Drew Boyd - Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results

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We dedicate this book to all past and future generations of innovators making the world a better place.

It worked! I told Jacob Goldenberg, my friend and coauthor of this book. They used the method, and used it well. Although it was late for us to be on Skype given the seven-hour time difference between Cincinnati and Jerusalem, Jacob was eager to hear how my latest class had gone. Jacob and his colleagues in Israel, Roni Horowitz and Amnon Levav, had developed a new method of creativity and had been teaching it to corporate executives, engineers, marketing professionals, and other business leaders all over the world. Still, this latest class of mine was a true test of whether the method was fail-proof and reliable as we all believed.

Yes it was, I was happy to report. One of the students in particular had achieved the kind of creative breakthrough Jacob and I had hoped forand which wed seen happen time and time again with seasoned professionals. I had handed sixteen-year-old Ryan an ordinary flashlight and, after walking him through the required steps of the method, instructed him to invent something new. Ryans invention was a simple modification of the flashlights on-off switch. He created a switch that would also act as a dimmer, changing the brightness of the light as needed. This may not seem to be a particularly exciting idea to you, and its not the most revolutionary idea well introduce in this book. But listen to the circumstances.

Ryan was part of a group of special-needs students at the Hughes Center High School in Cincinnati. These students had various cognitive and motor limitations, including autism and learning disorders. Ryan has Down syndrome. Despite his cognitive limitations, he was able to learn and successfully use the same method that you will learn here, a method in use by leading corporations and inventors around the world.

The traditional view of creativity is that it is unstructured and doesnt follow rules or patterns. That you need to think outside the box to be truly original and innovative. That you should start with a problem and then brainstorm ideas without restraint until you find a solution. That you should go wild making analogies to things that have nothing to do with your products, services, or processes. That straying as far afield as possible will help you come up with a breakthrough idea.

We believe just the opposite. Well show you that more innovationand better and quicker innovationhappens when you work inside your familiar world (yes, inside the box) using what we call templates. We dont make that claim lightly. Jacob, Roni, Amnon, and their advisors, professors David Mazursky and Sorin Solomon, developed this method of creativity inspired by the work of pioneering researcher Genrich Altshuller. Altshuller discovered that creative solutions have an underlying logic that can be defined and taught to others. His focus on patterns in engineering solutions stimulated Jacob and his partners to ask the same questions about patterns in highly innovative products and services.

By 1999, this team had studied hundreds of successful products to see what made them different from similar products. What they found will surprise you. Youd think that new and innovative products would be quite different from each other. In fact, inventive solutions share certain patterns, patterns that can be formed into templates. These templates regulate our thinking and channel the creative process in a way that makes us morenot lesscreative.

We believe innovators from all corners of the world have used templates in their inventions for thousands of years, most of them without realizing it. Those templates are now encoded like DNA into the products and services you see around you.

Surprisingly, the majority of new, inventive, and successful products result from only five templates: subtraction, division, multiplication, task unification, and attribute dependency. These templates form the basis of the innovation method called Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT). In the twenty years since its inception, the method has been expanded to cover a wide range of innovation-related phenomena in a variety of contexts. By using Systematic Inventive Thinking, companies have produced breakthrough results in many types of situations and in every part of the world. In this book we focus on the basic techniques and principles that are at the methods core and that make it unique.

You may have been struck by the word systematic in Systematic Inventive Thinking. Most people are. We know it sounds counterintuitive, the notion that creativity can be systematic. Yet it can be. The method also happens to be very effective at making creativity accessible to anyone. And by using the method, you will be consciously harnessing templates mankind has used intuitively for ages to create new ideas.

Does it work? Royal Philips Electronics, a world-leading electronics firm, used the Subtraction technique to revolutionize the DVD market. Remember when DVD players looked like the traditional bulky VCR players, with a confusing number of buttons and displays on the front panel? The Philips team used our approach to develop a DVD player controlled by a handheld device. The result: a slimmer, cheaper, easier-looking, and easier-to-use DVD machine. Philipss solution redefined the DVD market and established a new design standard for todays DVD players and other home electronics. That was just one of 149 usable ideas Philips generated using SIT on that occasion.

Samsonite, the worlds largest travel bag company, used the Task Unification technique to expand into the college backpack market. Backpacks, especially for college students, cause back and neck strain due to the weight of their contents: textbooks, laptop, and so on. Instead of padding the straps like all others, the Samsonite team created a way to use the heavy weight as a comfort advantage . The straps are shaped so that they press softly into the wearers shoulders at strategically located shiatsu points to provide a soothing massage sensation. The heavier the contents, the deeper the sensation and the more stress-relieving for the wearer.

Pearson Education, the worlds leading education company, used the Multiplication technique to create a new course designed specifically for students who failed pre-algebra or algebra and needed a different approach to studying these subjects. By the way, its just a coincidence that the multiplication technique was helpful with the math curriculum; that same technique also led Pearson to invent a new audio planning coach that helps teachers plan their lessons and to create a new web-based approach to customer service.

In this book, were going to teach you how to apply our inside-the-box approach to develop any type of product, service, or process. Well illustrate each technique with lots of examples, both from clients weve worked with and from the world at large.

Consider, for example, Bill Frisell, one of the leading jazz guitarists since the late 1980s. He is known for using an array of electronic effects (delay, distortion, reverb, octave shifters, and volume pedals, to name a few) to create unique sounds from his instrument. One of Frisells favorite techniques to devise new sounds is to imagine having only one of the guitars six strings available to him. He subtracts the others by restricting himself to playing on one string and forcing himself to make more creative music. Bill Frisell became more creative when he worked inside the boxthat is, confined to a guitar but with some key elements subtracted.