Посты с тэгом: systematic inventive thinking

Innovation Sighting: Tales of Things

Published date: April 6, 2015 в 1:21 pm

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One way you can use the Task Unification Technique is to make an internal component take on the function of an external component in a Closed World. In effect, the internal component “steals” the external component’s function.
Five universities in the United Kingdom got together and created a way for people to add stories to their own treasured objects. The treasured objects have the additional task of relating their stories to others. Future generations will thus have a greater understanding of a family heirloom’s past. They can even track their heirlooms after they have passed them on to the next generation. These objects will also be able to update previous owners on their progress through a live Twitter feed.
This project was dubbed Tales of Things, and includes both a software application and an online service that allow you to share and follow the “life stories” of personal objects. Tales of Things adds value to people’s lives in two ways: First, people have a way to assign more significance to their own possessions. Second, as people place more importance on the objects that are already parts of their lives, family and friends may think twice before throwing away something, and instead try to find new uses for it.
Here’s how it works. By photographing an object and attaching a QR code to the object, you enable anyone to scan it using a smart phone or other mobile device, and immediately view its history; read stories, tips, or advice about it; and attach his or her own notes, photos, video, or audio to it.
What’s the point of this? Imagine that your grandfather gives you an antique hammer that has been in the family for generations. Your great-great grandparents used it to build their home. Your great grandfather used it to hammer nails into the frame of the four-poster bed in which your parents still sleep. You treasure the object—and, even more, the fact that with it your grandfather gave you a written history of the hammer, a history that family members had been carefully preserving for more than a hundred years. Time passes. You use the hammer to build your kids a playhouse, to construct a dog kennel for your beloved golden retriever, and for other projects. Like your ancestors, you take time to write down for your children all the special stories related to the hammer. Then you give it to your son. You also hand him the historical record—by this time, almost two hundred pages long—and request that he continue the tradition. Tales of Things makes this sort of legacy not only possible but also easy.
Tales of Things uses Task Unification: taking a task (recording and passing on family stories about the hammer) that was formerly performed by an external component (ancestors) and assigning it to an internal component (the hammer itself ). In effect, the internal component steals the task from the external component.
The founders of Tales of Things have big plans for the future. They are especially interested in getting businesses hooked on the idea. They believe that companies will be able to use the service to engage customers at a deeper level than is now possible. Consumers can share with one another opinions and tips about products. Industries with vibrant secondary markets—say, automobiles or industrial equipment—can document the life cycle of a given car or table drill.
 
 
From “Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results”
 
 

Innovation Training: The Leadership Elixer

Published date: March 23, 2015 в 12:02 pm

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Training programs, by design, are meant to provoke and cause changes. Changes can be in the skills, attitudes, behaviors, or knowledge of the participants. For leadership training programs, the ability to “think differently” seems to be at the top of many companies’ list of priorities.
So how do you think differently and creatively? By using cognitive thinking tools that re-pattern how you see situations and potential opportunities. It is the Holy Grail, the magic elixir that can transform a talented leader into a great one.
The good news is that humans follow patterns in many 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.

