Introducing the leading Innovation system TRIZ

TRIZ, the leading methodology for creating innovative ideas systematically - an introduction

Though usual belief is - innovation happens through intuition or luck, in today’s competitive world, innovation cannot be left to lady luck or intuition alone. Most leading organizations in the world have to strive for creating innovation in their own way though not all of the proprietary methods of innovation followed by the companies are known. 

Some of the known methods for creating innovative ideas are:

1.   TRIZ or Theory of Inventive Problem Solving

2.   Lateral Thinking

3.   Synectics

4.   Brain Storming

5.   Crowd–sourcing

Amongst these methods perhaps the most powerful and extensive system is offered by TRIZ and it is the only one that can help creating innovative ideas systematically.

Deep application of TRIZ is difficult, but a few fundamental concepts of TRIZ can help to increase innovativeness of a learner significantly.

TRIZ is the Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TIPS). This methodology was created by Russian scientist and inventor Genrich Altshuller. The main philosophy of TRIZ is

“The principles of Inventions already done can be used for a new invention.”

Altshuller analyzed 200000 patents worldwide, identified 40000 of them as original and through a great effort identified 40 guiding principles. According to him one or more than one of these principles were used in any and all of the original inventions. These principles are known as 40 Inventive Principles of TRIZ and these together form the most well known component of TRIZ.

In addition to the inventive principles, Altshuller identified five fundamental patterns for technological evolution. He contended that all technological inventions followed these patterns of evolution.

For solving a problem inventively by generating innovative ideas using these principles and patterns, Altshuller and subsequent researchers formed a host of tools and methods which together formed the body of TRIZ. Today TRIZ is perhaps the only empirical method for systematically generating innovative solutions.

The main tools and methods of TRIZ are:
        1.  Ideality and Ideal Final Result - IFR

        2.  Contradiction analysis

        3.  Resource analysis

        4.  40 Principles

        5.  Contradiction Matrix

        6.  Patterns of technological evolution

        7.  The Four Separation Principles

        8.  Substance Field analysis

        9.  Operator analysis

       10.  76 standards

       11.  Effects database, and

       12.  ARIZ

As you understand,TRIZ is a large system.

Is it enough to generate the innovative idea only?

It is said that the left brain is for logic and the right brain is for creativity or innovation. Our main focus is on innovation. For solving a problem, you have to,

·      Generate an astoundingly new idea that solves the problem without practically increasing any cost to you – that is called an innovative idea.

Even before starting the efforts to solve the problem you also have to do the not so easy tasks of

·      Clearly defining the problem after due analysis of all things involved 
·      Clearly identifying the people for whom you are solving the problem

·      Clearly establishing the possibility that the solution of the problem actually is needed by the people involved. This is Market acceptance.

Finally, after solving the problem, you have to necessarily ensure

·      Clear identification of the facilities or resources that will help you to implement the solution. Implementation may be in the form of a new product or a new process.

The last four activities represent left brain responsibilities and mature management principles will help you. This does mean at all that they are to be given less importance. These are as important as innovative problem solving because you may solve a problem very innovatively only to find that there is nobody interested to implement your solution or you have solved the wrong problem.

The most difficult issue is then, finding out the innovative idea that will solve the problem for which not much help is there. It is now recognized world-over that creation and management of innovation is the most elusive function in an organization.

Let us see first what is meant by an innovative solution.

What is an innovative solution?

As we can intuitively understand, all new ideas are not of same class – some are more innovative having more impact and some are not so significant resulting in minor improvement. By general experience we know that most of the new ideas we encounter are not of earth-shattering class.

Why should we bother about this class of innovative ideas? The reason lies in our motivation in solving a complex worthwhile problem. There may be many solutions to a problem, but we would be targeting only the solution with maximum impact and minimum cost.

Altschuller after studying 200000 patents identified the following levels of innovation:

Usually most organizations tend to remain within their comfort zones and that is why they tend to direct their efforts towards the first two levels of new ideas.

Broadly, all new ideas can be classified into two types:

·         Improvement: first two levels can be clubbed into improvement, and 
·         Innovation: last three levels of new ideas, more the innovation better it is.

We would be considering in this thread, as embodied in TRIZ, only a radically new solution which we will call innovation.

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