Посты с тэгом: SIT

Innovation in Practice: Three Years and Counting!

Published date: December 6, 2010 в 3:00 am

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Today marks the third anniversary of Innovation in Practice. I am happy to say I see no end in sight.  Blogging is the ultimate truth serum: it helps you discover what you know, how you learn, and how you connect to a community of fellow bloggers.  I use this blog to test my ideas, develop new ideas, and practice what I preach.  I appreciate all of you who read this blog, and I encourage you to reach out to me.  I welcome ways to improve the blog and I would love to hear topics you want me to focus on.

The themes of this blog are:

  •  Innovation is a skill, not a gift.  It can be learned like any other skill such as marketing, leadership, or playing the guitar.  To be an innovator, learn a method.  Teach others.
  •  Innovation is a two-way phenomena.  We can start with a problem and innovate solutions.  Or we can generate hypothetical solutions and explore problems that they solve.  To be a great innovator, you need to be a two-way innovator.
  •  Innovation must be linked to strategy.  Innovation for innovation’s sake doesn’t matter.  Innovation that is guided by strategy or helps guide strategy yields the most opportunity for corporate growth.
  •  The corporate perspective, where innovation is practiced day-to-day, is what must be understood and kept at the center of attention.  How the corporate practitioner views the academic community, the consulting community, and the research community is where we will find best practices.  This is where truth is separated from hype.

2010 Highlights

  • I became a full-time academic after retiring from Johnson & Johnson in May.  This frees up a lot of time to do the writing, consulting, and research in innovation that I have always wanted to do.  Even though I’m in academia, the blog’s focus will remain “The Corporate Perspective” because this is where I believe innovation has to be ignited to drive economic growth.  Academics teach, and practitioners do.
  • The LAB series continues to push me to innovate in new ways.  This year, I innovated the Blackberry, the game of baseball, website design, retail selling, Legos, service models, water access, party planning, an aquarium, wedding invitations, and the iPad.

2011 Focus

  • New Audiences:  I want to expose innovation methods to kids, seniors citizens,  people with disabilities…anyone who wants to make a difference with innovation.
  • New Relationships:  I look forward to strengthening my ties to some very special people including Jacob Goldenberg, Amnon Levav, Yoni Stern, and the entire team at S.I.T..  Also, Christie Nordhielm and Marta Dapena-Baron at Big Picture Partners, Bob Cialdini at Influence at Work, Yury Boshyk at Global Executive Learning Network, and the team at the Washington Speakers Bureau.  I look forward to new projects with Mark Adkins at PDMA and Randy Rossi at Bally Design.  All good stuff.
  • New Colleagues:  Special thanks to the UC marketing faculty (Karen, Chris, Fritz, Dave, James, Frank, Bob, Inigo, Norm, Jane, Raj, Constantine, and Ric).

 
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Crowdsourcing and the Task Unification Tool

Published date: November 29, 2010 в 3:00 am

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Crowdsourcing has a crowd of critics.  Crowdsourcing is the notion of distributed problem-solving where problems are broadcast to large groups of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions. The belief is that the “wisdom of the crowd” yields superior results over what individuals can do.  The use of the term has spread to just about any activity that involves groups of people tackling an issue.

The critics have a point. Crowdsourcing seems to be an old story retold a new way.  The idea of collaborating with others is not new.  The idea of reaching out to thousands to gain insights about a problem is not new either.  Here are two examples held out as crowdsourcing best practices that make the point.  A Catholic church in Germany launched an online open idea competition. On the competition platform, young people are encouraged to submit their ideas about what they would like to change at the Catholic Church.

That is not crowdsourcing.  That is market research.

Here is another. CreateMyTattoo connects customers with a community of 700 tattoo artists who compete to design the perfect custom tattoo.  Customers see several variations of their tattoo idea and provide feedback to the artists during the contest. The site guarantees at least ten unique custom tattoo designs or your money back!

That is not crowdsourcing.  That is competitive bidding.

Here is a better example that starts to move in the right direction.  DHL, a courier company, is testing a way to use city residents to deliver packages along the route as they go about their daily travel. The programs is called “bring.BUDDY,” and it hopes to reduce road congestion and DHL’s carbon emissions. Participants use a smartphone app to specify their travel. An alert is sent to them of any package that needs to be delivered along their route. In return, the participants receive points which they can redeem at local stores.

