Innovation in Practice

The LAB: Innovating the Lego with S.I.T. (June 2010)

I just had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Soren Lund present at the PharmaBrand Summit in Monaco.  He is the Senior Marketing Director of Product and Marketing Development at the Lego Group.  He told the amazing story about how Lego markets their product and leverages the power of their user community to create innovation and growth.  It prompted me to search the blogosphere for other stories about Lego, and I can see that the company is quite popular.  Blogging Innovation, Endless Innovation, Stefan Lindgard, and various others have written useful blog posts about Lego..

Rather than talk about Lego and its innovation, I decided to apply the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., to the basic Lego product – the 2x4 brick.  I created these new embodiments during the two hour break following Seren’s presentation.  With a bit of research, I learned there are some 24,000 SKU’s.  While I have some general knowledge about the product (having purchased it for my son), I must admit I do not know a great deal.  So it would not surprise me to find that I created ideas that already exist.

I start with a component list to use the first four of the S.I.T. tools:

1.    Base
2.    Posts (the little round stumps on top of the base)
3.    Tubes (the little open tubular structures inside the base

Using this list, I manipulate the product by applying a tool.  This turns it into a “virtual product.”   I use “Function-Follows-Form” to work backwards and think of potential uses and benefits for the “weird” form created by the tool.  Here are some ideas generated very quickly with S.I.T.:

The LAB: Innovating Water Access in Developing Countries (May 2010)

Shortage of water may become a more catastrophic problem than food or energy shortage according to experts.  The problem affects developing as well as developed countries including the U.S..  For this month's LAB, we will look at how the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., can be used to address such a serious issue.  The following ideas were developed by students at the University of Cincinnati working on the PUR water filtration system from Procter & Gamble.  They are excellent examples of purpose-driven innovation.  You can download the team's complete portfolio here.

 1.  TASK UNIFICATION (assigning an additional job to an existing resource):  Hikers and campers can now experience PUR Trek and the confidence of having filtered water at all times anywhere they go. These 16-oz, single-serving, disposable, portable, and easy to carry drink containers offer a flat design for minimal storage, with easy-to- expand, biodegradable Tetra Pak inspired material.  For quick filling at a stream or other water source, the open top design allows the user to quickly scoop up the cool unfiltered water.  Then as the user drinks from the active filtering spout, all sediment and harmful particles are left behind in the bottom of the container.  Consumers can count on one disposable container to last up to 10 days, and they can be purchased individually or in 10- packs.

2.  MULTIPLICATION (making copies of a component but changing it):  The PUR-2-Go is PUR's latest product targeting the needs of busy students and singles. Its two compartment pitcher is easily filled through PUR's new electronic filter system. Integrated in the lid, this new filter works so fast that it filters instantly and makes a holding compartment in the pitcher unnecessary. The two compartments of the pitcher easily break in two. The bigger compartment can stay in the kitchen while the smaller compartment transforms into a reusable bottle of water to go.  This makes the use of bottled water unnecessary because the PUR-2-Go is just as easy to handle and quick to use. This grab and go usability of the PUR-2-Go makes it more convenient for everybody to commit to a greener lifestyle.

The LAB: Innovating an Aquarium Using S.I.T. (February 2010)

There are a 183 million pet fish in the United States, more than double the number of dogs.  Fourteen million U.S. households have fish.  During the past decade, the pet fish category grew by more than 20% making it one of the fastest growing in the industry.  For this month's LAB, we will apply the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., to the mainstay of fish keeping - the aquarium.

Here are five unique aquarium concepts invented by one of my graduate students, Janette Douglas, at the University of Cincinnati as part of her final exam in "Applied Marketing Innovation."  For the this exam, each student was given a product randomly.  They had three hours to create new-to-the-world concepts and demonstrate proficiency using each of the templates.

To use the S.I.T. method, Janette starts with a component list:

1. glass panels
2. lid
3. bottom of tank
4. fish
5. gravel
6. plants
7. filter
8. water

Here are her ideas:

1.  SUBTRACTION (remove an essential component):  Remove the fish.  Make the tank a "plant only" tank.  The benefits are: lower maintenance, lower cost, more flexibility, and more room in the tank.  The target audience is people who enjoy the peaceful nature of an aquarium but don't want the responsibility of taking care of an animal.  (DREW'S NOTE: this idea actually exists today, especially for a niche of aquarium owners who "aquascape".

2.  TASK UNIFICATION (assign an additional job to an existing resource):  Assign the gravel the additional job of regulating water temperature.  The benefits are: no need to monitor water temperature as it is self-regulated, easy to add fresh water without having to worry about temperature, and less expensive as you do not need a separate water heater.  Target audience is people who tend to make frequent changes to their home's temperature or people who live in climates with extreme temperature changes.  Feasibility is a question mark - not sure if this technology exists or could be developed.

