The powerful inventive principle segmentation - examples from everyday problem solving

Divide or segment a thing into smaller pieces and have your inventive solution

Common sense says: if you divide something into smaller pieces, value of the pieces taken together becomes less than the value of the whole. On second thoughts: am I right in saying so? Can it be otherwise? Sometimes I get really confused.
Surpassing all confusion though, TRIZ first principle of Segmentation boldly prescribes: Segment or fragment or divide suitable something into still smaller pieces and you will reach a totally new shining piece of innovation. Obviously,
           - we have to choose a whole piece of suitable something.
We cannot segment our large living room into small pieces of individual walled off spaces and increase the living room value or we cannot divide the deep joy of six days of continuous stay at Panchmari, the queen of hill stations in India, by moving from one tourist place to another six times and be still more joyous (or would we?).
If you start thinking about segmenting something and increase the value in totality, you might find it difficult to find a suitable thing at first.
But believe in principle of persistence and strive on.

Segmenting your grief

What about dividing a piece of something of negative value into smaller pieces and distribute it amongst multiple willing takers? The takers will have their own negative valued pieces, but won't probably mind having a little piece of extra one. Bearing the burden of a great worry is now shared by many. It becomes bearable.

1. Share your worry or grief: two principles come into play, principle of segmentation and principle of sharing. Sharing is a kind of distribution amongst willing people or agents. We are thinking of distributing the negative valued pieces amongst a group of individuals near you. They may may be your family members. That is the level of people nearby.
2. Share the load you are carrying in right hand between the two hands: this is distribution at a still closer level. What about increase the distribution scope globally? Today you can do that. You have the Web and google blogger (with plus google) or facebook.
3. Waking up in the morning just introduce your worry into your facebook consciousness stream and forget about your great worry altogether. People with faces and no faces world over will now share your burden, you know. 

Thinking at different levels

TRIZ introduced a valuable idea of looking at a problem at different levels - time-wise: past, present & future and physical presence-wise: micro, macro, global. Together these give rise to 3x3, that is, nine combinations of views possible. the following is the depiction of the idea. 

Nine screens of Inventive thinking

Segment now and here, that is the combination of Present and Here (Individual): segment space in a room to convert it to a classroom and earn from an altogether different use of the room.
Segment now and neighborhood (group): Segment a large plot of land into blocks and put the blocks into different uses - ultimately you get a high paying housing estate.
Segment now and global: Divide a country and conquer it. It was done with great innovation in the past and can be done now also.

Just the idea of thinking in nine thinking windows gives you totally new perspectives and sometimes highly innovative and gainful solutions.
So what did we do? We have combined the principle of segmentation with principle of sharing and also with nine thinking windows and examined the possibilities of the combinations.

Inventive Principle of Composite

Think for a moment about this process of thinking. You are basically merging three concepts together and examining your problem from the merged concept standpoint. It seems this is a very powerful way of thinking with lots of new possibilities. Is there any name to it? At this moment I can't think of a name, but I remember another powerful TRIZ principle number 40: Principle of Composite.
We would name this thinking from the standpoint of combined concepts as:

Principle of Composite thinking

What did we do here?
We just applied the principle of composite to our new thinking process itself. Principle of composite is a little different from principle of merging. Composite is a type of merging but the components are different or dissimilar whereas in principle of merging components are similar in nature.
Confused? You are not alone there, I am with you.

Simple applications of the great principle of segmentation in everyday life

1. The water jet from a fire fighter's hose damages the things and also is not so effective. 
2. Segment the water jet into water droplets: damage decreases and effectiveness of the jet in putting out the fire increases. Think of the sprinkler in your garden, think of the shower in your bathroom. Both are examples of segmentation with high benefits. Don't you think segmentation is a nice little weapon in your hand to breakdown a problem into smaller pieces? Well, the answer is a resounding yes. All these abstract principles are so powerful that if you incorporate these in your mindset deeper and deeper, that itself would make you a powerful problem solver. 
3. Segment the water jet into a spray of mist: it does practically no harm to the object and surprisingly is more effective in fighting the fire. It seems you have reached the end point of segmenting the helpless water jet. Just wait and see. 
4. Nowadays high pressure water jets are being used for environ friendly and precision cutting of sheets of steel and other hard materials. Don't believe it? Okay, watch the YouTube video. 

The use of segmentation has produced a totally novel and gainful way of cutting instead of the mundane task of putting off fire. That is what we call innovation.

The fish market is a nice place

I am lazy person. Not only have I delayed posting in this important blog, but also woke up as late as 9 yesterday morning. 
A commotion woke me up. My dear wife was in a rare distraught agitated state. I had to get up and join the party. I gathered that the house help will be a little late, my wife has to go out on an important business and Prince Potai, our dearest pet half-Bengal cat may come home any moment with his usual bellyful of hunger:- and his fish stock is empty. Someone has to go to the market to replenish stock of fresh fish for the Prince.

This is problem analysis and definition in action. I hope you could recognize this in its abstract form. Out of all the confusion arose the root or moot point: replenish the fish stock from the market, quickly.
I volunteered and won my bid without any competition. Our local fish market consists of a few local sellers sitting on the side of the road itself not under any shed. I reached there and was happy to find that the first fish-wallah had ample quantity of small fishes of type that I wanted.
I purchased all and he started the preparing and cleaning process. It was a rather lengthy process. I waited patiently. Gradually more buyers - an elderly gentleman and a lady with a kid appeared. They would have to wait for quite a bit of time.

This fish is called Bata

In the process of solving the problem, that is, purchasing the fish, a new situation had arisen. Defining it as a problem was optional. I could have taken it as problem or ignored it altogether because I was the first in the queue and had my rights of making others wait behind me.
I chose to define the situation as a problem.
My immediate instruction to the fish man was:

1. Stop preparing my lot and take up the requirement of the elderly gentleman.
2. Finish it and then take up my job again. 
3. But after 5 minutes, stop my job and take the case of the lady with a kid. 
4. Finishing her job, take up my job and finish it. You must not interrupt this last phase by serving any other customer.

Fish market - I feel comfortable here, I don't know why

There were faint smiles from the buyers and initial hesitation from the seller. But after a few moments the job was taken up as I intended. The buyers finally left with seemingly happier face. Even the fish monger seemed to be happy. I had to wait 10 minutes extra.
I acted on instinct, but while waiting I went on to analyze my action.

What did I do?
I segmented.
What did I segment?
I segmented the waiting times of the other buyers and distributed and shared it thus reducing the negative effect of waiting for the two buyers. For me waiting 10 more minutes was not a problem, more so when I was sure to feel the positive feeling that the elderly gentleman and the lady with a kid will feel. Their positive feeling I shared. That compensated my cost of waiting time. It was finally gainful for all.

Segment a negative aspect and distribute it. You will see unexpected things happening around.

What about segmenting a positive thing and distributing? It is your turn now to think. 




Read my main blog on Innovation & Problem Solving and the other related blog on Innovation - Basic Principles