This is novel.  But DHL could go further with the concept.  What else do people know or do (explicitly or tacitly) that DHL could use to improve operations, reduce cost, or increase revenue?  For example, what if DHL had a way to know what delivery routes are optimal based on information fed to it by customers (through cellular technology)?  What if the crowd could identify open parking spots, report packages that need picked up, or spot activities that might demand the use of courier delivery?

There is a better way to leverage the crowd.  Rather than “source” the crowd for their explicit ideas, we “cache” their tacit, day-to-day routines to detect patterns and insights.  In “crowdcaching,” people don’t  know that they are contributing their small, incremental movements and decisions to a larger pool.  It is like digital ethnography.  We collect large samples of tiny decisions to “bootstrap” our insights and decisions.

Innovation Sighting: New World Order with Attribute Dependency

Published date: November 22, 2010 в 3:00 am

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One way to develop stronger innovation skills is to practice pattern recognition…seeing an inherent pattern used to create innovative products and services.  Pattern recognition "builds innovation muscle" and makes you more adept at applying patterns to other products and services.  Here is an interesting example that uses the S.I.T. pattern called Attribute Dependency.  This pattern creates new (or breaks existing) dependencies between attributes of a product or service.  It can also create dependencies between attributes of the product or service and its external environment.

Do you see the Attribute Dependency pattern in this map?

NewWorld

This "new world order" map creates a dependency between a country's population size and its land mass.  By correlating the two attributes, countries are located where their population is best matched to physical area.  Take a moment to study it.  It is worth the look.

While the map is interesting, one might question its value.  It is hypothetical as no country is going to move its population to another location.  If one defines innovation as NEW, USEFUL, and SURPRISING ("Gee, I never would have thought of that."), the map meets two out of three criteria.

To make it truly innovative, we use "Function Follows Form" and envision potential benefits of such a map.  We take the form of the map as is, and we hypothesize new functions it can perform.  Here are some potential uses:

1.  Training Tool:  I can imagine using this in my innovation course as a way to demonstrate Attribute Dependency.  Rather than just show students this map, however, I would have them take an original world map and apply the pattern in a disciplined way.  They might come up with this same configuration, but it is more likely they will create their own, even more novel "new world order."  After the exercise, I would share this map as a way to reinforce the idea.

2.  Research Tool:  Perhaps this map could be used in political science research to see what it says about countries and their policies.  Is there a difference between countries that have different population densities in terms of their economies, politics, and social norms?  How would things change if their population density was normalized to the rest of the world?

3.  Foreign Policy Tool:  Perhaps this map could suggest new strategies for conducting foreign policy.  What if Mexico and Iran really were next to each other?  What would it do to each country in terms of trade or conflict?  What if Germany had a lot of the oil-producing region?  Would oil be distributed more equitably?

4.  Trend Spotting Tool:  Perhaps the map could help suggest new trends in cooperation and conflict.  If India and the United States shared a border, what would the new relationship look like, and is it likely this could occur?  What new languages might emerge in certain regions given the new locations.  How would religion change?

5.  Corporate Strategy Tool:  Could this map suggest modifications to other types of maps that would help companies see new strategic opportunities?  For example, what if a company created a different map of its customer's locations based on some attribute such as "cost to serve" or "future growth potential."  Perhaps it would suggest new ways to service customers or target new customers.

 

The LAB: Innovating the Blackberry with S.I.T. (November 2010)

Published date: November 8, 2010 в 3:00 am

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Blackberry is taking a shellacking from iPhone and Android.  It’s market share has declined 4% in four months.  Why?  The company drifted from a strategy built around its core competency and is frantically chasing its app-crazed competitors. Though Blackberry defined the smart phone category, it will lose its lead unless it changes.

Blackberry needs innovation.  This month’s LAB outlines an approach for using the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., to Blackberry.  The focus is how to disrupt iPhone and Droid and re-assert dominance in the smart phone category.

