What if TRIZ tools were available for everyone?
TRIZ (Теория Решения Изобретательских Задач, Russian Theory of Inventive Problem-Solving) is a strange case. TRIZ was developed by a Russian engineer called Genrich Altshuller in peculiar circumstances, it is based on analysis of 3 million patents and finally extracted "invention rules". Nowadays original TRIZ researchers are working mostly in the USA (Detroit area). TRIZ is utilised in versatile fields and especially Asian companies are heavily utilising it.Why to utilise TRIZ in innovation activity? Katie Barry, Ellen Domb and Michael S. Slocum have a point:
"Common creativity tools have been limited to brainstorming and related methods, which depend on intuition, fiat and the knowledge of the members of the team. These methods are typically described as psychologically based and having unpredictable and unrepeatable results. TRIZ is a problem solving method based on logic and data, not intuition, which accelerates the project team's ability to solve these problems creatively.
I have tested those "40 Inventive Principles" in a contradiction matrix of TRIZ and these can be utilised ... outside gadget design ;-) The TRIZ Journal is "uneven" on its academic status, but it contains many fascinating cases.
Currently, there are interesting things happening around TRIZ. I had a great meeting in May with Yoni (Yonathan) Mizrachi. He is doing research on the next level of TRIZ called Directed Evolution:
"Directed Evolution is a systematic process for predicting future generations of a system by inventing them. In business terms this means that its users can use Directed Evolution to reach a position of market and technological leadership"
Yoni, good luck with you efforts!
Although TRIZ is widely researched and developed, tools based on TRIZ are proprietary, closed.
My dream: There would be an open source software (or open research) community developing TRIZ method and software tools. These tools would be available for individuals and intermediaries.
What would happen if these powerful tools would be available for everyone in open source? An increase in innovation rates? Or collapse in inventions, when nobody can not differentiate useless chindogu from real novelty ;-) What do you think?
by Mikko Ahonen
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