Innovation in Practice Blog
Characteristics of Future Innovations
My crystal ball is no better than others. Rather than predict innovations, I predict what characteristics they will have and how they might be invented.
1. Mobility: Future products will incorporate some degree of mobility and integration into the mobile lifestyle. Smart phones fuel this. But mobility is not all about communications. Future products will take advantage of the data created by people as they move through their day. The innovation templates, Task Unification and Attribute Dependency, are excellent tools for identifying these opportunities.
Innovation Sighting: Innovating Political Elections with Division
The Division template of the corporate innovation method, S.I.T., works by listing the components of the product or service, then dividing out a component either physically, functionally, or by preserving the characteristics of the whole. Here is a unique example of the Division template with political elections. This idea comes from innovation consultant, Lauchlan Mackinnon, in his blog, Think Differently!!.
Innovation Suite 2010 – New York City
SIT will be conducting its 5th innovation course in New York City from Nov 1-3, 2010. This course is designed for middle management and above, but most anyone can benefit from the learning experience. Participants of previous courses were Presidents, Marketing VPs and Directors, R&D VPs and Directors, Innovation Teams, and Product Directors from both large multinationals and smaller organizations. You can register for it at https://www.sitsite.com/academy/.
The LAB: Innovating Retail Selling with Task Unification (September 2010)
Task Unification is a great tool when you have a general idea of the direction you want to go or business challenge you are dealing with. It is one of five templates in the Systematic Inventive Thinking method. Like all the templates, it helps regulate and channel the ideation process while creating unique and useful innovation possibilities. It works by taking a component list of the product, process, or service, and then assigning an additional “job” to that component. It helps break “fixedness” in how we see components and their traditional role, thus opening up potential growth opportunities. For this month’s LAB, we will use this template to innovate new ways of in-store retailing.
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