Creativity Template

The creativity template technique challanges one of the basic tenet of marketing theory, which belives that customers represent the most valuable source for creating new ideas. The authors argue that creative thinking should be based on intrinsic sources. What is more, they argue that companies should listen the voice of their products instead of listening the voice of their customer. Products evolve in response to environmental pressures taking the form of market needs and desires. In a process resembling the survival of the fittest, products that fail to fulfill these needs and desires disappear, while products that satisfy them survive until the next change takes place. Therefore creativity template provide a tool for looking for information about a new product independent of the current market place. Information inherent in the product reflects market needs. Over time a product becomes a physical represenation of the changing market needs. Creativity templates inherently carry important codes for the evaluation of successful new products and could be exploited to generate a competitive advantage based on minimal market information.

In their research authors identified four innovativation patterns that frequently occur at successful new product/service development. At this point it has to be mentioned that in HBR article authors refer to five patterns. The basic idea is that templates of creative thinking taken from the past may be used for accelerating thinking about new ideas in the present.

Another basic principle of Creativity template is a Function Follows Form phenomenon. It is deemed that human beings are more likely successful in manipulating with the product and then deducing the potential values and benefits for the customers, than in finding a solution for specified function.

This template suggest to improve the product or service by removing the core components or attributes. There are many successful product such as diet coke, de-caff and walk man that prove the existence of this template.

Having removed a core element of the product, developers tend to replace it with something else. To avoid drifting too far from the task at hand, they should first look for the replacement from the product environment. The closer the resource to the product is the more creative is the solution. For example, a maker of children’s product, applying the replacement template, might visualize a kitchen high chair without legs. The aim would be to replace legs with something from immediate environment. This maight be a table to wich the chair can be attached.

This pattern in innovation involves the dependent relationships that exist between attributes of a product or service and attributes of its environment. The idea is to spur innovative thinking by trying to create new dependencies where they do not already exist and to modify or dissolve dependencies where they do. Domino Pizza case represents the innovative service, that can be explained by attribute dependency template. Its success derives from reducing price if delivery price is over half an hour. Innovative element lies in the fact the price of pizza is no longer constant, but depends on delivery time.

This template is based on the identification of negative connection between an external component and the product configuration. This connection is solved by establishment of a new link between the external and internal component. This template usualy ask for some additional R&D work.

CLASS	A
PHASE	Idea generation
APPLICATION FIELDS	New product development, new service development, advertising
ASSUMPTIONS	This method affects the thinking process (cognitive process) as opposite to managing the session where new ideas are searched (brain storming). The Creativity template is highly analytical and focused. It is opposite to methods trying to enhance randomness. Its authors argue against randomness as being instrumental to creativity. This method aims for efficiency and not for generalizibility.
PROS	Astructured, efficiency-based approach to ideation. It is oriented on finding a right solution and not just a large number of potential solutions. It can be used by individuals as wall as in the group context. The technique is not based on a random search for new ideas. The technique is based on scientific discovery. It is based on the similar fundamental idea as TRIZ, yet it is far more simple and, therefore, more applicable.
CONS	Structured approach asks for a certain familiarity with the technique. In comparison with simple techniques such as brainstorming, 635 etc. it is more difficult to use and asks for more detailed training. The technique is sometimes more powerful for ex-post explanation of successful ideation than as a tool for creative thinking.
DESCRIPTION	The creativity template technique challanges one of the basic tenet of marketing theory, which belives that customers represent the most valuable source for creating new ideas. The authors argue that creative thinking should be based on intrinsic sources. What is more, they argue that companies should listen the voice of their products instead of listening the voice of their customer. Products evolve in response to environmental pressures taking the form of market needs and desires. In a process resembling the survival of the fittest, products that fail to fulfill these needs and desires disappear, while products that satisfy them survive until the next change takes place. Therefore creativity template provide a tool for looking for information about a new product independent of the current market place. Information inherent in the product reflects market needs. Over time a product becomes a physical represenation of the changing market needs. Creativity templates inherently carry important codes for the evaluation of successful new products and could be exploited to generate a competitive advantage based on minimal market information. In their research authors identified four innovativation patterns that frequently occur at successful new product/service development. At this point it has to be mentioned that in HBR article authors refer to five patterns. The basic idea is that templates of creative thinking taken from the past may be used for accelerating thinking about new ideas in the present. Another basic principle of Creativity template is a Function Follows Form phenomenon. It is deemed that human beings are more likely successful in manipulating with the product and then deducing the potential values and benefits for the customers, than in finding a solution for specified function. The four identified patterns are: Discplacement template; This template suggest to improve the product or service by removing the core components or attributes. There are many successful product such as diet coke, de-caff and walk man that prove the existence of this template. Replacement template; Having removed a core element of the product, developers tend to replace it with something else. To avoid drifting too far from the task at hand, they should first look for the replacement from the product environment. The closer the resource to the product is the more creative is the solution. For example, a maker of children’s product, applying the replacement template, might visualize a kitchen high chair without legs. The aim would be to replace legs with something from immediate environment. This maight be a table to wich the chair can be attached. Atribute dependency template; This pattern in innovation involves the dependent relationships that exist between attributes of a product or service and attributes of its environment. The idea is to spur innovative thinking by trying to create new dependencies where they do not already exist and to modify or dissolve dependencies where they do. Domino Pizza case represents the innovative service, that can be explained by attribute dependency template. Its success derives from reducing price if delivery price is over half an hour. Innovative element lies in the fact the price of pizza is no longer constant, but depends on delivery time. The component control template; This template is based on the identification of negative connection between an external component and the product configuration. This connection is solved by establishment of a new link between the external and internal component. This template usualy ask for some additional R&D work.
TRAINING MATERIAL	Presentation of Creativity Template (Eng) Presentation of Creativity Template (It) Presentation of Creativity Template (Slo) Case study Derbi-Piaggio Case study Nova KBM Case studi Sava
CORRELATE TECHNIQUES	TRIZ methodology
REFERENCES	Goldenberg J. and Mazursky, D. (2002), Creativity in Product Innovation, Cambridge University Press. Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., Solomon, S. (1999), Creativity templates: towards identifying the fundamental schemes of quality advertisements, Marketing Science, 18, 333-351. Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., Solomon, S. (1999), Creative sparks, Science, 285(5433), 1495-1496. Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., Solomon, S. (1999), Toward identifying the inventive templates of new products: a channelled ideation approach, Journal of Marketing research, 36 (May), 200-210. Goldenberg, J., Horowitz, R., Levav, A., Mazursky, D, Finding your innovation sweet spot, Harvard Business Review, 81 (3), 120-129.

CREATIVITY TEMPLATE