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TINO as the Second Stage of the Innovation Process

Identify your innovation experts: The Innovation ‘Hidden Expert’ Quiz  

Who can provide me with the best innovative ideas?

Many of you are already familiar with the previous ‘restaurant as metaphor’ hidden-expert quiz, However, drawing a direct line from that conceptual ‘restaurant’ notion to a practical common business situation wasn’t always so simple.

The reasons for this difficulty are varied. Some of these have been explained in the ‘restaurant as metaphor’ post, and others exceed the scope of this post.

But while the ‘restaurant’ metaphor may seem to be only relevant ...

The challenge

Successful marketing demands the right information in order to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems. Such challenges generate a permanent flow of business questions. Some questions are commonly approached through document-based quantitative methods (data-bases, data-mining and analysis). Others are dealt with through undocumented, qualitative information, using surveys, focus groups and in-depth interviews.

Unfortunately, too often such qualitative methods fail both to explain past events and behavior and to predict accurately future trends, leaving the company relatively blind.

Such failures are usually dealt with by switching from one research method to another, or by changing its weight in ...

How to solve cross-border organizational RTV problems?

General introduction

Solving RTV problems, in which retail products are shipped back to the manufacturer for disposition, can save companies millions of dollars. Some retailers report as much as 10%-20% of products returned, while only 4%-6% may be perceived as an unavoidable cost of doing business.

Logistics professionals are always searching for innovative methods to better identify major drivers for production, packaging, storing, shipping, and warehousing malfunctions, but most efforts focus on optimizing existing knowledge and expertise.

RTV is a typical cross-organizational problem, spanning different components of the business ecosystem (manufactures ...

Customer relationship management (CRM) concerns a company’s interactions with clients, assisted by a collaborative tool. The main goals are identifying and reaching out to new clients, retaining existing clients and bringing back those who left. From a cost-benefit perspective, CRM aims to reduce costs and increase the efficiency of marketing, pre-sales, sales, and customer services. However, recent research argues that more than 50 percent of all CRM implementations are eventually regarded as failures by the customers.

Some CRM experts blame this failure on the technology provided or the quality of implementation process. Such claims are sometimes correct, but since ...

How to make the bad guys help protect the good guys?

 Inspired by counter-terrorism HUMINT (human intelligence) methods, the Think Intelligence™ methodology and its TINO™ framework, offers an out-of-the-box, anti-fraud solution

General introduction

The typical organization loses 6% of its annual revenue to fraud. Furthermore, fraud damages by executives are nine times as costly as those caused by employees. And more than 93% of these “bad guys” joined their company as “good guys”…

It is expected that the best anti-fraud advisors would be highly-experienced risk managers and anti-fraud officers. This seems reasonable, but remember that the better they are, the ...

How about having a network of highly creative people, exclusively sharing with you innovative perspectives, free of charge? We can train you to build one, or do it for you.

General introduction

Innovation is a substantial change, renovation is a minor change, and invention is the creation of something from scratch.

The TINO innovation program generates substantially more perspectives regarding possible changes. It also creates a highly valuable human network, whose members will gladly share innovative observations and actionable ideas.

You can read more about the innovation program and other solutions at the HUMINT Solutions blog.

                                                                             Case Study

A company ...

Inspired by governmental HUMINT (human intelligence) methods, the TINO Anti-Fraud Program offers an out-of-the-box anti-fraud solution

Effective prevention of fraud means removing vulnerabilities that can be used by the bad guys rather than searching for the bad guys themselves.

As in other challenges, when we require a good prognosis and effective problem solving methods, we first need to have an accurate diagnosis. Preventing hidden activities is always more complex compared to visible ones. As accurate and relevant the information we gather, as straightforward and effective the actionable solution we can structure and implement.

But what comes first, the chicken or ...

Sustainable Innovation processes must consist in ongoing evaluation of different perspectives. The TINO framework facilitates this through  deployment of a TIKOs Network.

TINO acts as a GPS, and its TIKOs act as satellites.

While renovation means relatively minor changes, and invention means creating something from scratch, Innovation is the application of substantial changes. The success of innovation programs can be best analyzed by comparing their ability to generate and maintain substantial changes.

In analyzing the nature of desired changes, while focusing on the undocumented people-domain (rather than the documented data-domain), there is a serious obstacle. We need more than one ...

 Developing a business demands effective management of external 'satellites'. – An effective network of TIKOs provides this

Business development aims to access new markets and customers. Towards this goal, a typical business-development manager will design new business models, and interact frequently with sales and marketing teams.

As we described in our previous posts, from a TINO perspective the fundamental error of the traditional approach is its emphasis on improving personal competencies. We believe however that the problem is rarely a lack in abilities. More often than not, it is a lack in information.

TINO does not aim to replace your current ...

Develop strategies and Navigate effectively within complex environment

The simplest way of explaining the practical use of the TINO framework is comparing it to driving in a complex environment. Let's analyze the interaction between three key factors be in such a situation: the car, the address, and a GPS navigation system.

From a business perspective:

• The car - stands for the whole range of production and operation processes

•  The GPS - stands for the whole range (and levels) of managerial processes. These aim to achieve best effective cost benefits after being provided with business objectives.

• The address - stands for whole set ...