Посты с тэгом: innovation method

Innovation Sighting: The Division Technique in Vision Correcting Displays

Published date: September 15, 2014 в 7:33 am

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Innovation is anything that is new, useful, and surprising. “Surprising” means that the idea makes you slap your forehead and say, “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”

Here’s a great example. “Researchers at the MIT Media Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have developed a new display technology that automatically corrects for vision defects — no glasses (or contact lenses) required.” It is a classic and clever example of the Divison Technique, one of the five techniques in Systematic Inventive Thinking.

From MIT News:

“The first spectacles were invented in the 13th century,” says Gordon Wetzstein, a research scientist at the Media Lab and one of the display’s co-creators. “Today, of course, we have contact lenses and surgery, but it’s all invasive in the sense that you either have to put something in your eye, wear something on your head, or undergo surgery. We have a different solution that basically puts the glasses on the display, rather than on your head. It will not be able to help you see the rest of the world more sharply, but today, we spend a huge portion of our time interacting with the digital world.”

In hindsight, it makes so much sense to “divide” the function of your glasses (vision correction) and place it somewhere else. For example, this technology might be applied to televisions, car windshields, windows in your home, or just about anything that you have to focus on.

To get the most out of the Division technique, you follow five basic steps:
1.  List the product’s or service’s internal components.
2.  Divide the product or service in one of three ways:

  • Functional (take a component and rearrange its location or when it appears).
  • Physical (cut the product or one of its components along any physical line and rearrange it).
  • Preserving (divide the product or service into smaller pieces, where each piece still possesses all the characteristics of the whole).

3.  Visualize the new (or changed) product or service.
4. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values? Who would want this, and why would they find it valuable? If you are trying to solve a specific problem, how can it help address that particular challenge?
5. If you decide you have a new product or service that is indeed valuable, then ask: Is it feasible? Can you actually create this new product or perform this new service? Why or why not? Can you refine or adapt the idea to make it more viable?
Keep in mind that you don’t have to use all three forms of Division, but you boost your chance of scoring a breakthrough idea if you do.
 

Innovation Sighting: Subtraction in Commercial Aircraft Cabins

Published date: August 25, 2014 в 3:00 am

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Can you imagine flying in a plane without windows? A design team from Technicon Design in Paris created an interior that displays 360-degree views that are simulated on internal screens from external cameras that capture the surrounding environment in real time. The images displayed in the interior cabin—including the walls and even the ceiling—give passengers the feeling of flying through the air in an invisible vessel.

It’s an excellent example of the Subtraction Technique, one of five techniques in Systematic Inventive Thinking.

As reported on Fox News:

For business minded clientele, the screens can also be used for video conferences. Or if you’re in the mood for a some entertainment, kick back and relax with a state of the art in flight movie. For claustrophobic passengers, the screens can also be used to project relaxing landscapes like a tropical beach. Technicon Design created the design for a National Business Aviation Association and has since won an award at the International Yacht & Aviation Awards in the exterior design category.

“I challenged the team to break out of conventional thinking with regards to a business jet exterior and interior,” Gareth Davies, design director at Technicon Design’s studio near Paris, told the Daily Mail. “We quickly settled on the controversial yet interesting idea of removing the windows from the cabin and using existing or very near future technology to display the exterior environment on flexible screens.”


To get the most out of the Subtraction technique, you follow five basic steps:\

  1. List the product’s or service’s internal components.
  2. Select an essential component and imagine removing it. There are two ways: a. Full Subtraction. The entire component is removed. b. Partial Subtraction. Take one of the features or functions of the component away or diminish it in some way.
  3. Visualize the resulting concept (no matter how strange it seems).
  4. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values? Who would want this new product or service, and why would they find it valuable? If you are trying to solve a specific problem, how can it help address that particular challenge? After you’ve considered the concept “as is” (without that essential component), try replacing the function with something from the Closed World (but not with the original component). You can replace the component with either an internal or external component. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values of the revised concept?
  5. If you decide that this new product or service is valuable, then ask: Is it feasible? Can you actually create these new products? Perform these new services? Why or why not? Is there any way to refine or adapt the idea to make it more viable?

Learn how all five techniques can help you innovate – on demand.

