Innovation

Non-Tech Innovation – Three reasons why your company needs it to succeed

Published date: December 15, 2021 в 4:34 pm

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Category: Innovation,Strategy

Is technology stealing the limelight of innovation? Obviously, a lot of innovation is about technology, and technology can drive innovation in many ways. But beware the trap: sometimes organizations equate I = T and miss out on the huge opportunities of non-tech innovation.

Meet John, the owner of a global hotel chain in Singapore. John traveled a lot and used his travels to stay at competitors’ hotels to learn about their services, facilities, food and more.

On one of his trips, John came back to one of Bangkok’s famous hotels, about a year after his first visit. As he approached the front desk he was amazed as the receptionist smiled at him and said “Welcome back, sir. It’s so nice to see you again.”

Impressed as he was, John kept thinking about this welcome. “How did she know I was here before?” he wondered. “There is no way she remembered me, so what is it?” John came to the conclusion that the hotel must have some kind of facial recognition software that informed the receptionist whenever a past guest was returning to the hotel. Regardless of the technology behind it – John felt he definitely wanted to create the same experience for his returning guests.

Back at his office, John consulted with his management team and several specialists. After significant research and deliberation, they recommended installing cameras in each hotel and using a designated software that will alert the receptionist whenever a returning customer is checking in. The cost for the system was several millions of dollars!! Excited as he was about the heartwarming effect of the personal approach, John had to abandon the idea. It was just too much money. He put it behind him, but from time to time wondered if that hotel in Bangkok actually spent that much money on such a system.

The following year he revisited the same Bangkok hotel, and when he approached the receptionist he was again greeted warmly as a returning customer. “I must know,” he said to the receptionist, “I have indeed stayed in this beautiful hotel before, but you seem to know that without even entering my name into the computer… How do you do that?” The receptionist smiled at him warmly and explained:

“It’s actually very simple. We have agreements with all the taxi companies that service the airport. Whenever they drive a guest to our hotel they engage in conversation and ask, among other things, whether this is their first visit to the hotel. If it is the first visit the driver will put the suitcase on the guest’s left-hand side, and if it is a returning customer on the right. We pay the taxi companies $1 per customer, so everybody wins.”

We are willing to bet John never saw that one coming.

John is not the first to assume the tech route was taken. Technology is changing and shaping our lives at a radical speed. It seems that unless it negates the laws of physics, we can develop anything. And amazing things are being developed. But is it always necessary or is the tech hype pulling the wool over our eyes and making us overcomplicate things? As John’s story just proved, we need to remind ourselves that there is still room for other kinds of innovation. Here’s what you stand to gain:

  1. Agile and cheaper ideas and solutions – New technology can be costly, with lengthy development time. Non-tech ideas can often be rolled out directly by its inventors (as opposed to external developers) using resources that are more readily available. As we saw with John, facial recognition software would have offered a similar service. But there is something about the “suitcase solution” that makes it a more feasible option (especially in the short term) and somewhat more elegant.
  2. Getting the whole company involved – Viewing innovation as tech solutions only, limits who is able to take part. When you widen the definition, you encourage everyone in the organization to contribute. If your company is serious about creating a culture of innovation, promoting new ways for doing things: whether it’s marketing, sales, enhancing productivity, developing new services…celebrate those directions too. What people come up with will surprise you.
  3. Breaking fixedness – Sometimes the process of innovation is overly technological. Instead of improving a given situation through examining both intuitive and non-intuitive directions, technology gets thrown into the mix as the obvious way to evolve (or to at least give the illusion that you are advancing and improving), regardless if it’s really needed or not. Take the Path of Most Resistance and see what results when you challenge your thinking to new, lucrative directions.

Technology might be the way of the future, but non-T innovation is still a worthy player in its own right. Let it have a loud voice in your organization. You never know what the future will be, and you want to be sure you have enough channels proposing it.

