What is it about some products and services that make them more innovative and more creative than other products? 

What is their secret ingredient?

Well, it turns out, there are characteristics of highly innovative products and services that tend to attract people’s attention more than others. 

If you’re looking for something very creative, you want to have these characteristics in mind.

The 5 Characteristics of Highly Innovative Products

1. Mobility

Examples:

• The iPhone gives us the ability to have a mobile lifestyle. We can check emails and text messages, check locations, and do so many things. 
• Small bottles of shampoos and other toiletries that you carry when you travel
• GPS in your car
• Disease tracking and geo-tracking

Recommended SIT techniques that lead to a mobile lifestyle:

• Task Unification 
• Attribute Dependency

2. Adaptability

Highly innovative products are smart. These products change, they morph, and they just seem to know when a situation is occurring. They adjust themselves to become more relevant to what you’re doing right in that moment. 

Examples:

• Thermostat
• Car seat adjustment

SIT techniques that lead to an adaptable lifestyle:

• Multiplication
• Attribute dependency

3. Simplicity

Highly innovative products are simpler than less innovative products and they’re counterintuitive. You can have a high functioning, complicated product, but incredibly simple to use. Those are the ones that people find most innovative. 

Examples:

• AirPods – no worries of any tangle wires
• Google Docs (simpler than MS Word)
• Apple products

SIT techniques:

• Division
• Subtraction

4. Specificity

It means the problem is also part of the solution. Highly innovative products have some unique aspect of it that leads you to the solution of it. 

Examples:

• An eye-tracking sensor that can detect when your eyes get very drowsy when driving too long. If your eyes are drowsy, the car will recognize the problem.

SIT technique:

• Task Unification

5. Ideality

The product is unique in that it only appears when the problem appears. The product has some feature in it that it only shows up when you need it. Otherwise, it’s hidden away. 

Examples:

• Pull-out ironing board stored in a drawer
• A parking system used in Korea where they use a balloon that pulls up and down to let you know if somebody pulls out of a spot

To hear more on the 5 characteristics of highly innovative products, listen to the full podcast episode here: Episode 019: What Makes Something Creative? The Characteristics of Highly Innovative Ideas.