When talking about innovation, many people think of the method of ‘brain-storming’. ‘Brain-storming’ is now a well-known method to the public. It has been widely used in various occasions such as trainings, workshops, and departmental meetings.

The core concept is to stimulate employees' creativity with teamwork.

1. Each one of the team members can speak freely, meanwhile
2. Everyone needs to keep an open mind and not judge or criticize other’s idea.

Alex Osborne, the founder of ‘Brain-storming’, firmly believes that in such an atmosphere, people's creativity will be inexhaustible. By doing ‘brain-storming’, the team is able to come up with more ideas, and the probability of generating something creative and innovative is much higher.

However, since founded in 1953, ‘brain-storming’ has not brought any influential innovation to the society. In the 1990s, many research institutions began to study various factors that affect the effectiveness of ‘brain-storming’. Especially when having the same amount of people, to ‘brain-storm’ or to solve the problem individually, which one is more provides more benefits to the team?

Research shows that when having same amount of people:
• - The number of ideas provided by the ‘brain-storming’ group is less than the number of ideas raised by team members individually
• - The ideas from the ‘brain-storming’ group are less innovative than those from the individuals
• - In addition, compared with the ideas brought up by individuals after in-depth research, the ideas from ‘brainstorming’ seems to be more casual, less specific and less targeted.

Therefore, ‘brain-storming’ has not played a substantial role in innovation so far, except for being fancy and lively.

How to come up with an innovative solution?

Innovation seems to be something that can’t be planned, the inspiration pops up unpredictably. In reality, we are facing various challenges and problems all the time, the old products are no longer applicable, and it’s urgent to have innovation in the product. Would it be great if there is a set of methods or processes which can help to create innovative ideas?

Does it actually exist? The answer is yes, as long as you try the following ways, it will definitely help you come up with creative ideas.

1. Understand and accept the limitations of the framework
2. Use 5 innovation strategies to accelerate the output of creativity

• - Subtraction
• - Division
• - Multiplication
• - Task Coordination
• - Attribute Dependency

Accept the limitations of the framework

‘Thinking out of the box’, I believe we’re all familiar with the phrase. Although in reality, there are a lot of limitations when looking for the solutions. For example:

• - time limitation
• - geographic area
• - manpower
• - capital restriction
• - field/domain (eg, the current knowledge, skill, and experience we have been based on the existing product or service)

Are these limitations going to restrain our innovative thinking? I don’t think so. It’s the innovation with practical meaning only when your solution can correctly solve the problem under the limitations. Extricating you from limitations would lead your ideas to an abstract situation therefore loss the innovative or practical value.

For example, I need to stick 2 pieces of paper together, but I don’t have glue at home. What do I do?
1. Go out right away to buy glue in the store nearby
2. Get few grains of rice, mash it with finger and use it to stick together the paper.

Which one of the methods above do you think is more innovative? I don’t think the first one can be counted as innovative, but a convention. The second way of thinking re-allocates the existing resources under the certain condition at the moment and produces a creative solution. Without doubt, this would be more useful to us.

5 strategies to accelerate the production of innovation

Why is innovation so hard?
Very often, it’s the habitual thinking that limited our creativity. People tend to solve problem by using the ways that has been practiced or think in one dimension instead of multiple dimensions at the same time.

So, if we can get rid of the thinking habit with a series of tools and see problem from different perspective, we have the chance to come up with innovative ideas. The following 5 strategies may help you to extend the dimension when you think.

Subtraction Strategy

Subtraction strategy: Delete some parts you originally think is necessary
When you start to use the subtraction strategy, often times you may panic as you might have the feeling, you’re deleting a core function of a product or service.

Example: Liquid laundry detergent without detergent
Let’s see how Vitco created an epoch-making product by using subtraction strategy.

Step 1: List the ingredients of the product

• - Detergent
• - Fragrance
• - Adhesive

Step 2: Remove one of the ingredients, best if a fundamental part
For a liquid laundry detergent, the detergent is the most fundamental.

Step 3: Imagine the result
By doing so, the liquid laundry detergent won’t be able to reach the purpose of cleaning

Step 4: Identify the advantage and market segment of this product
It sounds absurd in the beginning, who needs a liquid laundry detergent that doesn’t have the function of cleaning?

The technical experts at Vitco mentioned, that detergent would harm the cloth also causing discoloration. By removing this ingredient, can lengthen the usage life of the cloth. The target customers are not the ones who want to “clean” laundry. Rather for people who only wore their clothes once and are just doing the laundry for a feeling of refreshment rather than cleaning it because it’s dirty.

Based on this, the company developed a kind of product with only a little amount of detergent, called ‘Clothing Freshener’. Nowadays, clothing fresheners sell over a billion dollars per year at P&G and Unilever.

Division Strategy

Division strategy: Divide a certain function of a product into multiple parts, re-organize and provide a brand-new function.

Division strategy can help us to cast aside our solidified perception to a certain item, as we assumptively see a product or function as a whole piece.

Example: Multitrack Recording
Musician Les Paul's status in the music industry is equivalent to Steve Jobs from Apple. He invented multitrack recording technology.

You might have had this experience; the sound quality of MP3 might sound better than one from a live concert. Why? Because MP3 is made in the studio, it’s usually the outcome of multiple times of recording, up to dozens, until the sound engineer is satisfied.

However, when live, the band and the lead singer might not always be on the same pace. This is the very reason why recordings often need to be re-take so many times. If one person missed a key, it’s restart. The result leads to long time consumption and high cost.

Paul’s innovation in recording technology is this:

Step 1: List the component of the product

• - Drummer
• - Guitarist
• - Keyboard player
• - Singer

Step 2: Break down the product
Record the different instruments and singer tracks separately

Step 3: Re-combine
Re-mix the different tracks together

Step 4: Find the potential advantage and value of the new product

Before that, nobody ever thought about recording the band separately, they’re together as a whole by default. But since Paul started this multitrack recording technique, a brand new era of music production was born.

• - Tremendously decreased the cost
• - Significantly shorten the production period
• - More flexible creation (even one person can imitate a whole band)
• - Convenient for special effects implementation in movie production
• - Make up for defects in live performance

Multiplication Strategy

Multiplication strategy: Duplicate a certain aspect of the product and give new value.
Multiplication strategy can also be helpful to cast aside our solidified perception to a certain item. Different than the division, it focuses on quantity.

Example: Gillette Razor
Gillette's double-layer razor lead the revolution of razor, which is a typical case of multiplication strategy.

Ever since the Bronze Age 3000 years ago, people have been only using the single layer blade. Gillette's double-layer razor adds a new layer of blade. When shaving, one layer pushes the beard up from the skin, and the other layer shaves the beard, thus making razor closer to the skin and providing a cleaner shaving experience.

It duplicated one part of the original product, and then adjusted other parts accordingly, and resulted in a new function.

Step 1: List the components of the product

Step 2: Choose one function to duplicate

Step 3: Think of what the potential advantage and value that the new product can bring

Task Coordination Strategy

Task Coordination strategy: Put an add-on task to one part of the product and give it new value. Task Coordination strategy helps us to break our understanding of the single function of one product.

Example: The flashlight app in iPhone
When you return home from work late at night, you need light to help you find the hole for the key. The phones now have the camera function, which include a flashlight. Turning on the flash as a light, this is a typical case of using an existing part of the product for an add-on task.

Step 1: List all components of the product

Step 2: Choose one part and assign a new task

Step 3: Think of what the potential advantage and value that the new product can bring

Attribute Dependency Strategy

Attribute dependency strategy: Choose 2 properties that are originally not relevant and make them rely on each other in a meaningful way. Attribute dependency strategy can bring different experience to the users.

Example: Delivering time and purchasing price

A lot marketing campaigns link price with another irrelevant objective. For instance, Domino’s Pizza promises the customer to have the pizza delivered within 30 minutes, otherwise the customer gets the pizza for free. There are many games now linking the login time with the gamer’s level or logging in X number of times will give you X number of titles. This is also a typical case of attribute dependency strategy.

Step 1: List the variables of the product

Step 2: Put the variables into row or column

Step 3: List all the current dependency relationships

Step 4: Think of the new dependency relationships

Step 5: Think of the potential advantage and value that the new relationship might bring.

If you use the 5 different strategies to review your product, I believe you would have some interesting discoveries.