You may be surprised to find many of your products and services conform to the five innovation patterns of Systematic Inventive Thinking. If so, it means your employees are predisposed to use innovation patterns when developing new products. Like many innovators, they are using patterns probably without realizing it. Given this predisposition to using innovation templates, a company can realize huge gains in innovation effectiveness by taking the next step.
Take the case of a large industrial company in the energy sector. It leads the industry producing a product that is relatively simple in design but incredibly challenging to produce. Despite its strong reputation and market success, the company worries it is not innovative. Yet when I reviewed its project pipeline, I spotted concepts with each of the five patterns of S.I.T. (Subtraction, Task Unification, Multiplication, Attribute Dependency, and Division). The teams did not use S.I.T. in the classic way (apply templates and work backwards using "Function Follows Form" to find a potential benefit). Instead, they used trial and error, experimentation, and good old fashioned tinkering. Their innovations embody the templates nevertheless.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Innovation in Practice: Are You More Innovative Than You Think?
