Patterns That Predict Innovation Success
The New York Times published a list of “32 Innovations That Will Change Your Tomorrow,” an eclectic mix of concepts that range from the wild and wacky like SpeechJammer (#14) to more practical ideas like a blood test for depression (#25).
I analyzed each of the 32 concepts to see which ones could be explained by the five patterns of Systematic Inventive Thinking. 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. Dr. Jacob Goldenberg found in his research that the majority of successful innovations conform to one or more of these patterns. Conversely, the majority of unsuccessful innovations (those that failed in the marketplace) do not conform to a pattern.
Based on my analysis, here is the breakdown of which pattern explains each innovation on the list:
- Task Unification: 9
- Attribute Dependency: 7
- Division: 3
- Subtraction: 3
- Multiplication: 3
- None of the above: 8
In other words, 24 of the 32 innovations in the New York Times list could be explained by the SIT patterns. The eight concepts that were not pattern based were either process or performance enhancements. For example, the carbon fiber bicycle frame (#9) is one of the eight. That does not mean these eight will not be successful. But based on Dr. Goldenberg’s research, the odds are they are less likely to succeed than if they had one of the patterns embedded inside. The patterns, in essence, are predictive of success.