Teaching Children the S.I.T. Method

Published date: February 23, 2015 в 8:00 am

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My seventh-grade son asked me to volunteer at his school to teach something nonacademic and fun, like how to rollerblade, bake cookies, and so on. I called the school and asked if I could teach a course called “How to Be an Inventor.” I had taught Systematic Inventive Thinking in many innovation workshops for about four years at that point, so I was confident I could deliver a fun and useful program for kids.
To my surprise, the school administrators said no.
I was dumbfounded. I thought the school would welcome a minicourse on creativity. I asked why. They insisted it was impossible to teach someone, especially kids, how to be an inventor. They were worried that the course would set too high an expectation and that I would “break the children’s little hearts.” Like most people, the administrators were stuck on the idea that creativity is a gift that some have and some don’t.
After long negotiations, the school finally agreed to let me teach my course. Ten kids signed up, all seventh and eighth graders. For five weeks, one hour each week, I taught them the same innovation techniques that you learned in this book. I taught them exactly the way I teach adults, except that I used examples kids would find interesting.
The last class was their “final exam.” Each child went to the chalkboard, and I gave each one a common household product: a coat hanger, a flashlight, a watch, a shoe, and so on. None of the children had advance knowledge of the object he or she would be receiving. For the next thirty minutes, each child was to apply to his or her product one of the five innovation techniques learned in class. Their goal was to transform the ordinary object into a new-to-the-world invention, draw a picture of it on the chalkboard, and explain how they had used their technique to create it.
The first presenter was Morgan, seventh grade. She had been assigned a wire coat hanger—a simple, one-piece device with no moving parts. For most people, this exercise would have been very intimidating because a coat hanger seems too simple and mundane to innovate. But not Morgan! Using the Attribute Dependency technique (chapter 6), she invented a coat hanger that expands up or down or sideways depending on the size and weight of the coat hung on it.
Next was Nicole. She had been given a white Keds sneaker that I borrowed from my wife for the class. She’d also used Attribute Dependency to create a shoe with a sole that matched the user’s activity or weather conditions. “I invented a shoe where the bottom can be changed depending on whether you are dancing or bowling, or maybe when it rains or snows,” she explained. As with Morgan’s invention, it was new, useful, and surprising.
And so it went, right down the line, with one child after another using systematic creativity to offer up a new invention. I was very relieved to know that I wasn’t going to be breaking any little hearts.
At the end of class, I held a graduation ceremony. I awarded the students certificates pronouncing that they were officially inventors. They were to go out into the world and create many new, awesome inventions. They had huge smiles on their faces. (So did I.)
It was time to pack up and leave as the class was over, or so I thought. As I was walking out of the classroom and down the hallway, I turned and noticed the children following me. I picked up the pace a bit because I wanted to get home. They picked up the pace too and stayed right in step with me. Then Nicole, nearly running at this point, shouted out, “Drew, Drew! I have another idea: a shoe that expands as your foot grows.”
Nicole and the others couldn’t turn it off ! Their little minds were still working in high gear even though the course was over.
I have since taught the method to third and fourth graders in the Wyoming City Schools in Cincinnati. When applying the Multiplication technique, one of the students, Sam, followed my instructions to the letter. As before, I had given each student an actual product to work on, and I had given Sam a bright red University of Cincinnati umbrella. Dutifully, he created an umbrella with two handles: one in the usual place, and one on top of the umbrella, at the tip (the Multiplication technique, chapter 4). As the standard part of our methodology, I asked Sam, “Now, who in the world would want an umbrella with a handle at the bottom and another handle at the top? Why would that be beneficial?”
Sam thought about it for a minute. Then he jutted his arm into the air, screaming wildly, “Ooh, Ooh, I know! I know exactly why you would want it!” I held my breath. Sam said, “If the wind blows your umbrella inside out, all you have to do is turn it around, grab the other handle, and start using it again!”
 
 
Copyright 2015 Drew Boyd

Innovation Sighting: Subtraction in Email

Published date: October 20, 2014 в 3:00 am

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The only thing worse than having too many emails is getting very long ones. When I open an email and see a long-winded message followed by a chain of other emails that have to be read as well, I dread it. After all, brevity is a virtue, and I value those emails that are short and efficient.

Now there’s a new app that helps manage the problem, and it is a great example of the Subtraction Technique, one of five in the innovation method, Systematic Inventive Thinking. It’s called “MailTime.” MailTime re-formats and summarizes your mails into a messaging conversation view. It redesigns the way you assign tasks helps you to track information easier.

I downloaded the app, and I love it. Here’s how it works:

Email replies are annoyingly formatted as a series of redundant transcripts, while text messages are nicely displayed as simple back-and-forth conversations. But MailTime makes work and personal email on your smartphone as quick, easy, and fun as sending text messages. MailTime features include:

  • CHAT BUBBLE FORMATTING: Read your email messages in an attractive “chat view,” while also retaining the ability to see the original email thread if desired.
  • ONE CLICK TO-DOS: Quickly assign to-do items for yourself and for others directly from your inbox, plus easily track the status of each pending task.
  • ‘TOO LONG’ EMAIL ALERTS: Just like Twitter prevents you from writing more than 140 characters, MailTime warns you if your email message is too long to be effective (but you can still send it if you want).

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.

