing resource. This tool helps to eliminate “functional fixedness,” in which each component is seen to perform only one task and additional tasks require the addition of more components. The essence of this pattern is to view all of a product’s existing components as potential resources that function in more than one role.

Unilever’s Cornetto was originally manufactured by an Italian ice cream manufacturer, Spica, who in 1959 was able to solve the problem of marketing frozen ice cream cones. Until then, it was difficult to market frozen ice cream cones because the ice cream caused the cone to dampen over time. Spica overcame the problem by inventing a process in which the inside of the waffle cone is coated with a mixture of oil, sugar, and chocolate, insulating it from the ice cream. Oil, sugar, and chocolate had always been available resources in the Closed World of ice cream but had their own tasks of promoting either texture or flavor. Utilizing these same components for the purpose of insulation was considered a breakthrough. Today, we can witness several examples of chocolate coating inside non-frozen cones to prevent ice cream leakage during consumption.

A Systematic Approach

Combining the Closed World principle with the five patterns results in a much more structured approach, the SIT method (Figure 4). Let’s examine this approach through the process of vegetable dough invention:

First, the developers defined the Closed World of the product. They broke the product down to its fundamental components and identified available resources. These included the various types of vegetables used for the fillings, as well as dough ingredients such as flour and other grains, salt, sugar, vitamins, and packaging.

Second, they applied the task unification tool. They systematically examined each component to see whether its function could be performed by the vegetables or some elements of them. Scoping out the list of components, they considered their options for manipulation. Seeing that the vegetables already dominated the inside of the pastry, they asked themselves whether the vegetables could also take over the outside.

Third, they defined the “virtual product.” The team envisioned creating pastry dough out of vegetables.

Fourth, they identified needs, benefits, and markets. The market value of such a product was clear—it could offer high nutritional value with low caloric value and almost no saturated fats. As for its innovative appeal, the developers felt that a product like that could be the basis of an entire platform of product lines.

Fifth, they checked feasibility and identified challenges. After the team unsuccessfully s subtracted all the flour, several adaptations led to a final product that had only 15% the normal amount of flour in it. The remaining 85% was replaced by vegetables by extracting the starches and other constituents of the vegetable and using them to replace the starches of the dough.

Of course, this thinking process does not replace market testing. It is at this stage that we look outside our company—to the market—for inputs. Thus, marketing research remains an integral part of the innovation process, but it simply moves to a later stage. Companies no longer need to depend on the market to raise ideas for them—there is a structured, internal process for that. The research is there to validate and “tweak” the ideas to make the technologies as marketable as possible.

A Recipe for Success

The SIT process leads developers to innovative technological concepts that can surprise and delight the market. But, because of the constraints, the process also relies heavily on the existing knowledge base of the company, as represented by its food technologists. In fact, this is the very reason that SIT ideas—and new technology ideas in general—lead to differentiated products in the market. Instead of depending on information streaming in from the market—a source available to everyone—the ideas arise as a product of the company’s unique intellectual property, proprietary knowledge, and current resources. Developing new technologies in an efficient, structured manner, leading to differentiated, innovative products on the market is what we’d call a recipe for success.

BY YONI STERN, ROBYN TARAGIN, AND SHAHAR LARRY

Originally published FOOD TECHNOLOGY 10.07

An Effective Tool for Problem Solving – Part 2

Published date: October 10, 2021 в 12:37 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology,Problem Solving

In Part 1 we described a method for laying out a chain of events that describes a problematic state of affairs, starting out from a problem statement. We call the resulting diagram a UDP chain, where UDP stands for Undesired Phenomena. I used an example from 6sigma.org to create the following map. If you are one of the few people on the globe who have not read Part 1 (you and the LinkedIn algorithm(:, I strongly recommend that you click here to do so, and 7 minutes later return to continue reading here. In this Part, I will continue with the same example to demonstrate a principle and a tool that can be used to “break the chain” and find solutions to the problem. The following was the UDP Chain based on the Root Cause analysis in the 6sig.org example:

Creating the UDP chain usually results in a first wave of ideas or at least directions for solutions. Simply laying out the problem in this way is conducive to fresh thinking, and to the discovery that some of your colleagues may even understand the problem totally differently from you. But this is only the first part of the exercise.