3.  MULTIPLICATION (make copies of a component but with a qualitative change):  Multiply the filter but change direction of flow - instead of filtering waste out, the second filter adds components to the water.  The benefits are: easy to add vitamins and other useful chemicals making it easier to control water quality.  Target audience is people who have exotic fish that require specific water conditions.

4.  DIVISION (physically or functionally cut the product or component):  Cut the glass in half.  This creates two separate spaces in the aquarium to support two separate marine environments side-by-side.  Target audience is people who want to enjoy fresh and saltwater tanks.  It could also be used by marine biologists who want to use two separate tanks to do research (manipulate one side and compare results to the other).  (DREW'S NOTE: this product exists).

5.  ATTRIBUTE DEPENDENCY: (create or break a dependency between internal and external attributes):  The glass panels change (clarity) depending on the oxygen levels in the external air and internal water environment so that adjustments can be made accordingly.  Potential benefits: greater accuracy of water composition in relation to the external air.  Target audience is fish hobbyists or scientists needing to carefully regulate oxygen for specific types of fish or plants.

Janette did a nice job on this final exam even though she is not an aquarium owner.  What I like about this example is that is shows how well people can innovate even when they are not experts in the product or service.  I doubt that a person who had never seen an aquarium could have generated these ideas.  But with just a general knowledge about the domain, people can innovate routinely using structured innovation methods. 

Innovation Sighting: The Multiplication Template and Virtual Reality

People are fascinated with the idea of human cloning after researchers cloned a sheep in 1997.  The debate about the risks and benefits of human cloning rages on.  What if you could clone yourself in a virtual sense?  Even better, imagine cloning yourself into another person's body?  What would you feel?  What would you learn?  How would your life be better?

Dr. Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist from Karolinska Institute in Sweden, has pioneered a method of allowing us to get out of our bodies and into the body of someone else...virtually...so that you sense whatever the other person senses.  We "clone" ourselves everyday with simple technologies like a mirror or camera. But this is different.  This technique clones you into another form so you can experience life from that point-of-view.  From CNN: 

This is an example of the innovation template, Multiplication.  It works by taking a component of a product or service, then creating copies of it that are different in some way.  Using SOLUTION-TO-PROBLEM innovation, we imagine potential benefits of the hypothetical solution.  Dr. Ehrsson believes this technique could help us improve our self-esteem.  It might help amputees put a sense of feeling into a prosthetic limb.  Or it might help us identify with other cultural, racial, or gender groups by "living" in their bodies.

This last idea is particularly intriguing.  Imagine you had the ability to mandate when someone else uses the technique to become YOU.  You would use this is critical situations when it is essential the other person understands your point-of-view: spouse, lawyer, negotiating partner, customer, boss, etc.  The ultimate cloning experience is not making another copy of yourself, but rather having others clone to become you.

 

The LAB: Innovating Your Wallet Using S.I.T. (December 2009)

Innovation puts cash in your wallet.  But what about the wallet itself?  For this month's LAB, we will apply the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., to create new and useful concepts for the wallet.

Wallets are the most personal items we own.  They carry our money, credit cards, identification,  licenses, photographs, and other memorabilia.  Your wallet says a lot about you.  As with food, we try to stuff more inside while staying thin.  Wallets have been around a long time.  Today, the wallet industry is a multi-billion dollar market fueled by new designs and innovation.

Here are six unique wallet concepts invented using the five templates in the S.I.T. method.  They were created by graduate students at the University of Cincinnati as part of their course requirements in "Applied Marketing Innovation."

The LAB: Innovating Health Care with S.I.T. (August 2009)

Health Care Reform, as the U.S. government sees it, promises lower costs, better access, and improved quality for all.  Let's apply a structured innovation method to health care to see if we can achieve some of these goals.  For this month's LAB, we will apply Systematic Inventive Thinking to the hospital discharge process.

Discharging patients from the hospital is a critical aspect of health care delivery.  It is a time of transition where one group of care givers stops treating the patient and another group starts.  The most frequent type of transition occurs when patients go from hospital to home, happening nearly 40 million times each year in the U.S.. Studies show that about 20 percent of discharged patients have an adverse event – a preventable emergency department visit or re-admission – within 30 days following hospitalization.  The discharge process is so important that a cottage industry is emerging around it.  Some  consultants, software products, best practices, training, and research studies focus just on discharging patients.

To use S.I.T., we start by listing the components of the service (process):

Innovation Sighting: Multiplication at Taylor Guitars

Here is an example of the Multiplication Template, one of five in the corporate innovation method called S.I.T..  It is from the Taylor Guitars, one of the leading companies in the category and one of the most innovative.  The Multiplication Template makes copies of components but changes the copies in some way from the original.  Taylor has multiplied the pickguard of their electric guitar series, but changed the configuration with different styles of magnetic pickups (the part that translates the sound from the strings).  It is a clever idea because guitar owners can re-configure their guitar for different playing situations.  It helps Taylor Guitar extend their product reach into the aftermarket for guitar parts and maintain a more loyal following of customers.