The first step is to pick the core benefit that Blackberry can lead with.  Using the Big Picture marketing framework, we need to identify a “dynamic variable” that is tied directly to RIM’s core competency – secure communications.  Blackberry uses powerful codes to encrypt messages as they travel between a BlackBerry server and the BlackBerry device.  All BlackBerry traffic runs through RIM data centers and servers which encrypt and unscramble messages.  The iPhone and Droid communicate directly with ordinary email servers – unsecured.

My recommendation is to compete on privacy (NOT security which is more of the “how,” not the “why”).  Blackberry cannot compete with iPhone and Droid on functionality (apps) and design.  Instead, it needs to raise the Importance and Perception of privacy in the minds of the market.  Privacy is highly desired by people and organizations, and Blackberry is the only technology that can do many functions securely.  The trick is to extend the idea of privacy management beyond just emailing.  Blackberry wants to convince the market that privacy is more important than apps and desgin.

Characteristics of Future Innovations

Published date: November 1, 2010 в 3:00 am

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What big innovation do you expect within 10 years?  My crystal ball is no better than others.  Rather than predict innovations, I predict what characteristics they will have and how they might be invented.

1.  Mobility:  Future products will incorporate some degree of mobility and integration into the mobile lifestyle.  Smart phones fuel this.  But mobility is not all about communications.  Future products will take advantage of the data created by people as they move through their day.  The innovation templates, Task Unification and Attribute Dependency, are excellent tools for identifying these opportunities.

An MIT team is researching the feasibility of using cell phones as a unique tool to identify any emerging disease outbreaks. The team, led by Anmol Madan, said that a disease changes the mobility pattern of a cell phone user and by developing a software that tracked movements, phone calls and text messages of 70 students who were also daily surveyed for their health, the software was able to identify those suffering from an ailment.  Students who came down with a fever or full-blown flu tended to move around less and make fewer calls late at night and early in the morning. When Madan trained software to hunt for this signature in the cellphone data, a daily check correctly identified flu victims 90 per cent of the time.  Public health officials could also use the technique to spot emerging outbreaks of illness ahead of conventional detection systems, which today rely on reports from doctors and virus-testing labs. Similar experiments in larger groups and in different communities will have to be done first though.

Innovation Sighting: Innovating Political Elections with Division

Published date: October 25, 2010 в 3:00 am

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The Division template of the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., works by listing the components of the product or service, then dividing out a component either physically, functionally, or by preserving the characteristics of the whole.  Here is a unique example of the Division template with political elections.  This idea comes from innovation consultant, Lauchlan Mackinnon, in his blog, Think Differently!!.

“Political parties may say or do ‘anything’ to get elected. They will make alliances of convenience with powerful interests such as the media, big business, or unions, and they will take populist poll driven positions (which is not necessarily bad in itself in a democratic system). When a party gets elected however, it is not always the best person for the job who fills any role: it is a complex allocation system that balances party relationships and internal politics with the capabilities and contributions of members to fill the leadership roles. 

My proposition is simple: what if we could split western democratic elections in to two phases or stages: a first election about the ideas and directions for the next term in government – the goals and aspirations that the people want the government to fulfill. Then run a second and completely independent election to determine the best people to fill those specific roles. Thus for example a democratic population could vote in not only the directions that are appropriate, for example health reform or financial reform, but they can also then call for suitable candidates to lead each portfolio and vote in specific people with appropriate backgrounds (for example in health reform or financial reform) to lead those portfolios and the implementation of those changes. A professor of health administration or economics or business administration or someone with deep industry experience in those areas would then have a much better chance of being selected than in our current system. And perhaps also we could focus each individual representing the country on serving the country and the world, rather than any party system.”

To extend this idea further, imagine “dividing” the political candidate out from their constituency and territory.  Voters from another area would choose a candidate knowing they would not have to live with the results.  After listening to the campaign promises, they elect a candidate based on issues that do not affect them.  The benefit would be these voters can be more objective and not take into consideration territorial factors.

Another division observable in the U.S. midterm elections is separating the candidate from their party affiliation.  Many campaign advertisements leave the political party out so voters pick candidates on the merits of their case rather than through party biases.

