Innovation in Practice Blog
The LAB: Innovating the PC and Printer…Together (March 2012)
Hewlett Packard’s announcement that it’s combining its PC and printer divisions is meeting skepticism. Larry Dignan, editor-in-chief of ZDNet, had this to say:
“Hewlett-Packard says it’s combining its printer and PC divisions partially because the move will drive “innovation across personal computing and printing.” Oh really? Color me decidedly skeptical on that claim, which was touted in the company’s announcement today. My mental block: What exactly are the touch points between a printer and a PC, and where does the innovation lie? HP does have printing innovation. Its inkjet technology can be used for drug delivery, for instance. However, unless your PC is delivering doses of pharmaceuticals to you, it’s a stretch to see the connection.”
For this month’s LAB, lets put the S.I.T. method to the challenge. Imagine being part of this newly-combined HP organization. Here is how you might apply each of the five techniques of systematic inventive thinking. The key is to leverage each technique in a way that forces non-obvious connections between the two units, laptop and printer. These configurations become a “virtual product.” We use Function-Follows-Form to work backwards to the problem they solve or benefit they deliver.
Marketing Innovation: The Unification Tool on a Grand Scale
The Unification Tool is a tricky but effective advertising tool. Unification recruits an existing resource and forces it to carry the advertising message. That resource can come from within the medium itself or within the environment of the medium. In other words, the tool uses an existing component of the medium or of its environment in a way that demonstrates the problem or the promise to be delivered.
The LAB: Innovating Twitter with S.I.T. (February 2012)
Twitter continues to evolve with some 220 million users tweeting collectively 250 million times a day. It is a vast social network that has become the world’s “listening post” for events happening everywhere. Major news organizations rely on Twitter to give early warning to breaking stories.
For this month’s LAB, we will apply all five techniques of Systematic Inventive Thinking to Twitter. Our goal will be to create new features and innovations with the main Twitter platform as well as to create completely new applications related to Twitter. Many “apps” tied to Twitter already exist, and you can find a thorough inventory here.
What an Innovative Culture Looks Like
An innovative corporate culture is one that supports the creation of new ideas and the implementation of those ideas. Leaders need to help employees see innovation in the right light. The most innovative companies do the following:
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