Managing the “Air-Time to Contribution” Ratio

Published date: December 8, 2021 в 5:14 pm

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Category: Innovation,Innovation Facilitation

My mother liked to strike up conversations with strangers of all stripes, and it was one of my favorite childhood pastimes to listen in. But sometimes, when they babbled away uncontrollably, she would turn to my sister and me and mumble: “mental constipation, verbal diarrhea”. My professional life provides, alas, many occasions in which I am reminded of this indelicate quip. With a softer approach in mind, I have developed throughout the years a practical tool for managing the contributions of participants in a workshop that I would like to share with you.

First step: Mentally visualize the participants, each placed in one of four quadrants, defined by two axes:

  • Quantity – the amount of air-time they tend to occupy (how often and how much they speak).
  • Quality – your assessment of their potential contribution to achieving the goals of the session.

This segments your public into four groups:

Participants in each quadrant require different treatments. Your second step, therefore, is to interact with each group according to the following guidelines.

A’s (reticent with low contribution potential) – Balance OK, no harm to the dynamics, unless there are too many A’s in the room, which means that something is terribly wrong. But even if there are relatively few A’s, it is worth exploring: Maybe an A shouldn’t have been there in the first place? If so, is it too late to release them from this unnecessary commitment? Maybe they can be highly valuable elsewhere? But maybe all they need is to better understand their role in your workshop and what they could potentially contribute. I remember a Plant Manager in Mexico who was sure that the Marketing Manager and her team should be allowed to lead an enthusiastic discussion about new products without any spoil-sport manufacturing comments from him, until I explained that his professional considerations (provided that they were phrased constructively) were crucial guidelines within which the marketing team, and others, could let their imagination fly. He then transformed into a true partner of the marketing participants, helping them convert their ideas into implementable projects.

B’s (verbose with low potential contribution) – Need controlling, because they are misusing the team’s most valuable asset – time. There are many ways, some more subtle than others, to control a rampant B, and your task is as delicate as it is crucial to the success of the engagement. First, there is high potential for hurt feelings, and second, the possibility always exists that there is, in fact, more value in B’s contribution than initially meets the ear.

C’s (reticent with high potential contribution) – Can be easily mistaken for an A and left alone. Thus, their potential contribution is lost, with unfortunate consequences both for them and for the team. An important task for you as facilitator is to find a moment – probably during a break – to conduct your differential diagnosis: is the introverted engineer from R&D an A who shouldn’t have been invited in the first place, or is he an invaluable trove of coaxable, priceless information?

D’s (verbose with high potential contribution) are a facilitator’s best friends. They contribute. They sustain the energy. They give you the (positive) feedback you need. They will extract you from those uneasy moments of general silence. They are truly your allies. But beware of the trap of allowing them to lead the discussion uni-directionally, squelching other voices that may open the more innovative avenues you would like to explore.

In summary, all participants are potentially your friends and allies. A balanced management of “air-time to contribution”, with differential treatment for each and every one of them will ensure that this exciting potential is realized.

Metaphors We Work By

Published date: December 1, 2021 в 5:23 pm

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Category: Innovation,Innovation Facilitation

The name of this document, as well as its content, was inspired by a thought-provoking book entitled “Metaphors We Live By”. The book was written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, a linguist and a philosopher, respectively, and published in 1980. Lakoff and Johnson’s main thesis in the book is that “metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”

When talking to people about SIT, whether in casual conversation or as part of a teaching or facilitation scenario, many of us have found that the easiest way to convey what we are about, and the best way to make the (metaphorical…) penny drop, is often by using a metaphor. Below you will find a brief description of some of the metaphors that I have found to be most useful. Here I will share four of the ten metaphors that I have identified – let us know if you would like to read about some of the others.