“Preserving” division divides the product or service into many smaller versions, each preserving characteristics of the whole.  In this example, imagine voters had 100 votes instead of one.  They could distribute votes to more than one candidate as a way to express preference on the issues.  For example, if they liked a candidate from one party yet still liked some aspects of the other candidate, they might cast their 100 votes with a 70-30 split.

The LAB: Innovating Baseball with Attribute Dependency (October 2010)

Published date: October 11, 2010 в 3:00 am

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 Baseball has a density problem.  The ratio of “minutes of action” over “total minutes played” is low.  Consider for example, the “no-hitter” pitched by Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies.  Not a single opposing player was able to reach first base because of his performance.  Baseball is essentially a duel between pitcher and batter.   If there was a way to trade out some of the pitching duel for more field play, baseball would be less boring.

For this month’s LAB, let’s apply the corporate innovation method, SIT, to find potential improvements to the game of baseball.  The method is based on five patterns inherent in many innovative products.  By extracting and applying those patterns, we can innovate anything.  For baseball, we will apply Attribute Dependency tool.  Here is how it works.

We start with a list of attributes (variables) of the game of baseball.  Then we create combinations of those attributes with an eye towards creating a correlation between them.  As one attribute changes, so does the other.  This becomes our hypothetical solution to which we work backwards to see if it solves a problem or adds value.  In the case where there is already a dependency between attributes, we artificially break it and see what benefit it might deliver.  For example, there is no dependency between runs scored and the inning played.  We would change this by creating a new dependency where the value of a run changes as the inning changes.  For example, a team earns two runs for crossing home plate instead of one, but only in the ninth inning.

Here are several ideas that make the game “dense” with more action and make it faster.  These ideas are based on breaking and as well as forming dependencies between attributes.

The LAB: Innovating Retail Selling with Task Unification (September 2010)

Published date: September 27, 2010 в 3:00 am

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Task Unification is a great tool when you have a general idea of the direction you want to go or business challenge you are dealing with.  It is one of five templates in the Systematic Inventive Thinking method.  Like all the templates, it helps regulate and channel the ideation process while creating unique and useful innovation possibilities.  It works by taking a component list of the product, process, or service, and then assigning an additional “job” to that component.  It helps break “fixedness” in how we see components and their traditional role, thus opening up potential growth opportunities.
For this month’s LAB, we will use this template to innovate new ways of in-store retailing.

Retailers already do a lot of creative things to improve sales.  There are the traditional tactics like putting the milk and eggs in the back of the store.  But newer approaches are emerging as retailers learn from their online experience
and migrate these ideas to in-store selling practices.  Search optimization, for example, applies to a brick and mortar store every bit as much as the online store.  Let’s imagine ourselves in the retail sales business such as a grocery story or department store.  Further imagine we are planning for an upcoming seasonal selling opportunity such as Halloween.  According to the National Retail Federation, the value of all retail sales in the seasonal Halloween category (pumpkins, candy, costumes, decorations) is about $5 billion in the U.S..  While impressive, stores need to constantly think of ways to innovate and grow the top line sales and bottom line profits.

 Let’s use Task Unification to create some retail selling innovations.   Here is our component list for a retail store (such as Target, a large U.S. chain):

  1. shopping carts
  2. cash registers
  3. scanners
  4. shopping bags
  5. aisles
  6. shelves
  7. customer service
  8. sales staff
  9. products
  10. customers
  11. store lighting
  12. departments

The challenge that we want to address is: 

“How do we increase sales in the Halloween category?”

To use Task Unification, we take a component from the list above and give it this “job.”  For example:  “The aisles have the job of increasing sales of Halloween products.”  Now we work backwards to imagine the benefits of this, how it would work, what problems and issues does it present.  In other words, we innovate a new way for the aisles of a department store to create stronger sales.  The trick is to use each component productively, not just to be different.  For example, if we suggested that the lighting in the store would now be orange in color to promote a Halloween theme, this would not pass the test.  The lighting in the store actually has to “sell” something or otherwise drive some positive business result.

Even better is when you can fold in the advertising concept called “fusion.”  This is when we take a specific message such as a brand theme and incorporate it into the new “job” to be taken on by the component.  We fuse the component, its new job, and the message.  For example, let’s consider the brand theme of Target:  smart consumers seeking value and design…”cheap chic.”  Now the store lighting not only illuminates the store, but also has to do it in a way that conveys or reinforces this brand message.

