GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

What do you say when you have nothing new to say? That is the dilemma marketers face in mature categories where the product’s features and benefits are well understood. Even more challenging is when your product is virtually the same as the competition. Running ads to remind the market what they already know is wasteful and potentially annoying. But you can’t risk being invisible to the market or you will lose brand awareness.

That’s where the Extreme Effort Tool comes in handy. The tool works by exaggerating the effort one must go to use the product. Instead of promoting a particular benefit, the tool emphasizes the overall attractiveness and desirability. It is an efficient way to keep your product in the mind’s of the audience and stand out in a busy marketplace.

The tool is one of eight patterns embedded in most innovative commercials. Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues describe these simple, well-defined design structures in their book, “Cracking the Ad Code,” and provide a step-by-step approach to using them.

The tools are:
1. Unification
2. Activation
3. Metaphor
4. Subtraction
5. Extreme Consequence
6. Absurd Alternative
7. Inversion
8. Extreme Effort

Here is an example from Kohler:

There are two ways to use the tool. One is to show the extreme effort customers will go to use or acquire the product, as in the Kohler commercial. The other is to show the extreme effort the company will go to provide or deliver the product. This is particularly good for service companies as they can demonstrate, in an extreme, outlandish way, the lengths they will go to deliver that service. Here is an example:

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

Suppose you’re told that three out of four car accidents happen within 25 miles of your home. Are you safer driving away from home?

Based on this statistic alone, most people would assume they are safer. But the picture changes when you consider an important part of this scenario called the base rate. In probability and statistics, the base rate is the underlying probability unconditioned by prior events. Failing to consider the base rate leads to wrong conclusions, known as the base-rate fallacy. In this example, the base rate is the total percentage of driving that happens within 25 miles of your home. Let’s assume it is 90%. Given the odds of an accident are only 75% in an area you spend 90% of your time, driving close to home is clearly safer.

Why does this matter in innovation? Understanding the base rate with a product’s performance can lead to hidden insights and opportunities. Look at this example, as reported by CNET:
“Where exactly do most people accidentally ruin their iPhone?  If you guessed the toilet you’d be wrong, says a new survey.  According to device warranty provider Squaretrade, most people — 21 percent to be precise — damaged their device in the kitchen. The runner up, at 18 percent, is the living room, followed by the bathroom at 16 percent.”
Well that’s fine, but now let’s consider the base rate: how much total time do we spend using an iPhone in the kitchen versus other places? Assume people spend an average of 10% of their iPhone usage in the kitchen. Viewed this way, the rate of iPhone accidents in the kitchen seems high. We would have to conclude the kitchen is not a safe place to use a smartphone. At the other end, let’s assume instead we spend 30% of our cellular calling time in the kitchen. In light of the base rate, the kitchen is actually a safe haven for iPhones.

For innovation practitioners, here is the point: when you see disparities between the point estimate and the base rate, you should ask why. Perhaps there is an opportunity to innovate a solution. If the iPhone is at risk in the kitchen, perhaps an innovation technique like Task Unification could help. Is there another component in the vicinity of the kitchen (The Closed World) that could be recruited to help reduce the risk of breakage? If so, you may have a nice commercial opportunity.

If the iPhone is safer in the kitchen, you should also ask why. Are there features, user habits, or design aspects that make it safer? Can they be generalized and embedded into other smartphones? Can they be used in other things like kitchen tools? Once again, you may have a nice commercial opportunity on your hands – thanks to the base rate.

The bottom line is that ignoring the base rate can lead to wrong judgments. Instead, take advantage of this often hidden gem. Peek into the base rate in any product scenario to see what possible opportunities lie within.

image credit: times.uk

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

“The Quiet Time^TM Universal System turns cell phones off automatically in designated areas such as theaters, hospitals, doctor’s offices, and business meeting rooms. Our patented technology converts your incoming calls to text messages and alerts the cell phone owner.”

This may sound like the latest gizmo you would see at the Consumer Electronics Show. It is actually an invention created by my students using Systematic Inventive Thinking…in 2007, the year the iPhone was first released. Five years later, Apple has been awarded a patent described as an “apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device.” It reveals a way to change aspects of a mobile device based on certain events or surroundings.

As reported by CNET:

“Imagine a mobile phone that automatically turns off its display and sounds when it senses that it’s in a movie theater. For example, the phone could disable its own noise and display if it knows it’s in a theatre. It could be prevented from communicating with other devices if it detects that it’s in a classroom. Or it could automatically go into sleep mode if entering a sensitive area where noises are taboo. In a typical scenario, the mobile device would communicate with a network access point that enforces a certain policy, such as putting the handset on mute. Users could have the option of accepting or rejecting a connection with the access point based on the policies. A single access point could also offer multiple policies.”