The Evolutionary Metaphor

Ideas are like species. There are many of them out there. They struggle for attention and resources, and only the fittest survive. In “idea nature”, random variations of ideas emerge through accident and luck. Some of these variations – the 3M Post It, Penicillin – turn out to be useful and successful while others (the majority) disappear. What SIT does is to create the variations non-randomly. Thus, SIT is about systematic or directed creation of “idea mutations” or “idea variations”. This means that the random factor is taken out of the idea evolution process. Some of the advantages, other than the obvious, are:

  1. SIT variations are created using the 5 patterns. Thus, instead of just speeding up the process by proactively creating variations, SIT leads to the creation of types of variations that have been shown to have a higher probability of survival.
  2. Through the FFF structure, SIT not only speeds up the generation of variations, but also accelerates the selection process by passing each variant immediately through the market and implementation filters.
  3. As the SIT method evolved (more evolution there), additional tools and practices have been incorporated to make sure that those ideas that have been non-randomly selected, get to be packaged in such a way that their survival is guaranteed, or at least supported.

The Yoga Metaphor

The mind, like the body, can be trained to be more flexible. Our thinking processes have numerous joints and muscles, and many of them are rarely flexed or stretched during the course of our everyday thinking. When one learns SIT and practices the SIT tools, one is rotating mental joints and stretching thinking muscles. If this is done consistently, the entire thinking system is positively affected. Yoga is not a random collection of bodily movements, but rather a coherent system that systematically covers all major body parts, with special attention given to areas and movements that are ordinarily neglected. This demonstrates the difference between SIT and brainstorming or the practice of solving puzzles and riddles. The latter activities also flex the mind, but do not necessarily reach the forgotten and neglected parts of the system.

The Yoga metaphor also helps answer the famous question: Does an SIT expert actually use the tools in real life? The answer is positive, but in a way similar to that in which a Yogi “uses” the Yoga postures in real life – it just makes any movement of the body more flexible, sure, and effective.

The Michael Jordan (Leonel Messi) Metaphor

Many people will counter any attempt to teach creativity-enhancing tools with some variety of the following claim: Creativity is an innate talent – you either have it or you don’t. The implication is, of course, that in the former case you don’t need instruction, while in the latter it will do you no good. This is a specific instance of the well-known nature-nurture debate, and our (biased, but well grounded) view is a specific version of its common-sense resolution. Yes, creativity is a talent, and as such has an innate component (nature). No amount of training would turn me (or you) into a Michael Jordan. On the other hand, MJ himself could never have achieved his legendary abilities without a huge amount of training, including a wide variety of techniques, exercises, and tips, given by experts whose playing abilities were much inferior to his. This metaphor also serves as a useful answer to the (childish, but still common) complaint that “how many inventions have you [SIT facilitator] come up with, that give you the right to teach me [the inventor] how to be creative?”

 The Firm/Marshy Ground Metaphor

The common conviction is that when individuals deal with everyday notions and ordinary activities, they are on firm ground, stable and safe. However, all innovative ideas live in “marshy terrain” and, thus, in order to achieve innovation, one must be willing to leave firm ground and wade through marshes in the hope of reaching undiscovered territory. Due to the buzz around innovation, people find themselves wishing to wade in the marshes but, intuitively, they fear the thought of getting muddy or, worse yet, not being able to return to the firm ground from which they ventured out.

SIT’s novel claim is that this underlying assumption, that innovation lives in the marshland, is misleading and altogether false. Rather, the innovative idea resides on ground as firm and stable as that on which current thoughts and modes of being are exist, and it is merely the path to this innovative idea that requires wading through the marsh.

SIT concedes that, indeed, to achieve innovation one must be willing to wade through these marshes. This wading process may be quite unpleasant and cannot, by any stretch, be considered as primarily entertaining (“we’ll have great fun”). There are, however, two consolations: first, a structured methodology goes a long way in guiding you safely through the marshy ground, and second, once the innovative idea is reached, one finds oneself, again, on firm and stable ground.