Getting Schooled: 5 Ways to Tackle a Challenging Problem

Published date: August 18, 2014 в 3:00 am

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Success in life depends not only on what you accomplish, but also how you overcome everyday challenges. This includes the challenges many college students face during back to school season. Don’t call mom and dad yet: Here are five easy problem-solving tips you can apply to just about any challenge, big or small.
The Example Problem:
One of the scariest back to school challenges many students face each year is physically moving away to college for the first time. You might find that you’re moving somewhere without a lot of space or resources and you have too much stuff to take with you. Let’s tackle this problem in 5 steps. You’ll find that these steps can also help you in a variety of different challenges throughout your college life!

1. Chunk It: Break big problems into smaller, more solvable problems.

How do you swallow an elephant? One bite at a time. The same is true for solving problems. For our moving scenario: Look at the stuff you have to take to school and break it into smaller, more manageable groups (clothes, furniture, electronics, etc.). Then solve the problem for one group at a time. Perhaps ship some of the clothes, have a roommate take the computer, and so on.

2. Simplify It: Solve an easier version of the same problem to see how it works.

I call this activation – getting your mind on the right path to solve a problem before tackling it. Mentally imagine solving a similar, easier version to let your mind walk through the steps one at a time. This practice helps you see new solutions and resources you might have overlooked. Continuing with the back-to-school problem, imagine having to get your stuff to a next-door neighbor instead of a whole new city. Who might help, what would you take with you, and what tools would you use? Apply possible solutions you discover here to the bigger problem.

3. Draw It: Visualize the problem to see new ways to solve it.

Seeing a problem with all of its component parts helps you put the problem in a new perspective to open up possible solutions. Draw the problem on paper and show how the various parts are connected. How do they affect each other, and which parts are more challenging than others? Organizing your dorm room? Draw it.

4. Rearrange It: List the components of the problem and rearrange them to spark solutions.

We are so used to how familiar objects are structured that it prevents us from imaging other configurations. This tunnel vision blocks our creative problem-solving. To overcome it, mentally break objects into smaller parts and randomly put them in different places. Look for an unexpected benefit. For example, what if you packed some of your school clothes outside of the suitcase — perhaps with other objects, like fragile dishes or glassware? What if you rearranged items in the car in a different way? Move every component of the problem into a new place and see what happens.

5. Challenge It: What if your assumptions about the problem are wrong?

Things change, and what you once thought was true might not be. List the assumptions you are making about the problem and imagine, one by one, what would happen if an assumption were not true. For example, what if the date you need to start school is different than what you had thought? Have you checked your class schedule? Do you need to take all the items back to school right now? What if that’s not true? Challenging, and sometimes reversing, some of your assumptions can give you just the breakthrough you need.
 
 
 
Copyright 2014 Drew Boyd (This post first appeard in Coke Journey on August 11, 2014)

Decluttering Innovation

Published date: August 11, 2014 в 1:28 pm

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People need time to innovate, but corporations tend to “tax” employees with time-wasting bureaucracy. As reported in The Economist, clutter is taking a toll on both morale and productivity.

“Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School studied the daily routines of more than 230 people who work on projects that require creativity. As might have been expected, she found that their ability to think creatively fell markedly if their working days were punctuated with meetings. They did far better if left to focus on their projects without interruption for a large chunk of the day, and had to collaborate with no more than one colleague.”

Endless meetings aren’t the only forms of corporate clutter. Complex organizational design forces people to waste valuable time and energy figuring out how to get things done. Emails overload, especially when employees don’t know how to use filtering techniques. Status reports dull the mind and waste energy by forcing employees to regurgitate old news

To fight through the clutter, I recommend the following:

1. Develop an Innovation Competency: Innovation is a skill, not a gift.  It can be learned by anyone and applied systematic. Innovative companies treat it as just another core skill by creating a well-defined set of innovation competencies and embedding them into employee’s competency model along with other required behaviors such as ethics and leadership.  A innovation method such as SIT, for example, gives an employee the ability to “innovate on demand.”

2. Drive Innovation as a Process: Defining innovation as just the NPD process is too limiting. Leaders need to sponsor cross-functional teams using systematic innovation tools that feed concepts into the NPD process.  This will eliminate the “fuzzy” in the front end to create sustainable process of generating new opportunities.

