The LAB: Innovating Inflight Services with S.I.T. (February 2011)
Airline service innovation seems like an oxymoron considering the industry’s reputation for low quality. But the industry is fighting back to improve its image. Companies that specialize in inflight entertainment as well as airframe manufacturers are accelerating the use of new technologies to deliver more value in the air. That’s good news for an industry that has focused way too long on cost-cutting. The next battle for supremacy will be won by airlines and aviation companies that innovate services across the experiential “journey” in a sustained way. For this month’s LAB, we will create new-to-the-world concepts for the inflight service experience using the S.I.T. tool set.
We begin by creating a list of the components of the product or service. We select a component and we further break it down to its sub-components or attributes that we can focus on. We then apply a tool to that component to change it in some way. This creates the Virtual Product. Working backwards (“Function Follows Form”), we envision potential benefits of the modified service to both the customer and the company.
Here is a list of components: