Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results

Next week, Jacob Goldenberg and I will launch our new book, Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results. It is the first book to detail the innovation method called Systematic Inventive Thinking, the subject of this blog for the last six years.

In the twenty years since its inception, SIT has been expanded to cover a wide range of innovation-related
phenomena in a variety of contexts. The five techniques within SIT are based on patterns
used by mankind for thousands of years to create new solutions. These
patterns are embedded into the products and services you see around you
almost like the DNA of a product or service. SIT allows you to extract
those patterns and reapply to other things.

The five techniques are:

• Subtraction:
  Innovative products and services tend to have had something removed,
  usually something that was previously thought to be essential to use the
  product or service. The original Sony Walkman had the recording
  function subtracted, defying all logic to the idea of a “recorder.” Even
  Sony’s chairman and inventor of the Walkman, Akio Morita, was surprised
  by the market’s enthusiastic response.
• Task Unification:
  Innovative products and services tend to have had certain tasks brought
  together and “unified” within one component of the product or service,
  usually a component that was previously thought to be unrelated to that
  task. Crowdsourcing, for example, leverages large groups of people by
  tasking them to generate insights or tasks, sometimes without even
  realizing it.
• Multiplication: Innovative products and services
  tend to have had a component copied but changed in some way, usually in a
  way that initially seemed unnecessary or redundant. Many innovations in
  cameras, including the basis of photography itself, are based on
  copying a component and then changing it. For example, a double flash
  when snapping a photo reduces the likelihood of “red-eye.”
• Division:
  Innovative products and services tend to have had a component divided
  out of the product or service and placed back somewhere into the usage
  situation, usually in a way that initially seemed unproductive or
  unworkable. Dividing out the function of a refrigerator drawer and
  placing it somewhere else in the kitchen creates a cooling drawer.
• Attribute
  Dependency: Innovative products and services tend to have had two
  attributes correlated with each other, usually attributes that
  previously seemed unrelated. As one attribute changes, another changes.
  Transition sunglasses, for example, get darker as the outside light gets
  brighter.

Using these patterns correctly relies on two key
ideas. The first idea is that you have to re-train the way your brain
thinks about problem solving. Most people think the way to innovate is
by starting with a well-defined problem and then thinking of solutions.
In our method, it is just the opposite. We start with an abstract,
conceptual solution and then work back to the problem that it solves.
Therefore, we have to learn how to reverse the usual way our brain works
in innovation.

This process is called “Function Follows Form,”
first reported in 1992 by psychologist Ronald Finke. He recognized that
there are two directions of thinking: from the problem-to-the-solution
and from the solution-to-the-problem. Finke discovered people are
actually better at searching for benefits for given configurations
(starting with a solution) than at finding the best configuration for a
given benefit (starting with the problem).

The second key idea to
using patterns is the starting point. It is an idea called The Closed
World. We tend to be most surprised with those ideas “right under
noses,” that are connected in some way to our current reality or view of
the world. This is counterintuitive because most people think you need
to get way outside their current domain to be innovative. Methods like
brainstorming and SCAMPER use random stimulus to push you “outside the
box” for new and inventive ideas. Just the opposite is true. The most
surprising ideas (“Gee, I never would have thought of that!”) are right
nearby.

We have a nickname for The Closed World…we call it Inside the Box.