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Academic Focus: University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Published date: August 20, 2012 в 3:00 am

Tags: art middlebrooks,chicago booth school of business,innovation method,SIT

With six of its faculty members earning the Nobel Prize, it is hard to associate the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with anything else but economics. In reality, it is an innovator in many other areas. It was the first to initiate a PhD program in business (1920). It pioneered the executive MBA degree for experienced managers (1943). Booth was also the first to establish a minority relations program (1964). It is the still the only US. business school with permanent campuses on three continents: Asia, Europe, and North America.

Booth preaches what it practices. It teaches systematic methods of innovation to its students. Art Middlebrooks is an clinical professor of marketing at Chicago Booth, and one of a growing number of professors teaching the SIT method. He is well qualified as both a practitioner of innovation as well as a teacher and scholar. He teaches both innovation and services marketing. “I find that students learn best by ‘doing,’ so I’ve structured both the in-class and out-of-class work to enable students to ‘try out’ the various tools that I teach.”

From his faculty website:

“A management consultant and trainer focused on innovation, services marketing, and branding, Middlebrooks specializes in helping service companies grow profitably through new product and service development, branding, and effective marketing strategies. He has worked with companies from a broad range of industries, including energy, telecommunications, information technology services, and e-commerce. His clients include Bank of America, BP/Amoco, Hewitt Associates, and IBM Consulting Group.”

Art is a former senior director of marketing and product development for DigitalWork Inc., partner with Kuczmarski & Associates management consulting, manager in the Strategic Services division of Andersen Consulting, and systems analyst at American Management Systems.

He is coauthor of two books, Innovating the Corporation and Market Leadership Strategies for Service Companies. He has published in the PDMA Handbook of New Product Development, Management Review, Sales and Marketing Management, and Marketing News.
He earned an MBA in marketing and finance from Chicago Booth in 1988 and a bachelor’s degree in computer science and economics from Duke University in 1984. He is a member of the Beta Gamma Sigma and Phi Beta Kappa honor societies.

Innovation Sighting: S.I.T. Patterns in Refrigerators

Published date: August 13, 2012 в 3:00 am

Written by: boydadmin

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: corporate innovation method,door in door,LG,patterns,refrigerator,SIT

This month’s Innovation Sighting comes to us from Dr. Steven Palter. Dr. Palter is a gynecologic fertility specialist and a true innovator in the medical field. He learned the S.I.T. method recently, so he knows how to spot the five innovation patterns of S.I.T. in everyday products and services.

This one is a new refrigerator launched by LG at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It is the LGLFX31945ST French Door Refrigerator with Door-in-Door. The new Door-in-Door is a classic example of the Multiplication Technique. To use Multiplication, make a list of the components of the product, select a component and copy it, then change the copied component along some variable such as size, location, or other attribute. Once you create this Virtual Product, try to identify new benefits or markets served by this configuration.

In this example, the door was copied then changed to be located just inside the existing one. It creates a whole new area for storing food. This increases the storage capacity of the refrigerator without increasing the overall exterior size. Take a look:

LG didn’t stop there. They also launched a new innovation in refrigerators called the LG Blast Chiller. It allows you to vary the temperature delivered to an item depending on the type of food or beverage. Does that pattern sound familiar? If you have studied the S.I.T. method, you would recognize the Attribute Dependency pattern. Take a look:

Very cool! I like using refrigerators in my S.I.T. training sessions because there are so many ways to apply the five techniques to yield new-to-the-world innovations. Most people find it surprising that you can innovate a concept that dates back the ancient Egyptians.

Innovation in the Mobile World

Published date: August 6, 2012 в 5:17 pm

Written by: boydadmin

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: MMRA,mobile innovation,mobile market research,research apps

The rapid adoption of smartphones is changing the landscape of the marketing research industry. Last month’s “Market Research in the Mobile World” conference in Cincinnati highlighted many ways the market research industry is trying to adjust. The industry is evolving from using lengthy printed surveys and personal interviews to instead collecting consumer reactions “in the moment” that are transmitted digitally as it happens. What was once a process of collecting “many answers from few” is becoming a process of collecting “a few answers from the many.” With their trusty appliance in hand, consumers can now share what’s on their mind virtually any part of their day. Not only is data received faster, it is also more reliable by sampling smaller bites from a larger pool.

