1. Finding Your Innovation Sweet Spot
Summary by Catrin Aronsson
ME2603

2. Successful product
Customer interest + Within company position and capacity  Successful product?

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

4. 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”

5. What says the product? Essential elements Environment Color Usefulness
Temperature
Type of user

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

7. 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
Customer need
Benefits
Drawbacks
Challenges
Capacity?

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

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