This is a classic example of the Attribute Dependency Technique, one of five in the SIT innovation method. You can spot Attribute Dependency concepts immediately when you see one aspect changing as another changes. In this new patent, Apple calls it “situational-awareness” technology.

Attribute Dependency differs from the templates in that it uses attributes (variables) of the situation rather than components. Start with an attribute list, then construct a matrix of these, pairing each against the others. Each cell represents a potential dependency (or potential break in an existing dependency) that forms a Virtual Product. Using Function Follows Form, we work backwards and envision a potential benefit or problem that this hypothetical solution solves.

Attribute Dependency is a versatile tool, and it explains the majority of new products as reported in the research by Dr. Jacob Goldenberg.  I used it to create a lot of new concepts for the iPhone in my September 2008 blog posting.  In each of these concepts, look for the telltale sign of Attribute Dependency: as one thing changes, so does another.

image credit: using binoculars image from bigstock

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

This month’s Innovation Sighting comes to us from Dr. Steven Palter.  Dr. Palter is a gynecologic fertility specialist and a true innovator in the medical field.  He learned the S.I.T. method recently, so he knows how to spot the five innovation patterns of S.I.T. in everyday products and services.

This one is a new refrigerator launched by LG at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  It is the LGLFX31945ST French Door Refrigerator with Door-in-Door.  The new Door-in-Door is a classic example of the Multiplication Technique.  To use Multiplication, make a list of the components of the product, select a component and copy it, then change the copied component along some variable such as size, location, or other attribute.  Once you create this Virtual Product, try to identify new benefits or markets served by this configuration.

In this example, the door was copied then changed to be located just inside the existing one.  It creates a whole new area for storing food.  This increases the storage capacity of the refrigerator without increasing the overall exterior size.  Take a look:

LG didn’t stop there. They also launched a new innovation in refrigerators called the LG Blast Chiller. It allows you to vary the temperature delivered to an item depending on the type of food or beverage. Does that pattern sound familiar?  If you have studied the S.I.T. method, you would recognize the Attribute Dependency pattern. Take a look:

Very cool! I like using refrigerators in my S.I.T. training sessions because there are so many ways to apply the five techniques to yield new-to-the-world innovations.  Most people find it surprising that you can innovate a concept that dates back the ancient Egyptians.

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

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.

Mobile market research is proving to be better than online surveys. With online approaches, the consumer has to be taken out of the moment and put in their workspace in front of a computer. Mobile, on the other hand, gets you into virtually any consumer places including their private spaces.

The smartphone trend has huge implications for innovation professionals as well. The mobile nature of our society gives practitioners the same advantages as market researchers. Testing and refining new ideas can be done “in the moment” as ideas are generated. Imagine generating ideas systematically and at the same time, testing them outside the workshop room with potentially thousands of people.

Using mobile devices has other advantages. It is cheaper and easier to target the right consumers who are presently in a situation that is relevant to the idea being tested. Innovators can collect more natural, unfiltered responses by people in usage situations where their answers will be more salient. Mobile technology also facilitates geo-tagging. Innovators not only get demographic insights, but also geographic and behavioral data. Because mobile is so immediate, innovators can test initial concept “right out of the head.” Given the LCDs on smartphones, innovators can also get consumer feedback to visual or graphical renderings of the idea. Participants in an innovation workshop can then use this consumer feedback to make real-time adaptations to the idea and improve its potential value.

Andrew Sauer of Procter and Gamble and Steve August from Revelation delivered one of the many case studies that caught my eye. They described how P&G uses mobile devices to capture insights about mom’s and their use of diapers for their babies. P&G was losing consumer share and couldn’t figure out why. Was it pricing, brand confusion, or perhaps performance issues? Use of mobile data transmitted by moms, P&G was able to “be there” as the consumers used the product. They realized they were losing customers during the transition to the next larger size diaper. Moms were confused over selecting the right size diaper. Three months of mobile ethnography allowed P&G to innovate new packaging and retail concepts to alleviate the confusion and regain the customer base.

The lesson from the P&G case is that mobile feedback helps innovators understand the context of what consumers are dealing with. With context, innovators can then track the emotions consumers are feeling. Finally, innovators can connect the emotions to the subsequent behaviors. In situations like this, where the consumer can’t even articulate the problem, mobile research allows the issues and insights to unfold, even when the consumer is unaware.