To test a UDP Chain, we recommend that you read it aloud, from bottom to top, as if you were telling a story. Any defects in the causal logic will immediately emerge as you listen to yourself. In this case the story could sound like this: I have a hole in my pocket, so I lost my wallet, so I was left without cash, so I didn’t buy gas, so my gas tank was left empty, so I couldn’t start my car, so I couldn’t drive to work, so I got to the office late, so I got in late (again) to a meeting with my boss, so it added to my boss’s list of complaints, so I needed to prove myself even more, so I needed to stay late in the office. Every instance of the word “so” represents one of the small causal arrows in the diagram, and if I say, for instance, that there was a hole in my pocket and therefore my wallet got lost, I am accepting the causality of: hole in pocket -> wallet lost. Or: I will get into the office late -> I will arrive late at the meeting. The general structure of the UDP chain is therefore this:

Link N exists and therefore Link N+1 will also come to be (and therefore Link N+2, N+3 and so on). In our approach to problem solving, we aim to break this seemingly necessary sequence of events, by first asking a challenging question:

A)   What if, DESPITE N, NOT N+1?, which we can phrase also as:

A*) Let’s accept that N will happen, and then see how we can make sure that in spite of this fact, still N+1 will not happen.

This question leads to a second wave of ideas (the first came through the creation of the UDP chain itself), each created through posing the question on a specific pair of links.

  • What if despite the fact that my car won’t start, I can drive to work? (take a cab, get a ride, rent a car, call an Uber etc.)
  • What if despite the fact that I can’t drive to work, I will get to the meeting on time? (Zoom?)
  • What if despite the fact the I lose my wallet, I will have cash (next time)? (payment app?)

As you may note, each of these questions brings up thoughts, some more mundane others more exciting, but what they all have in common, and this is the power of what we call the first Qualitative Change Question, is that you eschew the tyranny of the causal necessity. Think how often we automatically assume that one bad thing leads to another. The Qualitative Change question challenges this mindset. It is also wise in the way that the famous AA Serenity Prayer (which, I just learned through WP, was written by Reinhold Niebuhr) teaches us:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.

With God’s role played in our case by the Spirit of Innovation, we can aim to replace the misguided search for the miraculous Root Cause which when extinguished will solve our problem, with an acceptance that some things we cannot change, don’t need to change, and, as we will see later, may even not wish to.

As I demonstrate in my article about the COVID World (click here to read) both individuals and corporations tend to make the automatic leap from, say, “there is strict social distancing” to “my restaurant/theater business is ruined” while others, who resist the urge, demonstrate that the option to break the chain exists. I am not espousing the New Age concept that just by dint of willing something you can achieve it, only pointing to a possibility to challenge the assumption that you necessarily won’t.

Asking this question provides you with two benefits:

1)    You can select a variety of entry points to tackle your problem;

2)    You gain flexibility of thought by reconsidering the causal relationship between links in the chain.

You are now ready to ask the Second Qualitative Question, which will challenge your thinking even further than the first:

Qualitative Change Question 2: Given a link N, what if not only will N+1 not come to pass, but

The more N increases, the less N+1 will obtain.

This question not only breaks the causal chain, but turns it on its head.

  • The more I lose my wallet the more cash I will have (maybe losing my wallet repeatedly will convince me finally to keep my cash elsewhere?)
  • The less cash I have the more I will be able to buy gas (I will finally download the payment app to my phone?)
  • The longer my boss’s list of complaints the less I will need to prove myself to her (I finally realize that I don’t want to work for a boss who constantly complains about me, and I finally make the move and leave the job?)

This is the classic “Qualitative Change” in SIT terminology: you train yourself to focus less on the phenomena that are bothering you and more on the relationships between them, and then to challenge the necessity of these relationships. This is pretty powerful when you manage to internalize the habit, and not only in work-related contexts:

  • We took the family to the beach and the more it rained the more fun we all had.
  • The more time I had to spend driving the girls to their activities around today, the more I advanced with the article I was supposed to write.

Note that if in the first example one could claim that it was just a matter of defining what I considered as “having fun”, in the second example there is an objective measure – the article’s deadline, and the task was indeed objectively achieved by running the article’s outline in my mind as I was driving or sitting around and waiting, or maybe even by discussing some of my premature ideas with the girls while in the car (a conversation such as the one that gave birth to one of my recent posts). Back to a business context and some real-life examples from the past year:

  • The less our customers can come to our bank branch, the stronger our relationship becomes (launch an initiative for calling our clients at home and offering support)
  • The lower the demand for our flagship product, the more profitable we will be (use the opportunity to focus on launching our higher-margin next generation for which we never managed to get proper management attention before).

You may have noticed that this flipped approach to assessing causal relations, although not identical, is a more generalized form of the well-known tactic of turning a problem into a solution. The UDP approach is wider, and it very rarely fails to deliver solutions, but even when it doesn’t, it invariably leads to fresh perspectives about your predicament.