Innovation Sighting: The Chairless Chair

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

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It’s like a chair that isn’t there, but magically appears whenever you need it. It’s called the Chairless Chair and you wear it on your legs like an exoskeleton: when it’s not activated, you can walk normally or even run. And then, at the touch of a button, it locks into place and you can sit down on it. Like a chair that is now there.

It’s a perfect example of the Subtraction Technique, one of five in the innovation method, Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT). It’s also a great example of Ideality, a property of innovation solutions that appear only when the problem appears.

From CNN:

“The idea came from wanting to sit anywhere and everywhere, and from working in a UK packaging factory when I was 17,” says Keith Gunura, the 29-year old CEO and co-founder of noonee, the Zurich-based startup behind the device, “standing for hours on end causes a lot of distress to lower limbs, but most workers get very few breaks and chairs are rarely provided, because they take up too much space. So I thought that the best idea was to strap an unobtrusive chair directly to myself.”

The device never touches the ground, which makes it easier to wear: a belt secures it to the hips and it has straps that wrap around the thighs. A variable damper engages and supports the bodyweight, which is directed towards the heels of the shoes. These are specially designed and part of the mechanism, but an alternate version works with any footwear and touches the ground only when in a stationary position. The user just moves into the desired pose and then powers the device, which currently runs for about 24 hours on a single 6V battery. (CNN)

“In addition to resting your leg muscles, it also provides optimal posture,” adds noonee CTO and co-founder Bryan Anastisiades “it keeps your back straight and can reduce the occurrence of bad postures for both healthy workers and those recovering from muscle related injuries.”

The Chairless Chair is attracting interest and production line trials are set to start in Germany with BMW in September and with Audi later this year. An aluminium and carbon fibre frame keeps the overall weight of the Chairless Chair at just two kilograms, so it doesn’t burden the wearer with too much excess weight and only marginally impairs movement. And in the future, it could be fitted with smart motors able to infer the user’s intentions and offer the ideal posture without even the need to press a button.

To get the most out of the Subtraction Technique, you follow five 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.

Innovation Through Task Unification

Published date: June 30, 2014 в 3:00 am

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The famous inventor, Thomas Edison, lived in a beautiful home. But something was unusual about the gate that led into his house. His visitors had to push the gate very hard to open it, and then again very hard to close it. It seemed odd that such a successful inventor like Thomas Edison wouldn’t fix his gate. Rumor has it that Thomas had attached a pump to his gate so that every time someone opened or closed it, they were pumping fresh water into the plumbing system of the house.

This is a great example of the innovation technique called Task Unification. Task Unification is defined as the assignment of additional tasks to an existing resource. That resource can be a component of a product or service. Or it can be something in the immediate vicinity of the product or service.

Think back to the story of Thomas’s gate. The gate has its primary job of letting visitors through, but it also has the additional job of pumping water. That’s not all to the story. The guests coming to visit Thomas are also a resource. They have their primary job of being friends of Thomas. But now they have the additional job of activating the gate to open and close it.

To use Task Unification, begin by listing the product’s internal components as well as the external components, the things right around where the product is being used. You select a component and assign it an additional task. That creates the virtual product. Using Function Follows Form, you look for potential benefits, and you modify or adapt the concept to improve it.

There are three ways to apply Task Unification:

One way is to have an internal component take a job of another internal component. Think of it as that component is stealing the function of the other component. Here is an example.

  • CmWhat you see here looks like an ordinary coffee maker. In fact, this product has a clever little innovation inside. The coffee maker’s filter has the additional job of measuring just the right amount of coffee to use given how much water was put in. It gives you the perfect brew every time.

You could also have an internal component take the job of an external component.

  • EasyfillNissan, the Japanese auto maker, has a nifty idea to make it easier to fill your tires with air. The car’s horn will beep to let you know when you’ve reached the right tire pressure. It’s called the Easy Fill Tire Alert. In this example, the car horn steals the job of the tire pressure gauge.

You could also have an external component steal the job of an internal component.

  • SubwayHere’s an example from a grocery store in Korea. They placed billboards in train and subway stations that show their products on the shelves just the way you would see it in a store. Commuters use their smartphones to scan the products they need. That shopping list is sent to the grocery store so the commuter can stop by on the way home to pick up the groceries. In this example, they assigned the subway billboards the additional task of becoming the point-of-sale. Very convenient and it saves times.

