Innovation in Practice Blog
TiVoing Dead People
George Orwell died January 21, 1950 at the age of 46. He is considered one of the great all-time fiction writers with works like Animal House and Nineteen Eighty Four. What if he were alive today? What would he say, and what would he write about? What if he blogged? What would the conversation be within the blogosphere? Much to my surprise, George Orwell is blogging…sort of. The Orwell Prize, Britain’s pre-eminent prize for political writing, is publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog. Orwell’s domestic and political diaries from August 1938 until October 1942 are being posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were written. The diaries are exactly as Orwell wrote them.
The LAB: Innovating the iPhone with Attribute Dependency (September 2008)
Here are ten innovations for the iPhone that I would love to see. I created these using the Attribute Dependency tool. It is the most powerful of the five tools of Systematic Inventive Thinking, but also the most difficult to learn.
To use Attribute Dependency, we start by making two lists. The first is a list of internal attributes of the iPhone. The second is a list of external attributes – those factors that are not under the control of the manufacturer (Apple, in this case), but that vary in the context of how the product or service is used. Then we create a matrix with the internal and external attributes on one axis, and the internal attributes only on the other axis. This matrix forces the combinations of internal-to-internal and internal-to-external attributes that we will use to innovate.
Complementary Innovation
Companies are enamored with chasing “white space opportunities.” White space is the nickname for new, undiscovered growth segments. It spins the notion that opportunity lies just ahead of us. Telling colleagues you are working on white space opportunities suggests you are doing really important stuff. It is the ultimate growth endeavor, the risk worth taking. White space will save the day. I’m not so sure. I have two problems with white space. It is neither white, nor a space.
The LAB: Demonstration of Task Unification (July 2008)
Welcome to The LAB. This month, we will focus on Task Unification. This tool is one of five templates in the S.I.T. method of innovation. The tool works by taking a component of a product or service and assigning it an additional task or job.
What I need from one of our readers is: a suggested product or service. I will use this suggestion to apply Task Unification to innovate new embodiments. Please post your suggestion in Comments below. Innovation results will be posted shortly!
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