3. Innovate Under the Radar: In the Harvard Business Review, Paddy Miller and Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg make a great point in their article, “The Case for Stealth Innovation.”  Savvy innovators know how to operate under the radar and nurture innovation programs through complex bureaucracy.  Thomas Bonoma’s classic HBR article from 1986, “Marketing Subversives,”said something similar:

“I found that under conditions of marketplace change, success depended heavily on the presence of marketing subversives in a company.  Subversive marketers undermined their organizations’ structures to implement new marketing practices….And no matter what higher management had decided to allocate to various marketing projects, the subversives found ways to work around the official budget.  They bootlegged the resources they needed to implement new, more appropriate marketing practices.”

The same can be said about innovation.

Copyright 2014 Drew Boyd

How to Involve Customers in the SIT Innovation Process

Published date: August 4, 2014 в 3:00 am

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When describing the SIT method, I sometimes say it’s like using the voice of the product. That’s because SIT is based on patterns that are embedded into the products and services you see around you. If products could talk to you, they would describe the five patterns of SIT.

But there’s another important voice in business innovation: the voice of the customer. After all, that’s why you do innovation – to create new value, directly or indirectly, for your customers. A good innovator understands their needs and wants. Here are four ways to gain new insights from your customers.
One of the first things you should do is listen to what customers are saying about a particular product or brand. It’s especially important to hear what customers say to other customers. That’s when they’re the most truthful and objective, even when talking to complete strangers. If you had a way to eavesdrop on a conversation between two customers, you’ll get new insights about their attitudes.
A great way to do that is to use social media. Applications like Twitter and Facebook let you hear what’s being discussed, almost as if you were standing right there with them. It’s inexpensive and it’s easy. When you listen to customers on social media, pay close attention to the specific words or phrases they use. What emotions do they express? What beliefs do they have about a product and how it works? Whether those beliefs are true or untrue, you need to know what they’re thinking so you can design your products accordingly.
Another way to learn about your customers is to watch them. Using field research, you go into the customer’s natural setting where they use the product or service. You observe their behaviors as they do routine, ordinary activities. If you watch carefully, you’ll see things they could never have described for you in words. They’re not even aware they are doing them.
By watching them, you might learn about a new step in how they use the product. That could affect how you use the Division Technique. Or, you might become aware of a new component in their Closed World, and that might affect how you apply the Task Unification technique. Pay close attention to who else is involved, what information are they using or not using, how they prepare the product for use, and perhaps how they store it or maintain it.
A third way to get customer insights is to ask them. You’re probably familiar with marketing research tools like surveys and focus groups as a way to collect voice of the customer data. But there are two simple techniques you always want to be able to use at a moment’s notice in case you engage a customer.

The first is to use open-ended questions. An example of an open-ended question is: “What’s most important to you when using this feature of our product.”  A closed-ended question would be: “Do you like this feature of our product?” The open-ended question encourages a full, meaningful response as opposed to a closed-ended question, which encourages a short or single-word answer. You’ll get deeper insights with open-ended questions.

The second technique when talking to customers is to use laddering. Laddering means asking a series of questions, one after another, but you base the next question on the answer you received from the last one. Like climbing the rungs of a ladder, you first ask about the functional aspects of your product, then ladder up to the values the customers sees in those features.
Finally, a great way to learn about your customer’s needs is to involve them in the innovation process. Use the Function Follows Form process. Once you’ve created the virtual product using one of the five SIT techniques, you ask two specific questions. The first is should we do it? Does the new configuration deliver some new benefit? Who would want this? I can’t think of anyone better to help you answer these than your customers. After all, they stand the most to gain by a new innovation. When they see something they like, they’ll tell you or they’ll tell you how to modify the concept to make it even better.
Customers might also have new insights about the second question: Can we do it? Do we have the know how or the right material or the right processes to make this? Are there barriers that might prevent us from making this? Your customers might have some critical insight or skills about how to remove barriers or make the concept more feasible.
Listen, watch, ask, and involve. The Voice of the Customer, used along with the SIT Method, will help you become a more effective innovator.

Be Fruitful and Multiply: The Multiplication Technique

Published date: July 14, 2014 в 9:34 am

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A common problem in photography is the occurrence of red-eye, like you see here. Redeye happens when the flash of a camera goes into the eyeball. It hits the back of your eye which has a lot of tiny blood vessels. The light picks up the red color from the blood in these vessels, and then it bounces straight back into your camera lens. Your friends get that eerie, red-eye look.

