Unified Structured Inventive Thinking (USIT) is a structured, problem-solving methodology for finding innovative solution concepts to engineering-design type problems. Historically, USIT is related to Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), which originated in Israel and is related to TRIZ, the Russian methodology. It differs from TRIZ in several ways, but most importantly it is a simpler methodology, which makes it quicker to learn and easier to apply. It requires no databases or computer software. (But note that the purest application of TRIZ does not require databases or software either.)

The goal of USIT is to enable a problem solver to invent multiple solution concepts in as short a time as possible for real-world problems (day-to-day technical problems in all fields). Key to this methodology is its ability to establish, quickly, unusual perspectives of a problem situation. Innovative results are achieved using tools (heuristics) designed to elicit complementary contributions from both cerebral hemispheres, generating logical and creative concepts. USIT tools and methods began their development in the Ford Motor Company Research Laboratory in a training program called structured inventive thinking that continues to be taught and applied in Ford Motor Company worldwide engineering locations (see History and Industrial Experience).