The Voice of the Product

Published date: September 6, 2010 в 8:55 am

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Could the greatest innovation of all time be a method of innovation?  Roger Smith proposed this in The Evolution of Innovation.  Is such a method out there?  The answer is yes.

Suppose you want to come up with a new product idea. Where do you begin?  What method would you use?  Conventional thinking suggests three possible directions.  First, we could seek insights from our customers through research and observation (Voice of the Customer).  Second, we could emulate what inventors like Edison and Disney did to create new ideas (Voice of the Expert).  Or we could seek ideas from competitors and other sources using the “open” mindset (Voice of the Market).

There is a fourth source – The Voice of the Product1.  Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues discovered the surprising insight that innovative products tend to follow certain patterns.  It is similar to the notion of TRIZ which is a set of patterns for solving problems.  Innovative products share common patterns because their inventors unknowingly follow patterns when generating new product ideas.  These patterns become the DNA of ideas2.  If you can extract the DNA and implant it into other products and services, you can innovate.

A majority of new and inventive products can be categorized according to only five patterns:

  • Subtraction: Taking an essential component away
  • Task Unification:  Assigning an additional job to an existing product
  • Multiplication:  Making a copy of a component but changing it in some way
  • Division: Functionally or physically dividing a component or product
  • Attribute Dependency: Creating new (or breaking existing) dependencies between attributes of a product or service and its environment

A systematic process called S.I.T. has been developed to apply these patterns. The patterns become “thinking tools” to identify new ideas. This process is called function follows form (FFF), a term coined by cognitive psychologist Ronald Finke. Instead of
innovating by identifying a “function” or need and then creating a product, one first manipulates the existing product and considers how the new form could be beneficial.

Yoni Stern and Amnon Levav describe it as follows:

“Using FFF, one develops products in the reverse order to the market research process. One begins with an existing concept or product — a list of the product’s physical components and its environment. Then one of the five thinking tools is used to theoretically manipulate the product. These new “virtual products” are immediately assessed as to their value and feasibility. If the virtual product has market potential and falls within existing company and technological constraints, it undergoes needed minor adaptations and is considered worthy of follow-up. Market knowledge is used as a filter rather than the starting point; ideas generated are likely to be different from those of competitors.”

People find it difficult to believe that innovation is a skill, not a gift.  With a method like S.I.T., anyone can learn to innovate anything, anytime.  If a better method evolves, I hope to be among the first to hear about it.

1. Goldenberg, Jacob and David Mazursky. “The Voice of the Product: Templates of New Product Emgergence”. Creativity and Innovation Management September 1999: 157-164.

2.  Stern, Yoni, and Amnon Levav. “The DNA of Ideas”. BIO-IT WORLD April 2005: 56-57.

The LAB: Innovating Website Design with Attribute Dependency (August 2010)

Published date: August 30, 2010 в 3:00 am

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Imagine a website that changes depending on the visitor.  Researchers at M.I.T. describe such a website that learns a person’s thinking style based on preliminary clicks so it can present information in an optimal way.  Purchase intentions increased 20%!

This is an example of the Attribute Dependency tool of the corporate innovation method, S.I.T..   It’s great for creating “smart” products and services –
those that adapt to user preferences or environmental
conditions.  For this month’s LAB, let’s apply Attribute Dependency to other aspects of websites to create new, innovative designs or features.

To use Attribute Dependency, make two lists.  The first is a list of internal attributes of a website.  The second is a list of external attributes – those factors that are not under your control, but that vary in the context of how the product or service is used.  Then create a matrix with the internal and external attributes on one axis, and the internal attributes only on the other axis.  The matrix creates combinations of internal-to-internal and internal-to-external attributes that we will use to innovate.  We take these virtual combinations and envision them in two ways.  If no dependency exists between the attributes, we create one.  If a dependency exists, we break it.  Using Function Follows Form, we envision what the benefit or potential value might be from the new (or broken) dependency between the two attributes.

Here are the variables that I put into the matrix (which you can download here).

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