But today’s cameras have a clever and simple way to defeat redeye. They have a dual flash. The first flash causes the person’s pupil to constrict enough so that very little light will get in. At that exact moment, the second flash goes off and lights up the subject matter. Voila! No redeye.
This innovation is a classic example of the multiplication technique. The Multiplication Technique is defined as copying an element already existing in the product or service but changing it in some counterintuitive way.
To use the technique, begin by listing the components of the product, process, or service. You pick one of those components, make a copy of it. You keep the original component as is, but the copied component is changed. That creates the virtual product. Using Function Follows Form, you look for potential benefits, and you modify or adapt the concept to improve it to yield an innovative idea.
NoticeableHere are some examples of multiplication. The consumer products company, Procter & Gamble, used the Multiplication Technique to create the Febreze Noticeable Air Freshener. It’s called Noticeable because it has a clever way to keep you smelling the scent. After a period of time, your nose becomes too accustomed to a smell, and the brain shuts it out. But this product gets around that. It has not one, but two different scents. The first scent pulses out into the room, but then stops right about the time your nose stops recognizing it. Just then, the second scent starts pulsing out into the room. Your nose picks up where the other one left off. Pretty clever.
Trac2Here’s another example. Gillette multiplied the razor blade of a straight edge razor to create the TRAC II Twin Blade Shaving System. The first blade gently lifts the whisker so that the second blade can cut off the whisker for a closer shave. The copied component is different in its location and function. By the way, you may have noticed Gillette and other companies have added even more blades to their razors. They have as many as five blades, but they don’t really do anything differently than the first one. I don’t consider that a creative idea, but rather just a way to improve performance.
Measuring cupLook at this measuring cup. It has two sets of measurements along the side. It has its original measurements, and a second set of measurements at an odd angle around the perimeter of the cup. Why would that be valuable? As you tilt the cup to pour liquid, the second set of measurements allows you to continue measuring the amount of liquid. That’s very convenient.
Multiplication accounts for many new products and services, and it’s straightforward to use. You want to make this powerful technique part of your innovation arsenal.

How to Organize an S.I.T. Innovation Workshop

Published date: July 7, 2014 в 3:00 am

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You can use an innovation method like S.I.T. on your own. But there are times when you want to use it in a group with your colleagues. After all, innovation is a team sport. Innovating in groups lets you harness the brainpower of others. Here are some tips and techniques to get the most out of your S.I.T. ideation session.

Perhaps the most important step is to select the right participants. The ideal number of participants is between 12 and 16. These people should be from diverse, cross functional areas of the company. About one third of the participants should be marketers from different parts of the marketing organization – market research, brand management, and so on. About one third of the participants should be technical – mechanical engineering, software engineering, operations, and so on depending on the project. And finally, about one third of your participants should be customer oriented. These are people that advocate for the customer. They include your salespeople, packaging, and customer service.
It’s also important to have gender diversity. An equal number of men and women is the ideal. Be sure participants are fully committed to participation in the workshop. Avoid letting people drop in and out as it suits their schedule. Otherwise, it interrupts the flow of the workshop.
When you begin your workshop, start by identifying the constraints around the exercise. Without constraints, the ideation will lack focus. You’re likely to generate ideas that are too wild to be considered viable.
Next, make sure you and the participants define the closed world around the problem. The closed world principle states there is an inverse relationship between distance from the problem and the creativeness of the idea. The farther away the solution, the less creative it will be. Where you define this imaginary space around the problem will have a big impact on how you apply each technique.
Once you select the techniques, create a list of the components and attributes by writing them down on a whiteboard, a flip chart, or a pad of paper. With Division, it’s a good idea to put these on sticky notes. Make sure you number the list. That helps keep the workshop more organized as you work through the lists.
When you apply a technique, be sure to work in smaller teams of two or three people, not as one large group. Working this way has many advantages. Pairs give each other their undivided attention. Working in pairs is also more efficient. As you apply a technique, assign each pair a different component from the list. That forces them to really focus, and it increases their chance of coming up with a creative idea. Be sure to set a specific time limit, say 3 minutes. This further constrains their brain to think inside the box.
When ideas are generated, try not to identify ideas with a specific person. Otherwise, people may bias the idea depending on who generated it. A simple way to do this is to have people write down their ideas. When giving credit for the source of an idea, make sure it’s from the pair of colleagues, not just one person. You have to find ways to strip ideas of their identity. This will make sure ideas don’t get thrown out prematurely.
A typical workshop can be anywhere from an hour in length to several days. Innovating is hard work, so be sure to manage the group’s energy level. Take a lot of breaks during the workshop, and mix up the activities to keep people engaged.
The S.I.T. method works because it channels people’s ideation and it regulates their thinking. You and your colleagues will generate many great ideas, so be sure the team has a process in place how you will capture and collect those ideas throughout the workshop.

