Editor | On 30, Oct 2004

SIT Community in The Netherlands

The first SIT Innovation Community Gathering took place on June 22nd 2004 in Antropia, Driebergen. About 50 professionals interested in creativity and innovation attended a day of lectures and interactive work to discuss current SIT developments and activities.

SIT – Systematic Inventive Thinkingâ„¢ is the name of both a company and the innovative method it develops for enhancing innovation and creativity across the organization. SIT evolved from TRIZ during the 1980s in Israel and has been developed in parallel both in Academia and in the business world. SIT has been applied for creative solutions ranging from product development to advertising in over 500 organizations around the world. The method, although trademarked, is not a secret. It has been taught in a number of universities, and published in books and articles.

A couple of years ago we discovered that SIT has a particular following in the Netherlands: at least 15 people – consultants, academics, corporate managers – were using our method without our knowledge. Naturally, we were happy to know that people were working with SIT, but also concerned about how well they were practicing it without benefiting from our training and experience. Also, since SIT is a business, we had an incentive to find some model by which we would be remunerated in some way for our IP and efforts. We therefore decided that the best way for everyone to benefit from SIT was to cooperate, rather than compete. We decide to jointly create a community of SIT users, dedicated to encouraging anyone who wants to seriously use SIT to promote innovation.

In the first gathering, SIT began sharing its knowledge with the participants, and offered a menu of training and support services. In parallel, two full SIT facilitators’ courses have already taken place in the Netherlands. Specialized SIT for Problem Solving and SIT for Marketing Communication will be offered this fall. The goal of the community is to assist in the creation of a network of SIT professionals in the Netherlands who will be able to share knowledge, support each other, and continue developing the methodology with SIT. As a community, we can all become a network better able to develop our services, promoting innovation in the Netherlands

So what happened during the day of the gathering?

1. We discussed Multiplication, an SIT tool, and its expressions in nature, in innovative products, and even in introduction exercises.
2. Several professionals who are using various SIT-related or pattern-based ideation processes presented their works in parallel sessions. For example, Corrinne Goenee, Managing Partner at Innovaction B.V. spoke about “SIT patterns illustrated by FMCG (food) examples”. Simon Dewulf, Managing Director of CREAX described “New ways of applying TRIZ for innovation”. Annina Van Logtestijn, and Dorien van der Heijden, Partners at ICSB Marketing and Strategy talked about “How traditional brainstorming and SIT can learn from each other”.
3. We then learned about SIT for MarCom and advertising, two developing new fields of expertise at SIT. SIT is used to find patterns in advertising, which are very useful for sharpening messages and developing more creative campaigns.
4. We presented the Orange Pages, a web directory where professionals who are practicing SIT can offer their services to the rest of the community. Check them out at http://www.sit-netherlands.com/orangepages/
5. Before the gathering, we created a questionnaire about Dutch innovation on the community’s website. The questionnaire uses an innovative internet-based market research tool for gathering quantitative data with qualitative insights called BrainJuicer®. The BrainJuicer®’s interviewing system collects information as to what people think and why, within minutes. The results are automatically processed, providing a “qual-quant” overview of an issue.

John Kearon, the developer of BrainJuicer®, presented the results of the first questionnaire, and we have created a second one to receive feedback on the event and continue developing the community according to participants’ needs. Please share your thoughts about the future of the innovation community in the Netherlands at http://www.brainjuicer.com/juicingcentre/juicer/LBT000042/ .
In the future we hope to collaborate with Dutch innovation lovers and create a thriving community that will become a leader in creativity and invention.