Bold Group
In brief
- Most methods look outward and arrive at something to buy. SIT looks inward and rebuilds what you already have.
- It applies five thinking tools, drawn from patterns in how products change, to existing resources.
- Monday: list everything you already own around the problem before anyone proposes a purchase.
Two directions
When a result will not move, most methods look outward first: benchmark competitors, scan the market, compare vendors. The answer is usually something new, such as a building, a system or a team. It may be right. It is also the most expensive answer and the slowest to pay back.
Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) works the other way. It starts inside, with the people, assets, processes and data you already have, and asks what happens if one of them changes its order, its form or its role.
Where SIT comes from
SIT was developed in Israel in the 1990s from TRIZ, the method Genrich Altshuller built from patterns in a very large number of patents. SIT simplified that discipline and took it beyond engineering. Research by Goldenberg, Mazursky and Solomon, published in Science in 1999, showed that many successful new products follow a small number of repeating patterns, and that those patterns can be learned and applied on purpose.
Five tools, applied to what exists
Most problem-solving starts with a problem statement and a hunt for root cause. SIT puts less weight on that; its tools came from studying how products actually changed, not from analysing problems.
- Subtraction.Remove something everyone thinks is essential, and see what the rest can still do.
- Multiplication.Copy an element, but change the copy so it does a different job.
- Division.Split a product or process apart, and put the pieces back in a new order.
- Task unification.Give something you already have an extra job.
- Attribute dependency.Link two things that have always varied on their own.
Five principles keep the thinking honest: look inside the system first (closed world), change the form before asking what it could do (function follows form), set aside the first easy idea (path of most resistance), prefer the answer that removes a problem over one that eases it (qualitative change), and see past the fixed idea of what each thing is for (breaking fixedness). Fixedness is what makes people say a thing “cannot change”.
Our published cases, read through the tools
Our labelling, after the fact. No new results are claimed here.
| Case | What changed | Read as |
|---|---|---|
| Store opening | Steps that did not depend on each other stopped waiting | Division (in time) |
| Turbine overhaul | The same stages, in a new order, with the same crew | Division (in time) |
| Plastics inspection | A second inspection, placed before colouring | Multiplication |
| Hospital ward | Nurses and an ID card took on the handover | Task unification |
| Travel expenses | The bank statement became the record | Task unification |
| Order backlog | Storage cost linked to the buyers’ measure | Attribute dependency |
Our working hypothesis
This is our reading, from using SIT with clients in Thailand, and we hold it as a hypothesis, not a finding. If the tools are patterns, each existing resource can be checked against each pattern before anything is bought. That is a cheaper starting point than a market scan, and it keeps the answer inside the organization that will run it.
SIT is our core method, not our only one. We add Theory of Constraints when a result is capped by one point in a chain, TRIZ when a technical contradiction blocks a design, strategic foresight when the design must hold in conditions that do not exist yet, and CIRCO when materials and product life are part of the problem.
What this looks like in Thailand
Thai organizations often carry more unused capacity than their plans assume: assets bought for one purpose, data collected for one report, people whose skills sit outside their job title. The inside-out question is a practical one here, because the alternative, buying the answer, competes for the same capital as everything else.
Where this does not apply
Where the resource the answer needs genuinely does not exist inside, such as a technology you have never operated or a licence you do not hold, look outside. The closed world is a starting point, not a rule against buying.
Self-check
Tick what is true for you.
0 of 5. If three or more are true, it is worth an hour with a founder.
Sources2 sources, with method and limits
- Creative SparksGoldenberg, Mazursky & Solomon, Science 285(5433): 1495–1496 · 1999
- Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough ResultsBoyd & Goldenberg, Simon & Schuster · 2013
Common questions
Does SIT replace other methods?
No. It is where we start. We add other tools when the situation calls for them.
Is SIT a Bold Group method?
No. SIT was developed by others; our founders are trained in it. What we add is how we combine it with other tools.