Get INNOVATE! – The S.I.T. App for iPad

Mastering the SIT Innovation Method

Published date: June 16, 2014 в 3:00 am

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Let me share with you some tips and advice on how to master the techniques and principles of Systematic Inventive Thinking.

First, work on mastering one at a time, not all five at once. It’s better to limit rather than dilute. Don’t overwhelm yourself trying to be an expert in all five right away.
One way to develop your expertise in the SIT techniques is with pattern spotting. A key premise of SIT is that for thousands of years, innovators have used patterns in their inventions, usually without even realizing it. Those patterns are now embedded into the products and services you see around you, almost like the DNA of a product. You want to develop your ability to see these patterns as a way to improve your use of them.
When you go to the store or when you’re watching TV and you see some new, innovative product, try to figure out which of the five SIT techniques could have been used to generate that novel concept. You’ll begin to realize that these patterns are all around you. That helps boost your confidence in the method and in the existence of these patterns.
At some point, you’ll use pattern spotting automatically. You’ll see some new product or service and instantly your mind will try to search which of the five techniques applies. When you get to that point, you have what we affectionately call, the SIT virus. It means you are well on your way to mastering the method.
Another way to master SIT is with mental simulation. Mental simulation is used by athletes and other professionals to improve their performance. They mentally simulate performing an event or series of events as a way to groove it into their mind.
You can also use mental simulation with the SIT techniques. When you’re out and about in your daily routine, pick an object randomly and pick one of the five SIT techniques. See if you can mentally work through the steps of the method to invent some new clever product or service right on the spot.
For example, imagine you’re at the airport standing in line at security. Pick an object or the process itself and see if you can apply one of the techniques to create some beneficial service or a new product. By mentally stimulating the SIT techniques, you’re going to perfect their use and you’re going to build your confidence in your ability to apply the techniques on demand.
While learning the SIT method, be sure to leverage social media. Find other people who use the SIT method. Share ideas and stories of how it’s been used in practice. Join this growing community of SIT practitioners.
Check out blogs, webinars, LinkedIn, Facebook and Pinterest. If you visit my Pinterest site, for example, you will find a board for each of the five techniques with examples of products that demonstrate that pattern.
Check the Resources link for this website, you’ll find recommendations for books, articles, and even an iPad app that can help you facilitate each of the five techniques. You want to become a student of creativity, because ultimately that is what will help you master SIT as your dominant method of idea generation.

How Patterns Boost Our Performance…Without Even Knowing It

Published date: May 5, 2014 в 4:59 am

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Humans are creatures of habits, and these habits can be analyzed and codified into rules that help us perform better. Many times, we’re not even aware of the habits that control our choices.

Conside the child’s game, Rock-Paper-Scissors. The odds of winning are one in three. At least, that’s what chance predicts. But people do not play randomly – they follow hidden patterns that you can predict to win more games than you should, a study has revealed.

At a rock-paper-scissors tournament at China’s Zhejiang University, scientists recruited 360 students, placed them in groups of six and had each of them run 300 rounds against their fellow group members. As an incentive, winners were paid for each individual victory.

When players won a round, they tended to repeat their winning rock, paper or scissors more often than would be expected at random (one in three). Losers, on the other hand, tended to switch to a different action. And they did so in order of the name of the game – moving from rock, to paper, to scissors. After losing with a rock, for example, a player was more likely to play paper in the next round than the “one in three” rule would predict.

Humans follow patterns in many other domains including creativity. Research by Dr. Jacob Goldenberg suggests that or thousands of years, inventors have embedded five simple patterns into their inventions, usually without knowing it. These patterns are the “DNA” of products that can be extracted and applied to any product or service to create new-to-the-world innovations.
The five patterns 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.