To learn more about how mobile technology is changing the market insights, visit the Mobile Marketing Research Association.

image credit: bostonno

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

Perhaps harder than branding is re-branding.  Once the market associates your brand with a specific promise, it is difficult to get people to shift over to a newer or more updated meaning.  This is especially true for brands that have been around a long time. Take the brand of Canada, for example.  It adopted the instantly-recognizable Maple Leaf as its national flag in 1965 over contending choices such the one shown here.  Now Canada is re-positioning the brand to update its global image.   The new campaign, “Know Canada,” makes clever use of the S.I.T. advertising tool called Subtraction.

The tool is one of eight patterns embedded in most innovative commercials.  Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues describe these simple, well-defined design structures in their book, “Cracking the Ad Code,” and provide a step-by-step approach to using them.

From PSFK: “Bruce Mau Design partnered with Studio 360 to redesign the Canadian brand that is more fitting for the modern world. A country that is more known for its maple syrup, and freezing cold weather, The ‘Know Canada’ campaign depicts the country as a place that’s more vibrant, innovative, refreshing, and a leader in global issues.  The idea is simple, and uses the two red rectangles of the Canadian flat as almost like bold quotation marks. Icons like well-known celebrities, scenic views, famous political figures, and even peanut butter, are highlighted in the middle of the two red posts.  The rebranding campaign can be rolled out as print posters, billboards, mobile apps, and even passport stamps and beer jugs.”

The iconic red maple leaf in the middle has been subtracted.  Subtracting out a familiar part of a product stirs our minds and activates the Structural Fixedness in all of us.  Structural fixedness (similar to Functional Fixedness) is the tendency of the mind to see things as an organized whole (a gestalt).  We have trouble reconciling when something obvious is missing.

The use of the Subtraction technique works well here because the campaign replaces the maple leaf with other symbols of Canada to make the mind create the linkage.Take a look:

image credit: wikipedia

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.” – Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

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.

Psychologist Karl Duncker discovered  Functional Fixedness when he posed his famous “candle problem.” In this classic 1945 experiment.  Duncker sat participants down at a table positioned against a wall. He gave each one a candle, a box of thumbtacks, and a book of matches, and asked them to attach the candle to the wall. Duncker realized that participants were so “fixated” on the thumbtack box’s traditional function that they couldn’t conceive of it as a possible solution to the problem. Interestingly, in later experiments, participants presented with an empty thumbtack box were twice as likely to solve Dunker’s challenge than those given a full one. Somehow, seeing the box out of context—that is, not performing its usual function of holding thumbtacks—helped them visualize it as a possible solution.

How do you beat fixedness? Tony McCaffery, a postdoctoral student at the University of Massachusetts, suggests a clever little trick – break items into their component parts and give them new, generalized names.  This helps you see beyond the object’s traditional function and helps you think more creatively of other functions it can perform.  He was featured in this month’s Scientific American Mind^TM:
“First, break down the items at hand into their basic parts, then name each part in a way that does not imply meaning. Using his technique, a candle becomes wax and string. Seeing the wick as a string is key: calling it a “wick” implies that its use is to be lit, but calling it a “string” opens up new possibilities.”
This is similar to using the Task Unification Technique, one of five in Systematic Inventive Thinking. To use Task Unification:

1. List all of the components, both internal and external, that are part of the Closed World of the product, service, or process.

2. Select a component from the list. Assign it an additional task using one of three ways:  choose an external component and use it to perform a task that the product already accomplishes; choose an internal component and make it do something new or extra; choose an internal component and make it do the function of an external component (effectively “stealing” the external component’s function).

3. Visualize the new (or changed) products or services. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values? Who would want this and why would they find it valuable? If you are trying to solve a specific problem, how can it help address that particular challenge?

4. If you decide they are valuable, then ask: Are they feasible? Can you actually create these new products? Perform these new services? Why or why not? Is there any way to refine or adapt the idea to make it more viable?

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

How do you know if someone is truly innovative?  I look for three things.  First, does the person have a cognitive process for generating new ideas? Innovation is a skill, not a gift.  It can trained and learned like any other skill.  So I expect successful innovators to have such training and be able to deploy ideation methods – on demand.

Second, is the person motivated and hopeful about the future?  Hope is defined as a positive motivational belief in one’s future; the feeling that what is wanted can be had;  that events will turn out for the best.  Research shows that an employee’s sense of hope explains their creative output at work.  Hope predicts creativity.

Third, and perhaps most elusive: do they have the innovation senses to know how their efforts will succeed?  I call these the Five Senses of Innovation.

1.  Internal Sense:  Does the innovator grasp the company’s current situation, challenges, opportunities, and direction as it relates to the presentation topic?  Does the innovator understand how to gain support from leaders in terms of budget, headcount, and time?  Does the innovator have a sense of how to give and get reciprocal support to the right people across different functional departments (R&D, marketing, finance, and so on)?

2.  External Sense:  Does the innovator understand the market layout and segmentation?  Is he or she tuned into the competitive factors?  Does the innovator grasp what factors are critical to drive success and why the company has a right to win?