Mobile market research is proving to be better than online surveys. With online approaches, the consumer has to be taken out of the moment and put in their workspace in front of a computer. Mobile, on the other hand, gets you into virtually any consumer places including their private spaces.

The smartphone trend has huge implications for innovation professionals as well. The mobile nature of our society gives practitioners the same advantages as market researchers. Testing and refining new ideas can be done “in the moment” as ideas are generated. Imagine generating ideas systematically and at the same time, testing them outside the workshop room with potentially thousands of people.

The LAB: Innovating Toilet Paper with Attribute Dependency (July 2012)

Published date: July 30, 2012 в 9:18 am

Written by: boydadmin

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: attribute dependency,corporate innovation method,SIT,toilet paper

When Joseph Gayetty invented commercially available toilet paper in 1857, he called it “The greatest necessity of the age!” Of course, he wasn’t exaggerating. The use of paper for toileting dates back to the 6th century AD. Gayetty’s Medicated Paper was sold in packages of flat sheets, watermarked with the inventor’s name. Since then, many companies have tried to innovate this product. Many innovations are simple gag gifts while others are quite useful.

For this month’s LAB, let’s apply the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., to create new concepts for toilet paper. S.I.T. is a collection of thinking tools, principles, facilitation methods, and organizational structures to help companies innovate products, processes, and services. We will use the Attribute Dependency Technique, one of five in S.I.T..

Attribute Dependency differs from the templates in that it uses attributes (variables) of the situation rather than components. Start with an attribute list, then construct a matrix of these, pairing each against the others. Each cell represents a potential dependency (or potential break in an existing dependency) that forms a Virtual Product. Using Function Follows Form, we work backwards and envision a potential benefit or problem that this hypothetical solution solves.

We start with a list of attributes: internal (those related to the product) and external (those related to the environment immediately around the product – not within the manufacturer’s control).

Internal:

number of plys
coarseness of ply
shape of ply
size of ply
number sheets per roll
color
temperature
moisture content

External:

age of user
medical condition of user
mood of user
frequency of user

Here are some concepts that might emerge from these attributes.

Marketing Innovation: The Subtraction Tool in Brand Development

Published date: July 23, 2012 в 3:00 am

Written by: boydadmin

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: Canada,corporate innovation method,SIT,subtraction

Perhaps harder than branding is re-branding. Once the market associates your brand with a specific promise, it is difficult to get people to shift over to a newer or more updated meaning. This is especially true for brands that have been around a long time. Take the brand of Canada, for example. It adopted the instantly-recognizable Maple Leaf as its national flag in 1965 over contending choices such the one shown here. Now Canada is re-positioning the brand to update its global image. The new campaign, “Know Canada,” makes clever use of the S.I.T. advertising tool called Subtraction.

The tool is one of eight patterns embedded in most innovative commercials. Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues describe these simple, well-defined design structures in their book, “Cracking the Ad Code,” and provide a step-by-step approach to using them.

From PSFK: “Bruce Mau Design partnered with Studio 360 to redesign the Canadian brand that is more fitting for the modern world. A country that is more known for its maple syrup, and freezing cold weather, The ‘Know Canada’ campaign depicts the country as a place that’s more vibrant, innovative, refreshing, and a leader in global issues. The idea is simple, and uses the two red rectangles of the Canadian flat as almost like bold quotation marks. Icons like well-known celebrities, scenic views, famous political figures, and even peanut butter, are highlighted in the middle of the two red posts. The rebranding campaign can be rolled out as print posters, billboards, mobile apps, and even passport stamps and beer jugs.”

The iconic red maple leaf in the middle has been subtracted. Subtracting out a familiar part of a product stirs our minds and activates the Structural Fixedness in all of us. Structural fixedness (similar to Functional Fixedness) is the tendency of the mind to see things as an organized whole (a gestalt). We have trouble reconciling when something obvious is missing.

The use of the Subtraction technique works well here because the campaign replaces the maple leaf with other symbols of Canada to make the mind create the linkage. Take a look:

What’s in a Name

Published date: July 16, 2012 в 3:00 am

Written by: boydadmin

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: Duncker,fixedness,innovation method,scientific american,SIT,task unification

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Look at this word, then see what mental picture you get: HAMMER. Like most people, you probably see a person’s hand wrapped around a metal or wood stick with an object fixed on top. You may see this object being used to strike other objects. You may imagine the heaviness of the object. The word “hammer” is a mental shortcut that instantly conjures up all the memories and associations you have with that thing. Naming objects is useful.