The Subtraction Technique: Reframing Your Business Model

Published date: April 28, 2014 в 3:00 am

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I had just finished a talk on Systematic Inventive Thinking in which I had stressed the usefulness of the Subtraction technique. Just then, a group of seven men approached the stage. They introduced themselves as the management board of Standard Bank of South Africa. They liked the idea that innovation is something that can be learned and applied. They were especially interested in Subtraction. “Do you think it would help us with our problem?” asked one of the delegates.

I answered the same way I always do when asked this question: “I don’t know. But there is only one way to find out.” We found an empty meeting room in the conference hall and made ourselves comfortable. The executives explained their problem.
“We want to grow by acquiring other banks,” said one of the managers, who seemed to be the appointed spokesperson. “We agree about that. We just can’t seem to agree on the best approach. Some of us want to buy another bank in South Africa, while others like the idea of acquiring a bank in North America or Europe. How can we use this innovation method to resolve this problem?”
I thought about it for a minute. I had never faced this type of strategy problem before. I really didn’t know if Subtraction would work as well with business model innovation as it did with traditional product or service innovation. But I was willing to try.
So I jumped in. “Okay, let’s be true to the process and start from the top. The first step of Subtraction is to list the key components. What are the components of a bank?”
The directors looked around at one another. It was such a simple question that it seemed to take them off guard. “Staff. We have employees of many types.”
“Good. Let’s write down ‘staff.’ ” I picked up a marker and began making a list of bank components. “What else?” “Assets,” said one. “Liabilities!” chimed in another. “We have buildings, ATMs, locations—we call it PPE, for property, plant, and equipment.”
“Keep going.”
“We have systems, and, of course, we have customers. We also have a reputation—our brand.”
I wrote this on the whiteboard:
•    Staff
•    Assets
•    Liabilities
•    Property
•    Systems
•    Products and services
•    Customers
•    Brand
“Now let’s use Subtraction and remove one of the components, preferably an essential one.” I noticed some of the men smirking. I had gotten used to this reaction. And many times, using these techniques will create a product or service configuration that seems silly. In humor and joke telling, the human mind makes a connection between two unrelated themes to form the punch line. This causes people to laugh. But even in serious situations such as this one, actually applying a technique results in a chuckle or two. Two unrelated ideas regarding a bank were about to collide, and the men just couldn’t resist the temptation to laugh.
“Let’s subtract the staff !” said one of the senior members. He said it half-jokingly, but he was genuinely interested in where the thought process would lead.
“All right. Imagine that your bank has no employees. It has all the other components, just no staff. Now ask yourself: What bank could you buy that has the ideal labor force for the kind of bank that you are? Given your customer base, your brand reputation, products, and services, what bank out there has the perfect group of employees that fit well with the rest of your components?”
One of the executives said, “We could find an employee base that is more diverse, for example. Perhaps we want employees with a global perspective. We could acquire a bank with employees who would meld with our employees but give us a broader perspective.”
Just imagining their company without one of its essential components helped these senior executives gain a whole new perspective on how to solve their problem. It no longer mattered where the bank was located. Geography had nothing to do with it. Applying the Subtraction technique (with the replacement feature) on just one component created a more useful dialogue about acquisition targets. Seeing the problem in this new light made merging with another bank even more interesting.
I let the discussion go on for a while. “Now let’s try it again. Pick another component from the list—any one of them.”
“Brand. Let’s subtract the company’s brand.” No one was chuckling this time.
“Very good. You have all the other components of your bank, but no brand. Now, what bank could you acquire that has a brand reputation that is ideally suited for the rest of the components: your staff, customer base, and so on?” The men thought about it for a moment, each of them pondering the various banks that might fit this profile. They were silent, actively thinking about other components written on the whiteboard.
After a few minutes, the leader of the group shook my hand and thanked me. Politely, he asked me to leave the room. “We have some work to do,” he said.
Following that meeting in 2004, Standard Bank of South Africa went on to acquire banks in Argentina, Turkey, Russia, and Nigeria. Note that it did not actually get rid of its staff, brand, or any of the components with these acquisitions. The point of using Subtraction was to mentally imagine the bank without these components as a way to reframe the problem and see opportunities in new, creative ways.

It worked!

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