3.  Positional Sense:  Given an understanding of the internal and external factors, does the innovator grasp where the company is positioned in the market and where it needs to be relative to the competition?  Does he or she connect how innovative products and services help move the company to a more desirable position?

4.  Strategic Sense:  Has the innovator considered various options to achieve success rather than just one “obvious” choice?  Is the innovator insightful enough to consider the less obvious or hidden options?  Does he or she sell ideas internally not just on the basis of what needs to be done, but also what was considered and ruled out?

5.  Value Creation Sense:  Has the innovator tied the recommended course of action to value creation for the company?  Is the innovator realistic about the recommended course of action and the risk involved?  Does the innovator show a real sense of concern and ownership of the fit and impact of the recommended idea?  Does he or she have “skin in the game?”

For a completely different take on how to use those “other” five senses (hearing, sight, touch, smell and taste) to create new innovations, click here.

image credit: voyager

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

The Columbia Sportswear Company is launching a new line of clothing that keeps you…cooler. The Omni-Freeze® is a specialized fabric weave that increases the surface area of the fabric that contacts your bare skin. This transmits heat faster and feels cooler to the touch.

This is a great example of the Attribute Dependency Technique, one of five in the S.I.T. innovation method. Attribute Dependency differs from the other templates in that it uses attributes (variables) of the situation rather than components. Start with an attribute list, then construct a 2 x 2 matrix of these, pairing each against the others. Each cell represents a potential dependency that forms a Virtual Product. Using Function Follows Form, we work backwards and envision a potential benefit or problem that this hypothetical solution solves. In the case of Omni-Freeze®, the dependency is created between body temperature and layers of clothing.

What makes the Omni-Freeze® so special is the way the dependency was changed. Normally, we use the matrix to create a new dependency or break one that already exists. In this case, a dependency already existed between body temperature and layers of clothing – the more layers you have, the warmer you get. But with Omni-Freeze® clothing, the dependency is reversed – the more layers you have, the cooler you get. Reversing a dependency is a powerful and provocative way to break fixedness and create new innovations.

Here is a short demostration of the new product:

image credit: omnifreezezero

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GUEST POST from Drew Boyd

Yahoo’s recent patent filings suggest it is entering the e-Book market, a move that will pit it against Amazon, Apple, and other content providers.  But given the nature of the patent filings, Yahoo seeks to leap over the competition with a potentially more innovative approach. Yahoo’s concepts conform to the Attribute Dependency technique, one of five in the SIT Method.  Research shows that new products that conform to one of the five SIT techniques tend to be more successful in the marketplace.*

The first concept calls for a variable pricing approach.  The price paid for an e-book varies depending on the amount of advertising the buyer is willing to put up with. The filings suggest that buyers could be offered titles at a variety of prices depending on the ads’ prominence.  “Greater levels of advertising, which may be more valuable to an advertiser and potentially more distracting to an e-book reader, may warrant higher discounts,” it states. Readers might be offered advertisements as hyperlinks based within the book’s text or even video.

Position of the ads could vary, too.  Like banner ads, boxes on a page could could pop up saying “brought to you by XYZ Company”.  The more willing the customer is to see the ads, the greater the discount.  “Higher frequencies… may even be great enough to allow the e-book to be obtained for free,” the filing states.

The second concept calls for variable advertising that depends on the content or context of the text on a particular page.  The products shown would vary by the type of book being read, or even the contents of a specific chapter, phrase or word.  The inventors suggest that ads could be linked to the mood or emotional state the reader as a they move through the book.

Targeting the ads could take account of previous titles the owner has bought.  This is yet another variation on the Attribute Dependency technique.

Attribute Dependency differs from the other templates in that it uses attributes (variables) of the situation rather than components.  Start with an attribute list, then construct a 2 x 2 matrix of these, pairing each against the others.  Each cell represents a potential dependency (or potential break in an existing dependency) that forms a Virtual Product.  Using Function Follows Form, we work backwards and envision a potential benefit or problem that this hypothetical solution solves.  In Yahoo’s e-Book approach, both advertising and pricing change depending on variable related to the buyer and variables related to the book story.

In reality, these are old ideas that are being embedded by Yahoo in new technology.  Both radio and television do the same thing: vary pricing of content and advertising based on buyer variables and content variables.  By patenting this in an e-Books, Yahoo may give itself a much needed edge in the competitive landscape.

e-Books will continue to evolve through innovation.  We will see creative uses of advertising, but also creative uses of the new medium itself in how authors write stories.

*Goldenberg, Jacob, and David Mazursky. Creativity in Product Innovation. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.

image credit : yahoo

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