In future installments we will analyze specific case studies to demonstrate in further detail how these tools can be used and converted into daily habits. Meanwhile, please try this at home!

[The tools described in this post have several progenitors. They are mainly based on the PhD work of Roni Horowitz, who in turn was strongly influenced by the work of both Genrich Altshuler and Karl Duncker, with contributions from Jacob Goldenberg and the SIT team as it used and refined the tools in 25 years of work. No one but me is to blame for the philosophical comments; they are my fault only.]

An Effective Tool for Problem Solving – Part 1

Published date: October 3, 2021 в 12:26 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology,Problem Solving

If you come to a problem-solver and say: “I have problem X”, most chances are that they will tell you to search for the Root Cause (RC) – a basic rule of Problem Solving (PS). I want to propose that in most cases looking for the RC is not an effective nor an efficient way of going about PS. I will then present the basic principles of an alternative approach, which I believe can very often be more useful.

Here is a definition of RC from Wikipedia:

A root cause is an initiating cause of either a condition or a causal chain that leads to an outcome or effect of interest. The term denotes the earliest, most basic, ‘deepest’, cause for a given behavior; most often a fault.

And this one, from ASQ.org, refers specifically to the common usage of the term in the context of Quality:

A root cause is defined as a factor that caused a nonconformance and should be permanently eliminated through process improvement. The root cause is the core issue—the highest-level cause—that sets in motion the entire cause-and-effect reaction that ultimately leads to the problem(s).

All this speaks to a widespread intuition: that in order to solve a problem one must look beyond the symptoms, and dig deeper “to its roots”. In fact, since the term seems to have been in circulation at least since the late 19th century or beginning of the 20th, its existence may even have contributed to the strength of this common intuition. So, what’s not to like?

To demonstrate the limitations of searching for a RC, and to demonstrate an alternative, let us use an example that appears in 6Sigma.us, as an example of using a common tool for RC analysis, named “The 5 Why’s” and attributed to Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota.

The problem statement does not appear explicitly but presumably it is: “My car won’t start”.

  1. Q – Why won’t your car start? A – There’s no gas.
  2. Q – Why is there no gas? A – You didn’t buy any.
  3. Q – Why didn’t you buy any? A – You didn’t have any cash at the time.
  4. Q – Why didn’t you have the cash to buy gas? A – You lost your wallet.
  5. Q – Why did you lose your wallet? A – There’s a hole in your coat pocket.

The RC here is, obviously, the hole in the Problem Owner’s (PO) coat pocket, and obviously, it makes a lot of sense to fix this hole, if PO doesn’t want to be in the same predicament again or suffer even worse consequences. But let us look at a different approach, that starts out very similarly but then diverges dramatically from RC analysis.

We write the initial problem statement in the middle of the page, and, before we ask the Why questions, we ask, five times: “So what?”. Then, we add the 5 Why questions and their answers below, as in a RC analysis. The resulting chain could look like this:

 

This series of causes and effects, which we call a UDP Chain, where UDP stands for Undesired Phenomena, seems like just a longer version of the same list produced by the 5 Why’s, but conceptually, it is a total rebuttal of some crucial aspects in the RC approach, resulting in an approach that addresses the crucial faults of RC analysis:

1)   The Problem Statement is not “the problem”. It is the intuitive manifestation of the pain felt by the PO (problem owner) at a given moment. More often than not, we will discover, through building the UDP Chain, that what needs to be fixed is elsewhere, or in several “elsewheres”.

2)   The reason we start building upwards, rather than starting with the Why’s going downwards is twofold:

a.    It gives a measure of the importance or urgency of the problem, thus providing an evaluation of the prices one is willing to pay for a solution.

b.    You may discover that what you perceived as a problem isn’t in fact something you need to change. I personally find this the most useful part of the exercise, when I use it on my personal problems (my 2nd grader refuses to study math, so what?, so her teacher will be angry, so what? so she will fail her this year? so what? So she will have to work much harder next year, great – let that be a lesson for her, excellent, I don’t need to do anything about it now).

3)   The UDP chain opens up an entire range of entry points to solve the problem. In the Part 2 of this article, we will introduce an important tool for finding solutions based on the UDP chain analysis, but independently of which specific tools you will use, the UDP parses the problem situation in such a way that you have now at least 12 entry points or angles of attack to try to solve it. The worst you can do at this stage is to narrow the search to one specific link, whether root or other – there is absolutely no reason to deal with the hole in the pocket first!

