Innovation in Practice Blog
Academic Focus: University of Chicago Booth School of Business
With six of its faculty members earning the Nobel Prize, it is hard to associate the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with anything else but economics. In reality, it is an innovator in many other areas. It was the first to initiate a PhD program in business (1920). It pioneered the executive MBA degree for experienced managers (1943). Booth was also the first to establish a minority relations program (1964). It is the still the only US. business school with permanent campuses on three continents: Asia, Europe, and North America.
Booth preaches what it practices. It teaches systematic methods of innovation to its students. Art Middlebrooks is an clinical professor of marketing at Chicago Booth, and one of a growing number of professors teaching the SIT method. He is well qualified as both a practitioner of innovation as well as a teacher and scholar. He teaches both innovation and services marketing. “I find that students learn best by ‘doing,’ so I’ve structured both the in-class and out-of-class work to enable students to ‘try out’ the various tools that I teach.”
Innovation in the Mobile World
The rapid adoption of smartphones is changing the landscape of the marketing research industry. Last month’s “Market Research in the Mobile World” conference in Cincinnati highlighted many ways the market research industry is trying to adjust. The industry is evolving from using lengthy printed surveys and personal interviews to instead collecting consumer reactions “in the moment” that are transmitted digitally as it happens. What was once a process of collecting “many answers from few” is becoming a process of collecting “a few answers from the many.” With their trusty appliance in hand, consumers can now share what’s on their mind virtually any part of their day. Not only is data received faster, it is also more reliable by sampling smaller bites from a larger pool.
The LAB: Innovating Toilet Paper with Attribute Dependency (July 2012)
When Joseph Gayetty invented commercially available toilet paper in 1857, he called it “The greatest necessity of the age!” Of course, he wasn’t exaggerating. The use of paper for toileting dates back to the 6th century AD. Gayetty’s Medicated Paper was sold in packages of flat sheets, watermarked with the inventor’s name. Since then, many companies have tried to innovate this product. Many innovations are simple gag gifts while others are quite useful.
For this month’s LAB, let’s apply the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., to create new concepts for toilet paper. S.I.T. is a collection of thinking tools, principles, facilitation methods, and organizational structures to help companies innovate products, processes, and services. We will use the Attribute Dependency Technique, one of five in S.I.T..
What’s in a Name
Look at this word, then see what mental picture you get: HAMMER. Like most people, you probably see a person’s hand wrapped around a metal or wood stick with an object fixed on top. You may see this object being used to strike other objects. You may imagine the heaviness of the object. The word “hammer” is a mental shortcut that instantly conjures up all the memories and associations you have with that thing. Naming objects is useful.
But the names we give items also creates a barrier to innovative thinking. We have a difficult time seeing that object doing anything else than the task assigned to it. It is also difficult for us to imagine using other objects to do the job of a hammer. It is a condition called Functional Fixedness.
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