Finding Your Innovation Sweet Spot Summary by Catrin

Finding Your Innovation Sweet Spot Summary by Catrin Aronsson 2015 -09 -10 ME 2603

Successful product Customer interest + Within company position and capacity Successful product?

The wrong way? • ”Think outside the box” • Make unpredictable products that matches the customer need • Gives impractical products • Will flop

Instead! • Systematic inventive thinking • Disciplined ”think inside the box” • Start with an existing product (not customers unmet needs) ”Don’t just listen to the voice of your customer; listen to the voice of your product”

What says the product? • Essential elements o Color o Usefulness • Environment o Temperature o Type of user

Five innovation patterns • Subtraction (reduction) o Remove component or attribute • Multiplication o Quality change of existing product • Division o Look at the parts of existing product • Task unification o New assignment of task to existing product • Attribute dependency change o New, modified or dissolved dependency of product to its environment

How to do it? • Break down product • List product attributes, physical and other aspects • Use patterns to rearrange elements + environment Virtual product • List potential function o o o Customer need Benefits Drawbacks Challenges Capacity?

What pattern? • High complexity products Subtraction • Cost controlling Unification • Classic product development Multiplication • Attribute dependency change: Most fruitful but difficult to apply! o List internal and external attributes o Find dependencies, or lack thereof, between internal/external attributes

Why success? • Brainstorming can be narrow-minded • The human brain works best when the problem is defined • Simply ask these questions: o What is essential? o What can be rearranged, removed, or replicated in new ways?