4)   Even if you do want to focus your efforts on a single link, there may be very good reasons to focus on others, rather than the “root” link, depending on various factors, for instance:

a.    If you are there, with the car, at the side of the road, the state of your coat pocket is undoubtedly very low on your priorities. You may, instead, wish to get hold of some money, or some gasoline, or find someone to replace you at the meeting.

b.    The coat might have been lent to you by someone and you don’t intend to ever see it again, so why bother about the hole?

c.    Your problem is that you tend to lose your wallet constantly. Today it was through the hole, but other times because you just forgot it, or left it in the office or whatever. Fixing the whole wouldn’t really be very helpful then.

d.    In the same vein, you can easily imagine how to continue this series of scenarios in which the RC is low on the PO’s priorities. Why direct their thinking to it then?

5) What determines the level in which the problem should be tackled are two parameters:

a.    Define which is the lowest link that you are not willing to accept and make sure you break the chain somewhere below that point. Example: if the only thing I care about is not having to stay at the office late to impress my boss, then I can break the chain at any link below #12 – that means I can tackle any of the 12 links below! Even link 11, meaning that in principle I could still be stuck with the car, be late for the meeting, incur the boss’s rage, and just find a way to show that I am trying harder without having to stay late. But obviously, if I am not ready to live with the fact that his boss will be dissatisfied with him (#10), then the chain should be broken below that link. Hailing a cab there and then is a solution that comes to mind (lock the car well before you do that). But note that we are still very far from the RC, and it may very well be the case that we don’t have any reason to go that deep because we can find a better, faster solution, much easier to achieve and much closer to our pain point. If, for instance, you are hurrying to a wedding after work, you may decide that #5 is your lowest acceptable link – “no gas in the car’s tank” in which case, forget your meeting or boss, and make sure you somehow get gas into the tank and then get moving.

b.    Define what is the lowest link that is still within reasonable scope for intervention by the PO. You should break the chain anywhere from the link and upward. Are you a psychologist? Do you have the authority – ethically or organizationally speaking – of dealing with a certain phenomenon? Do you have the expertise? Make sure you work on a link or links that are within your scope in all these senses.

c.    The combination of this ceiling and floor give you the Solution Domain – this is the scope within which you are searching for solutions by breaking the chain.

6)   Chains of cause and effect tend very often to be cyclical rather than linear. Imagine that you ask another Why? (link #0) and come up with “He doesn’t have time to fix his coat”. In this case the top SoWhat (#11), which states that he needs to stay later in the office every day, is obviously the cause for #0, thus closing the loop and creating a (somewhat vicious) cycle.

 

 

In sum, although searching for a Root Cause can be useful at times, we recommend a method that both opens more possibilities and enables you to select the most effective and efficient course of action rather than necessarily tackling “the root”. In 25 years of experience using this approach we have found that very often just mapping the UDP Chain will usually either:

1)   Liberate you from the need of taking action (so what? Nothing);

2)   Emphasize the variety of ways that your team understands the problem state;

3)   Point to the real versus perceived pain points;

4)   Mark the scope of the problem and its potential solutions;

5)   Open a variety of angles of attack.

And – TEASER AHEAD – a UDP Chain sets the stage for finding a variety of solutions using Qualitative Change tools, to be described in Part 2.

A Systematic Approach to Process Efficiency

Published date: September 29, 2021 в 6:08 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology,Strategy

There are quite a few methods to enhance productivity and increase process efficiency. Some notable examples are 6-Sigma, Kaizen and Lean. Most of these methods are highly effective at identifying waste and redundancy, and pointing out where you need to cut, focus, or streamline. This leads very often to substantial savings and gains in efficiency. Unfortunately, as much as these methods excel at identifying where to save, they are seldom helpful in prescribing how to do so. When it comes to leading their users to ideate about potential alternatives or solutions to current wasteful practices, practically all productivity methods resort to… Brainstorming.

But, as research and practice has repeatedly and consistently established, Brainstorming is not an effective means for generating truly novel yet viable solutions.

.

In other posts [click here if you want to receive a copy] like “Busting the Brainstorming Myth” and “How Effective is DT as an Innovation Methodology?”, we have described some of the major faults of the BS method for ideation. Here, we will just briefly mention that BS tends to produce either unexciting ideas that are not new, or exciting ideas that are not viable. This is the point SIT – Systematic Inventive Thinking comes into play. As opposed to BrainStorming, SIT is a structured process calling for disciplined ideation within well-defined constraints. By changing the problem solver’s mindset, this process consistently leads to novel and effective approaches to problems and challenges.

Paradoxically, SIT requires that you focus on existing resources and capabilities (which is why the method is also referred to as “Innovating Inside the Box”), learning to use them in novel ways by breaking your so-called “Mental Fixednesses”. The method is therefore especially apt for constrained environments or systems defined by strict engineering requirements.