As you may have seen, metaphors not only help one understand a concept better, they can also lead to novel points of view on an oft visited theme. To pique your curiosity, these are the other six metaphors:

  • The Opening-a-Black-Box Metaphor
  • The Alexander Technique Metaphor
  • The Iyengar Yoga Metaphor
  • The Flowing Water Metaphor
  • The Jumping-the-Gap Metaphor
  • The Brazilian Lover Metaphor

Please share your metaphors or thoughts about ours.

Case Studies of the Application of SIT in the Chemical Industry

Published date: November 17, 2021 в 5:32 pm

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Category: Innovation

The article shows the need for an unconventional innovation methodology within the field of new product development (NPD). Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) is such a method which has been applied successfully in the chemical industry.

An overview of the method, together with case studies from the industry, demonstrates the value of this departure from traditional thinking and other, more widespread, innovation methods.

Link to the full article: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880443

New Dimensions in Cosmetology

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

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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.

Inventive Solutions: Problem Solving Techniques in the Healthcare Industry

Published date: November 3, 2021 в 5:50 pm

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Category: Innovation,Problem Solving,Strategy

In the years leading up to 2001, the statistics showed a consistent annual increase in both the prescription and use of antibiotics among children. Today, it is common knowledge that overuse of antibiotics is one of healthcare’s biggest concerns. Back then, only healthcare professionals were aware of the danger of the evolution of “supergerms” with resistance to antibiotics. This, together with the financial impact that heavy antibiotic consumption had on the insurers (i.e. HMO’s) who subsidize the drug’s purchase, incentivized the HMO to find a solution.

Prescribing for the wrong reasons

Funnily enough, the biggest contributors to the problem were the HMO’s own General Practitioners, who obviously knew better. It was found that they were over-prescribing antibiotics to their patients not because they felt that it was the correct treatment, but because the HMO was – in part – evaluating them according to customer (i.e., patient, or in this case, patient’s parents) satisfaction. Not surprisingly, parents with children who did not feel well had their own motivations to get an antibiotics prescription. Parents wanted to give their children some type of medication to feel they were contributing to end their child’s suffering and… they needed to get back to work ASAP.

No silver-bullet solution

SIT was invited by the HMO to help generate solutions to this problem. After applying the Systematic Inventive Thinking method during multiple sessions over several days, it became apparent that there wouldn’t be a silver-bullet solution, but a collection of inventive solutions addressing different aspects of the problem. However, at the forefront remained the paradox of the doctors’ dilemma: wanting to satisfy their patients while giving the most appropriate clinical solution. In other words, the HMO was looking to remove the connection between the patient’s request for antibiotics and the doctor’s decision regarding the right treatment.

One of the most inventive solutions generated was a result of SIT’s Multiplication tool: Add to the problem world something that is similar to what already exists there.

 

 

Two for one – Inventive Solutions!

The idea was that the doctor would give the parent two prescriptions. One was effective immediately, prescribing medications that reduce the severity of the symptoms – nose drops, lozenges, etc. The second, effective 48 hours later, was the prescription for antibiotics. It was anticipated that if the symptoms would be gone by then (as is the case with most viruses), the parent would simply not fill this second prescription. [Note that in 2001, the OTC market in Israel was close to non-existent. Therefore, even symptomatic medicines were dispensed only by a pharmacist, even though no prescription was needed.]

This solution, together with an ad campaign against antibiotic overuse, and other solutions involving education for parents and doctors, generated an impressive decrease of 33% in antibiotic consumption over the following two years!

A very healthy, virus-free and bacteria-free autumn and winter season to you all!

13 Innovation Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make

Published date: October 27, 2021 в 12:20 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation

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Do you want to create an innovation-focused culture in your organization? Are you struggling to make organizational innovation a reality?

Are you tired of wondering why your team’s ideas don’t always seem to pan out as originally planned? Or do your team’s problems actually stem from the idea-generating phase?

 

There could be countless issues standing in the way of organizational innovation. But the truth is most of these problems are well within your control to fix.

That is, only if you know where to look and how to solve them.

