Heuristic Redefinition

Once you ve defined your opportunity, you can scope and focus your innovation projects. The Heuristic Redefinition technique will help you do this by identifying all the elements of your current solution and how they relate to one another. The Nine Windows technique will do this as well, adding the dimensions of time and scale to your innovation problem. Then Job Scoping is a simple but powerful technique for either narrowing or broadening your project s focus. 

Use Heuristic Redefinition when your innovation job to be done (JTBD) is not well defined, or is broad rather than targeted in nature and you need more specificity to take meaningful innovation action. This technique is very helpful to innovation leaders who are assembling their innovation project portfolios. 

Often the big "ah ha" when applying Heuristic Redefinition is the many new problem statements, or lower-order JTBDs, that pop up as a result of dissecting the high-order JTBD. Just when you thought you knew what you needed to do, Heuristic Redefinition can help you define this in a way that enables real innovation breakthrough at an actionable level. 

The Heuristic Redefinition technique was deveioped by Dr. Heimut Schiick-supp, a German author and consuitant who began researching and deveioping creativity methods severai decades ago. 

Say you want to make a house more energy efficient (a JTBD). But instead of tackling this problem as a whole, you could use Heuristic Redefinition to visually break the problem into smaller pieces. You could focus on any number of relevant system components the house itself, its insulation, the sun outside, the surrounding trees, the windows, the shades or blinds, the awnings over the windows, major appliances, or the house s ventilation system. With this breakdown, you can see the whole system and begin to hone in on the part(s) that promise to yield the most innovation for the least amount of effort, time, and resources invested. 

Scenario Let s see how KJ Method helped the Patient Crusaders team organize and prioritize their ideas for making dental patients more comfortable and less afraid during treatment (also see Heuristic Redefinition, Technique 5). 

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