But the names we give items also creates a barrier to innovative thinking. We have a difficult time seeing that object doing anything else than the task assigned to it. It is also difficult for us to imagine using other objects to do the job of a hammer. It is a condition called Functional Fixedness.

Psychologist Karl Duncker discovered Functional Fixedness when he posed his famous “candle problem.” In this classic 1945 experiment. Duncker sat participants down at a table positioned against a wall. He gave each one a candle, a box of thumbtacks, and a book of matches, and asked them to attach the candle to the wall. Duncker realized that participants were so “fixated” on the thumbtack box’s traditional function that they couldn’t conceive of it as a possible solution to the problem. Interestingly, in later experiments, participants presented with an empty thumbtack box were twice as likely to solve Dunker’s challenge than those given a full one. Somehow, seeing the box out of context—that is, not performing its usual function of holding thumbtacks—helped them visualize it as a possible solution.

The Five Senses of Innovation

Published date: July 9, 2012 в 3:00 am

Written by: boydadmin

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: innovation,method,positioning,senses,strategy

How do you know if someone is truly innovative? I look for three things. First, does the person have a cognitive process for generating new ideas? Innovation is a skill, not a gift. It can trained and learned like any other skill. So I expect successful innovators to have such training and be able to deploy ideation methods – on demand.

Second, is the person motivated and hopeful about the future? Hope is defined as a positive motivational belief in one’s future; the feeling that what is wanted can be had; that events will turn out for the best. Research shows that an employee’s sense of hope explains their creative output at work. Hope predicts creativity.

Third, and perhaps most elusive: do they have the innovation senses to know how their efforts will succeed? I call these the Five Senses of Innovation.

How to Use Systematic Inventive Thinking for Cutting Costs and Increasing Productivity

Published date: July 5, 2012 в 3:00 am

Written by: boydadmin

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: innovation,productivity,SIT,webinar,yoni stern

REGISTRATION:

Option 1: 04:00 pm CEST / 10:00 am EDT / 7:00 am PDT

Option 2: 05:30 pm CEST / 11:30 am EDT / 8:30 am PDT

Innovation Sighting: Clothing to Keep You Cooler

Published date: July 2, 2012 в 3:00 am

Written by: boydadmin

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: attribute dependency,innovation method,omnifreeze,SIT

The Columbia Sportswear Company is launching a new line of clothing that keeps you…cooler. The Omni-Freeze® ZERO is a specialized fabric weave that increases the surface area of the fabric that contacts your bare skin. This transmits heat faster and feels cooler to the touch.

This is a great example of the Attribute Dependency Technique, one of five in the S.I.T. innovation method. Attribute Dependency differs from the other templates in that it uses attributes (variables) of the situation rather than components. Start with an attribute list, then construct a 2 x 2 matrix of these, pairing each against the others. Each cell represents a potential dependency that forms a Virtual Product. Using Function Follows Form, we work backwards and envision a potential benefit or problem that this hypothetical solution solves. In the case of Omni-Freeze® ZERO, the dependency is created between body temperature and layers of clothing.

What makes the Omni-Freeze® ZERO so special is the way the dependency was changed. Normally, we use the matrix to create a new dependency or break one that already exists. In this case, a dependency already existed between body temperature and layers of clothing – the more layers you have, the warmer you get. But with Omni-Freeze® ZERO, the dependency is reversed – the more layers you have, the cooler you get. Reversing a dependency is a powerful and provocative way to break fixedness and create new innovations.

Here is a short demonstration of the new product:

The LAB: Innovating a Museum with S.I.T. (June 2012)

Published date: June 25, 2012 в 3:00 am

Written by: boydadmin

Category: Uncategorized

Tags: dream catalog,museum innovation,SIT,systematic inventive thinking,the lab

According the Center for the Future of Museums, many non-profit museums in this country are struggling from a broken economic model. Attendance and memberships are declining as consumers are given more choices of how to spend their time. To attract more, museums need to have good storytelling, stagecraft, showmanship, great imagery, and great sound. They need to tap deep passions and emotions to create “product” that is meaningful to audiences. Otherwise, many museums will shut down.

For this month’s LAB, let’s apply the innovation method, S.I.T, to a museum. Students from my Innovation Tools course at the University of Cincinnati created new concepts for a local museum, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The students portrayed the concepts in a Dream Catalog as a way to visually tell the story. You can download the entire catalog here.

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