PlaypumpHere’s another example of an external component being assigned the additional job of an internal component. It’s a concept called Play Pump. It’s a child’s merry-go-round, the kind you would see on a playground. They don’t know it, but as they play on it, they’re also turning a pump to pump fresh water out of a well and into a holding tank. It’s used in small villages in sub Sahara Africa where finding and pumping water is difficult. The kids of the village have the additional job of providing water to the community.

That almost sounds a lot like Thomas Edison and his water pumping gate! And that’s why Task Unification can lead you to some pretty clever ideas.

LEARN the entire S.I.T. Method at Lynda.com…

Business Innovation Fundamentals: The SIT Course on Lynda.com

Published date: June 9, 2014 в 11:29 am

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Just released! Lean the entire SIT Method on Lynda.com.

Innovation propels companies forward. It’s an unlimited source of new growth and can give businesses a distinct competitive advantage. Learn how to innovate at your own business using Systematic Inventive Thinking, a method based on five techniques that allow you to innovate on demand. In this course, author and business school professor Drew Boyd shares the techniques he’s taught Fortune 500 companies to innovate new services and products. Drew provides real-world examples of innovation in practice and suggests places to find your own opportunities to innovate.

In the bonus chapter, Drew shares insights from his own career and answers tough questions on resistance to innovation, innovation and leadership, and the difference between generating vs. executing innovative ideas.
Topics include:
•    What is innovation?
•    Understanding the myths about creativity and barriers to innovation
•    Understanding the characteristics of innovative products and services
•    Using the five techniques of Systematic Inventive Thinking
•    Creating new services and processes at work
•    Running innovation workshops
•    Involving customers in innovation
•    Mastering innovative thinking

The Division Technique: Cutting Innovation Down to Size

Published date: April 14, 2014 в 4:06 am

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You can frequently make groundbreaking innovations simply by dividing a product into “chunks” to create many smaller versions of it. These smaller versions still function like the original product, but their reduced size delivers benefits that users wouldn’t get with the larger, “parent” product. This is one of three approaches of the Division Technique called “Preserving Division.”

Les Paul used Preserving Division to produce his multitrack recording by taking a single piece of media—a tape—and dividing it into multiple smaller tracks that perform the same function as the original large piece of tape.

We see this all the time in the technology industry. For years, computer makers kept increasing the capacity of hard drives (the devices within PCs on which programs and data are stored). Then an engineer had a brilliant idea to use Preserving Division to create mini personal storage devices. Today many people won’t leave their desks without placing their “thumb” drives in their briefcase or pocket. These mini storage units are designed specifically for people who must carry electronic versions of documents with them but don’t want to be burdened with laptops or other computing devices. They simply transfer documents from their PCs to their thumb drives, and walk away from the computer.

Many food manufacturers use the Preserving Division technique to create more convenient versions of popular products. By taking a regular serving or portion of a product and dividing it into multiple smaller portions, manufacturers allow consumers to purchase food products in more convenient and cost-effective ways. Consumers buy only what they need instead of a larger amount. Recently, manufacturers have even used Preserving Division to help people curb their calorie intake by providing popular snacks in smaller, more diet-friendly packages. Kraft Foods’s Philadelphia Cream Cheese brand does this by offering individually wrapped single-serving-size portions of its flagship product for people to put in their brown-bag lunches or take to the office with a breakfast bagel.

The time-sharing arrangements that many hotels and condominiums offer provide more examples of Preserving Division. Under timesharing, a year of “ownership” of a property is divided into fifty-two smaller units of a week each. Each unit is then sold to a different owner, who has the right to live in the property for that week. Each smaller unit preserves the characteristics of the whole. Ownership has been divided over time.

Likewise, when you make payments on a loan, you are sending small amounts of money created by dividing the larger, principal amount of the loan. Like the time-sharing condos, the division is based on time.

When doctors treat cancer tumors with radiation therapy, they have to be sure to kill the cancer tissue without doing too much damage to the surrounding healthy tissue. How? They divide the total dose of radiation into smaller, less lethal doses and aim them at the tumor from many different angles. The smaller beams of high-energy X‑rays, divided in space, converge to hit the cancer cells. But the lighter dose of any one beam does not do enough damage to other tissue that it hits along the way.