 

Fortunately, that’s exactly what today’s guide will help you do. We’ll be going over some of the most common mistakes companies make when it comes to organizational innovation and indicate how you can go about correcting them.

DON’T LET THESE MISTAKES GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL INNOVATION

 

To start, you’ll need to take a closer look at your basic approach to innovation.

You do have one, right?

If you’re shrugging your shoulders, let’s start by discussing this all-too-common mistake first.

#1: You have no proper plan in place to support a culture of innovation

You want to create an environment that allows ideas to flourish naturally. That’s great, but so does everyone else.

So, what is your plan?

Without a proper plan in place, you can’t build an innovation-centric culture. It just doesn’t appear overnight or as soon as you say you are innovation-focused.

Instead, you must first create a plan and then brand it. Let’s see why this matters.

#2: You haven’t branded your innovation process

Though your first step may be building your plan, you also need to brand the entire process using a catchy name and a logo to make this abstract process tangible to your team.

It may sound gimmicky at first, but it’s proven time and again to be one of the major contributing factors helping teams successfully innovate.

The concept behind the idea is simple: By branding this process, you’re sending the message to your employees that you’re serious about innovation, and you’re committed to it.

You’re also reinforcing the idea that innovation is now a part of your culture, not just an afterthought. But caution! Correct this and Mistake #3 may be rearing its ugly head.

 

#3: You have created “Empty Branding”

Companies that heed the call to brand their processes often fall into the trap of spending large amounts of time and money on creating the hype without backing this buzz with corresponding actions. Employees then start to wonder about the gap between declaration and practice, which often leads them to regard innovation with skepticism and conclude that top management is committed only to PR.

So, as you devise your branding and internal communications plan, two things must also happen simultaneously:

  1. Someone from your team needs to take ownership of the entire process.
  2. Someone else should be consistently managing the team.

We’ll touch on both points next.

#4: No one has taken ownership of the process

It’s essential that someone take ownership of your innovation process.

Now, this does not mean they’re the only one working on the project. In fact, it’s just the opposite.

All hands are on deck. But the person in charge ensures that a system is in place. It’s branded and weaved into your culture, and it’s properly managed.

If you’re working with a small team, this person could also be the one managing the team as well.

 

Keep in mind, these are still two distinct roles and should be treated as such. Otherwise, you’ll be making another costly mistake.

The ownership role ensures that the planning is done, and the foundation is properly laid and in place.

The person in the management position ensures that your systems are working and running smoothly. And if they’re not, they’ll be the ones to make any necessary adjustments (more on this next).

#5: No one is managing innovation

Just because you create a system doesn’t mean it’s going to run on its own.

That’s why an innovation manager is key and – depending on your organization’s size – her/his team.

This person helps foster and grow the seeds that have been planted in the initial approach.

 

To succeed, your innovation Manager(s) should use a “top-down/bottom-up” approach involving both senior management and staff in programs and activities.

Your Manager and/or team will need clear assignment of roles and responsibilities and the ability to monitor that the organizational innovation is actually happening according to plan.

But even with these measures in place, if you’re making this next mistake, these actions won’t matter as much as they should.

 

 

#6: You’ve fostered an environment where people are scared to speak up for fear of criticism

In addition to ownership and management, your organization will also need people with facilitation capabilities.

These people help ensure that your employees feel comfortable speaking up — without fear of criticism or judgment.

During the group discussion, there will always be employees who speak up more often than others. But it’s essential that these team members don’t overrule the quiet ones.

If you’re creating an environment where people can’t speak up, they won’t. And some of your best ideas may never surface.

 

To alleviate this phenomenon, take breaks during discussions to moderate any employees who are taking over the conversation and encourage quiet team members to speak up without worrying about what anyone will think.

However, expressing yourself and generating ideas is still only half the battle. You must also use them, or you’ll be making this next error.

