Systematic Inventive Thinking

Subtract

Key question: What happens if you remove a feature from your product or service?

Example: A budget airline in Europe decided, for its short-haul flights, to remove all food and drinks from its airplanes. Since it was a budget airline, people mostly focused on the cost of the plane ticket and it could lower costs. As a result of removing food and drinks, the airline also thought they could remove one of the washrooms on planes, thus being able to add more seats and further lowering the costs of the plane tickets.

Multiply

Key question 1: What components can I add to my product or service?

Example: Smartphones are now going from one screen to two and even three screens!

Example:

Key question 2: What components can I add and change to my product or service?

Example: There are smartphone chargers in the market that now have multiple output devices (micro USB, USB C, lightning).

Divide

Key question: How might I be able to divide a product or service either in space or time?

Example: A good example of this is the transition of hotels moving from a daily rate to an hourly rate. What you once needed to 'rent' for a day can now be 'rented' for an hour or two. An interesting idea might be to have lounges where you can rent a private room for an hour or two for travellers on layover. There would be a concierge to handle transferring luggage if needed and you could get meals and snacks, or even take a nap while waiting for your next flight.

Unify

Key question: How might I assign new tasks to existing resources?

Example: Water jet packs were originally created to help with cleaning ships! But sales skyrocketed (sorry) when they were positioned as entertainment devices.

Attribute dependency

Key question: How might I change variables so they depend on each other?

Example: Did you know Motorola came out with a waterproof smartphone back in 2010, but waterproof smartphones didn't become a thing until the late 2010s? Or another example of attribute dependency is the invention of windows that changed shade depending on how much light goes through them (the more light coming through the window, the darker the window).

Hey you got to the end! Want more from me? Did you know I also have a Substack where I share what I learned from the 50+ books I read every year? It's a lot like this newsletter - a weekly article - except I also cover health and other non-work-related topics. Join hundreds of readers and subscribe so you won't miss the next newsletter when it comes out.