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.

Academic Focus: Columbia Business School on Marketing and Innovation

Published date: March 10, 2014 в 3:00 am

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Columbia Business School is offering a three-day Executive Education program called Marketing and Innovation. The program will teach Systematic Inventive Thinking as well as other key innovation concepts.

The program will be held June 17-19 and November 18-20 in New York. The program is ideal for middle- to upper-level executives who are responsible for strategic innovation and new product development. It is especially good for organizations that wish to send a cross-functional team to work on a specific challenge or project together.

Participants will gain a complete toolkit to take with them in order to tackle marketing challenges more creatively, by generating product-centered as well as market-centered insights. They will also learn the art of persuasion to help them find support for innovation through the organization.

This is a hands-on, three-day program that will help participants generate creative solutions to problems – solutions that are both novel as well as useful. Each session provides a short conceptual framework followed by an introduction of practical tools and a workshop where the tools can be applied.

Key topics include:
• Leveraging various outside constituencies in innovation (e.g., customers, lead users).
• Finding big opportunities and ideas
• Generating Product, Market, and Customer Insights
• Screening Ideas and Rapid Experimentation
• Building a Culture of Innovation
Participants from last year’s program had this to say:

“Innovation can be learned. So many people are intimidated by the concept of innovation because they think you have to be this incredibly genius-type person. But we’ve learned all sorts of tools that everybody can use. As long as you think systematically and follow a process, you can come up with good results. This was gratifying to me: that I, too, can be innovative and that I can really be good at it.”
– Kathy Farley, Dow Jones and Company
“Marketing and Innovation was a great way to learn new techniques for innovative thinking in the business environment. I can’t wait to apply these concepts in my company.”
– Molly Poppie, The Nielsen Company
“Marketing and Innovation was completely eye opening. The biggest value was discovering that you can learn creativity and understanding that, as a good manager, you have to carve out time during your week [for innovation] and inspire your team. Allowing people to share ideas and that you’re trusting them: that’s something I’ve learned through this course.”
– Bettina Alonso, Oceana

“From my perspective, I’d describe the program as the future. A lot of the concepts I’ve learned are going to drive forward my business, our ideas and where we go.”
– Ben Healy, Clayton Utz

Innovation Sighting: Getting Your Competition to Promote You

Published date: February 24, 2014 в 3:00 am

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How do you get your competitor to promote your value proposition? By thinking inside the box, or, in this case, using the box.

DHL did just that in the highly competitive package delivery category. Shipping companies compete on the basis of speed, convenience, and reliability. So the race is on to prove to the market which company performs the best.

In this campaign, DHL spoofed its competitors like UPS to broadcast that it's faster. Can you guess how?

This clever campaign is an example of two of the five techniques of Systematic Inventive Thinking – Task Unification and Attribute Dependency.

The Task Unification Technique is defined as: the assignment of new tasks to an existing resource (i.e. any element of the product or its vicinity within the manufacturer’s control). In this example, the"competition" has been assigned the additional task of "promoting the DHL value proposition" about being faster.

To use Task Unification:
1. List all of the components, both internal and external, that are part of the Closed World of the product, service, or process.
2. Select a component from the list. Assign it an additional task. Consider ways to use each of the three Task Unification methods:

  • Choose an external component and use it to perform a task that the product already accomplishes
  • Choose an internal component and make it do something new or extra
  • Choose an internal component and make it do the function of an external component (effectively “stealing” the external component’s function)

3. If you decide that an idea is valuable, you move on to the next question: Is it feasible? Can you actually create this new product? Perform this new service? Why or why not? Is there any way to refine or adapt the idea to make it more viable?

The Attribute Dependency Technique is defined as: the creation/removal of symmetries or dependencies between existing product properties. As one thing changes, another thing changes. In this example, DHL created a dependency between "elapsed time" and the "visibility of the message."

To use Attribute Dependency, make two lists. The first is a list of internal attributes. 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.  Take these virtual combinations and envision them in two ways. If no dependency exists between the attributes, create one. If a dependency exists, break it.  Using Function Follows Form, try to envision what the benefit or potential value might be from the new (or broken) dependency between the two attributes.

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