Functional INNOVATION

Innovation for the sake of it with no purpose, no end goal and most importantly, no idea of what problem needs to be solved, only returns itself with dead ends. Every business is built out of the need to solve a fundamental human problem through innovation and building systems to continuously identify such problems and innovate solutions will allow businesses to stay ahead of their competition. 

In the 1960s, Swiss Physicist Fritz Zwicky developed the method of ‘Morphological Analysis’ for complex problems. Around the same time, Soviet Scientist Genrich Altshuller formulated a method for systematic problem solving after reviewing more than 40,000 patent abstracts. Functional innovation methodology includes elements derived from these two approaches. It has also been influenced by the ‘Design Thinking’ process introduced by Herbert Simon and the ‘Creative Problem Solving’ method pioneered by Alex Osborn.