Here are some brief case studies that highlight how relatively small shifts in perspective, achieved through a structured process, can lead to substantially increased process efficiency.

HAVI –  Opening a Bottleneck with No Additional Resources

 

HAVI is one of Asia Pacific’s largest logistics companies. At their depots in China, HAVI faced a consistent problem: delivery truck arrival times were frustratingly unpredictable, causing a slew of issues. For example, sometimes multiple trucks would arrive at the same time. And, since Havi had a limited number of truck unloaders, truck drivers spent unnecessary time waiting for their trucks to be unloaded. To avoid this process bottleneck, HAVI needed to find a way to streamline the unloading process.

HAVI considered various solutions, but none were cost-effective. They considered, for example, extending the warehouse to add docking space for extra trucks, but realized this renovation project would be prohibitively expensive and not necessarily tackle the workforce aspect of the problem. They also considered hiring a temporary workforce during busy periods. However, since the busy periods were often unpredictable, it would be impossible to foresee when the workers would be needed.

The Right Incentive

Using SIT’s thinking tool, Task Unification, which assigns a new and additional task to an existing resource, HAVI came up with a creative idea to improve their warehouse’s process efficiency: truck drivers arriving to the warehouse were offered the option of unloading the trucks themselves. Initially, this idea seemed totally untenable, as the drivers, it was believed, would certainly refuse to take on an additional and arduous task. But, after giving the option some thought, the Problem Solving Team realized that, given the right framework, the drivers would actually be more than happy to comply. With less downtime on the job, additional pay for the extra task, and more control over their schedule, the drivers had everything to gain.

 

By incentivizing drivers to unload the trucks and paying them for the time they spent unloading, HAVI utilized its existing workforce to solve its problem. Since drivers no longer needed to wait for unloaders, they could unload their trucks immediately, resulting in reduced time and quick turnover. By using SIT’s structured thinking process, HAVI managed to save time and money, while eliminating a problematic bottleneck.

Teva Pharmaceuticals – Doubling Production Capacity – Now!

Teva, an Israeli pharmaceutical company, experienced a surge in demand for a specific drug, to which we will refer here as Drug A, when a rival company went bankrupt and could no longer deliver it to market. As new clients approached Teva for Drug A, the company realized that they had an incredible opportunity to grow their business quickly. However, to do so, and ensure retained interest from the new clients, Teva had to double capacity in two weeks’ time. The issue, however, was that the manufacturing line for Drug A was already working at full capacity. While prior attempts to increase capacity had resulted in a 15% production increase, Teva needed a more drastic change.

Drug Cocktail?

 

In order to double production quickly without significantly changing their process, Teva turned to SIT and its systematic methodology. Using SIT’s Closed World Principle, which states that solutions to a problem can be generated focusing on existing resources, the Problem Solving Team collectively listed all the elements within the production line and its vicinity (the production line’s “Closed World”).

Through a mapping process, the Teva team first identified that the greatest challenge in dramatically increasing production with the current production line (let’s call it PL-A) was one of the stages of the process, Stage 7. At the same time, the team also came to an initially counter-intuitive concept: that they could consider as part of the Closed World, another, adjacent line: PL-B, in which a different drug was being produced.

By analyzing each of these production lines and their processes, the Teva team arrived at a novel idea. It appeared that PL-B had a stage that was very similar to PL-A’s Stage 7 (the bottleneck). But, as opposed to the situation in PL-A, this stage in PL-B was actually working at only half its capacity! The ensuing solution was as simple as it was surprising: the team redesigned the PL-A process so that immediately after Stage 6, half of the ‘material’ on the Production Line was diverted to the neighboring PL-B, taking advantage of PL-B’s excess capacity in the relevant stage. After finishing Stage 7, the material was immediately rediverted back to PL-A to continue the regular Production Line A process to its conclusion (see diagram below). By using the adjacent Production Line’s (PL-B) capacity, Teva was able to double production with a minimal investment. This occurred almost immediately, giving Teva exactly what the company needed to match market demand for its drug.

 

Complement your Toolbox with a Counter-Intuitive Approach to Productivity and Process Efficiency

Most companies strive to improve process efficiency and enhance productivity. There is always some way to function faster, use fewer resources, or produce less waste. Traditional methods are effective in leading you to do so – but only to a certain extent. These methods usually point out where you need to act but fall short in helping you come up with novel ideas of how to do so. Using specific thinking tools and principles, SIT can do just that, helping you take full advantage of existing resources in surprising and innovative ways, ultimately leading to Productivity Through Innovation.

Get our innovation model that has worked for 1000+ companies.

    No thanks, not now.