Monthly Archives: March 2010
Two prisoners dug a tunnel from their cell 80 feet to escape from prison. Where did they hide the dirt? This is one of the examples used by Roni Horowitz of the consultancy group SIT to show the advantages of a method called Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT). The answer is that they hid the dirt in the tunnel. The prisoners stole nylon sacks from the prison bakery and each day they dug the tunnel and put the dirt into the sacks. At cell inspection times they pushed all the dirt bags back into the tunnel and tidied the cell. When the prisoners escaped the guards found a cell full of bags of dirt and an empty tunnel.It is a good example of one of the principles of SIT – look for the solution within the problem or its environment. The prisoners had very limited resources – but one of them … Continue reading
When a new idea strikes me for a website, I typically try to run it by a close friend. And usually, I get a really blank look.It’s not that the ideas are bad, it’s that the person I’m explaining it to doesn’t really understand my idea. Unless he/she sees a prototype, it’s incredibly difficult to follow what’s inside my head. Why? Because it’s inside my head. I’m the only one who can fully grasp the concept.Truly innovative ideas take a while to get used to, or even understand. History is riddled with inventors who were mistaken for crazy, only later to have made some of the most groundbreaking discoveries. Yet had they listened to their friends, we probably wouldn’t have many of the cool technologies that exist today.Alexander Graham Bell: “I’m going to try and make a machine that allows two people to hear each other’s voices with a wire.”Friend: … Continue reading
“Companies are actually living organisms, not machines. We keep bringing in mechanics, when what we need are gardeners.” – Peter Sengeby Mitch DitkoffSustainable innovation, the endless effort to find a better way, cannot be achieved by robotically lining up best practices and imitating them. The real catalyzing agent for renewable innovation is the ground from which these best practices spring – the confluence of purpose, people, and processes better known as culture. From where will the next wave of groundbreaking innovation come?Not from organizations mechanically mimicking each other’s best practices, but from organizations with the authentic commitment to take their stand on ground that has been cultivated for breakthrough.If you check the contents of the most popular books on innovation, the same topics show up again and again: strategy, systems, process, leadership, customer focus, risk, speed to market, prototyping, metrics, mass collaboration, market intelligence, technology, and creative thinking. Clearly, all … Continue reading