#7: You also lack proper systems to manage innovation in your organization

If you really want to see your team’s ideas take off, you need to figure out:

  1. How you’re going to manage those ideas
  2. How they will be put in place
  3. How you’ll measure their viability
  4. How you’ll gauge if something is working, needs to be scrapped, or just needs a slight tweak (more on this later)

Get these systems in place right away or your best ideas will slip through the cracks.

Speaking of ideas, the way your team ideates to come up with ideas could be another issue holding your innovation back.

#8: You’re still using traditional brainstorming-type methods

Are you still relying on the ol’ brainstorming technique where everyone sits around the conference table and tries to come up with ideas on-the-spot believing that “there’s no such thing as a bad idea”?

This is a huge mistake far too many organizations seem to be making. And their growth — or lack thereof — shows it.

In short, ideation sessions require structure and discipline if you want to break out of existing paradigms and biases.

To do this, you must focus on what you already know (“inside the box”), and then you must look at the problem from a different angle, which is also the next most common mistake on our list.

 

#9: You’re looking at the problem from the same angle every time

If you’re looking at a problem the same way every time, you’re always going to get the same results.

Take a step back and try to attack the problem head-on using what you know and the fact that your current angle is not working.

If you’ve tried to solve the problem from all sides, maybe you’ve been working on the wrong problem altogether.

 

#10: You haven’t mapped out the real problem first

If you’re stuck on the same issue and keep wondering why you’re not making any progress, you must ask yourself, “Are we sure this is really the problem?”

 

Chances are, it might not be. Start creating systems to solve the wrong problem, and you’ll be wasting everyone’s time.

So before you dive into different angles of approaching the same problem, you must first identify that you’re truly tackling the real issue at hand, not merely one posing as the problem.

Only when you correctly identify your true problem can you put your team’s skills to work on fixing it. There are tools that will help you do just that and surprise – finding the root cause is not necessarily the right way to go about it. Actually, it seldom is. Another common issue: you may not be giving your team the tools they need to succeed.

 

#11: You don’t give your team the tools they need to succeed

Even if you uncover your team’s strengths, if they don’t have what they need to get the job done, your innovation efforts will be wasted. Managers often erroneously assume that if they just put in the relevant incentives – carrots or sticks – their people will be driven to innovate. But no amount of motivation will help people who simply lack the skills and capabilities to innovate. And these can be acquired using the right methods.

And not only are the tools available, but employees can also become adept at using them, and can dramatically improve their organizational innovation capabilities with practice and dedication.

Besides giving your team everything they need to succeed, you also need to encourage communication and cooperation — especially if you have different departments working independently.

#12: Your organization is divided into silos

When business units do not communicate or collaborate, it is easy to lose sight of key insights, miss opportunities for synergies, and greatly decrease the probability of implementing meaningful projects.

Though this may occur in many ways within an organization, it is especially detrimental when it comes to organizational innovation. So, focus on fostering communication and teamwork.

 

Now, what happens when you create a plan, implement ideas from your team, and still don’t achieve the results you were hoping for?

Do you consider your team’s efforts a failure?

#13: If something doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed

Creating a culture of innovation cannot be achieved without a few failed attempts at implementing new ideas under your belt.

But it’s how you deal with these ideas that matters more than if the actual idea was a total flop.

So many organizations chalk the first (and only) loss as a sign that the idea failed and all others will similarly fail like, but this isn’t always the case.

 

You may only need a few small tweaks to your idea for it to be a huge hit and avoid innovation mistakes. Building on what didn’t work will only lead to stronger concepts.

If you’re not careful, you’re bound to toss out good ideas simply because the first run didn’t go quite as smoothly as planned and that will cost you.

 

Our experience has shown us that making an innovation program sustainable and fruitful in the longer term requires an organization to focus on the 7 elements of Organizational Innovation. Many of our most valuable insights have been learned directly from implementing these programs with our innovation partners. We will share more about this model in future articles.

eduction as a Key to Innovation

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

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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

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