 

The LAB: Innovating Shredded Wheat with S.I.T. (July 2009)

“We put the ‘NO’ in innovation!”  The good people at Post Cereal have a new twist on innovation…NOT innovating as a statement of the product's ubiquity and staying power.  “Some things just weren’t meant to be innovated."

How could I resist?  It was just too tempting to use systematic innovation on this simple product, especially in light of the perception that it should not be innovated.  Though the ad campaign is a spoof, I wonder just how much the people at Post really believe this.  What if shredded wheat could be innovated to create new growth potential for this 116 year old product? 

Here is a brief history from Wikipedia:

Henry Perky invented shredded wheat cereal in 1893. The wheat is first cooked in water until its moisture content reaches about 50%. It is then tempered, allowing moisture to diffuse evenly into the grain. The grain then passes through a set of rollers with grooves in one side, yielding a web of shredded wheat strands. Many webs are stacked together, and this moist stack of strands is crimped at regular intervals to produce individual pieces of cereal with the strands attached at each end. These then go into an oven, where they are baked until their moisture content is reduced to 5%.

I'll use all five templates of the Systematic Inventive Thinking method to see what new opportunities we can uncover. 

The LAB: Innovating a Garage Door Opener (March 2009)

Teaching people how to innovate is rewarding.  It empowers them.  It unlocks their minds to believe that innovation can happen "on command."   People realize there is no excuse for not having enough ideas or being innovative once they have been trained.

This month's LAB features the output of one of my students, Michael Sanders, in my class, "Applied Marketing Innovation."  For the final exam, students were assigned a product at random.  They had three hours to apply all five templates in the Systematic Inventive Thinking method to come up with true new-to-the-world innovations.  They were graded on how correctly they applied each template as well as the novelty of their inventions.  Michael's assignment:  Garage Door Opener.  Here is what he did.

The LAB: Innovating a Fishing Pole with Multiplication (November 2008)

Can you innovate a mature product?  Consider the fishing pole which dates back to the ancient Egyptians - it certainly qualifies as a mature product. This month's LAB will innovate it by using the systematic innovation method called Multiplication.

Fishing is the largest sporting activity in the U.S. with 40 million participants, far more than golf or tennis combined, the next two on the list.  Recreational fishing generates more than $125 billion in economic output and more than one million American jobs. If sport fishing were a corporation, it would rank above Bank of America or IBM on the Fortune 100 list of largest American companies.  The pathway to growth for any large, mature industry is: innovation!

We start by listing the components of the product.  We then make a copy (or copies) of each component, one at a time.  The new copies must be different in some way from the original component.  We then use Function Follows Form and work backwards to envision what the "pre-inventive form" could be used for.  We innovate by taking something that doesn't make sense at first, then find a legitimate purpose for it.  Here is what I came up with (about an hour's worth of work):

The LAB: Multiplication (August 2008)

The Multiplication tool is one of the five powerful thinking tools taught to me by the folks at Systematic Inventive Thinking. I like this tool because it is simple and yields great results.  Even children can learn it. 

Multiplication works by taking a component of the product, service, strategy, etc, and then making one or several copies of it.  But the copy must be changed in some way from the original component.  The original component is still intact, unchanged.  Now using Function Follows Form, we work backwards to take this hypothetical solution and find a problem that it solves.

One of our blog readers, Jim Doherty of the Grabbit Tool Company, agreed to let me use their main product, the EZ Grabbit Tarp Holder, for this month's LAB.  I bought a set at Ace Hardware last night, and used the Multiplication tool just now to create some new product ideas.  Here is a demonstration of the EZ Grabbit:

We start Multiplication by making a list of the components:

1. Sleeve
2. Dogbone
3. Chord
4. Grip
5. Lock

Make a copy or several copies of each component, one at a time, and change something about it.  What would be the benefit or potential use of the product with this new, changed component?  Here are some ideas:

1. Two sleeves, but the second sleeve is attached, back-to-back, to the original sleeve.  This would allow a second tarp to be attached to another one (with its own dogbone).  There could be three or perhaps even four sleeves, arranged in quadrant style (with the openings facing out), so multiple tarps could be attached.  The copied sleeve could be longer than the original, allowing different tarp configurations.
2. Multiple dogbones, but each is optimized for different types of material (tarp, plastic, terry cloth, cotton, denim, etc) to prevent damage, improve grip, etc.
3. Multiple chords, each coming out of the same dogbone with its own hole, to allow different attachment points.
4. Two grips, the second one attaches to the first one to allow it to be hung from a hook.
5. Two locking mechanisms, the second one used to attach to the fabric temporarily so it does not get lost or slide around during placement.

Once we have raw ideas like these, it's a good idea to get early customer feedback and perhaps build some working prototypes to let customers envision using the new product.  The ideas above are incremental innovations to the product's original category, so it can be valuable to get customer feedback about potential uses of the new embodiments outside the category to find breakthrough ideas as well.