TRIZ for Creative Problem Solving

by Ellen Domb, Ph.D.

What's your secret for staying in business? Is it continuous quality improvement? Define-measure-
analyze-improve-control (DMAIC) and design for Six Sigma (DFSS)? Plan-do-check-act (PDCA)? Plan-do-study-act (PDSA)? Quality circles? Process improvement? Total quality management? Kaizen? Or just plain old troubleshooting?

No matter what you call it, the vast majority of successful organizations have some way of tracking down their problems and doing something about them. The quality profession has been at the center of both the tracking and the doing since its birth.

Quality improvement has grown from simple inspection to inspection with statistical process control to the array of analysis tools and teamwork methodologies now used to create and deliver services and products that do what our customers require. These tools work: In product and service development and delivery, we're able to identify problems and determine whether they're the result of special or common causes. We protect our customers by immediate corrective action, and we protect our business and customers by preventing future problems.

So why do we need new methods, tools and techniques for creativity? Because identifying a problem and its root causes doesn't always give us the ideas we need to find a solution. For at least the last 10 years, quality improvement leaders have been saying that the next step for quality is the merger of quality with creativity. ^1,2

"Standard" quality improvement systems such as DMAIC and PDCA have always incorporated brainstorming as a key method for finding creative solutions to problems. Brainstorming is designed to liberate a team's thinking from past patterns and uncover ideas that people might have unconsciously suppressed. When it works, it's fast, and the team reaches a high level of consensus fairly quickly because the idea is usually improved by the entire team and is seen as a collective product rather than one person's idea.

But brainstorming doesn't always work. If the solution lies outside the experience of the team, this tool won't reveal it. Some teams try to compensate by inviting outsiders to join them for brainstorming sessions. This works if the new members happen to have the information the team needs, but there's been no good method for determining that in advance. It's a classic "Catch-22": If you know what the solution is, then you know whom to invite, but then you don't need to invite them because you know the solution.

TRIZ defined
TRIZ--a Russian acronym for "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving"--is a different kind of creativity system. It's based on the analysis of creative solutions to past problems. TRIZ applies to both continuous improvement and development of new products and services because continuous improvement requires solving current problems, and development requires finding a way to solve customers' problems.

Research on the TRIZ method was done in the former Soviet Union from 1946 to 1985 and has continued globally since then. Quality Digest featured an extensive introduction to the method in its February 2004 issue ("Enhance Six Sigma Creativity With TRIZ").

Two basic principles in TRIZ maintain that:

Somebody, someplace, has already solved your problem or one similar to it. Creativity means finding that solution and adapting it to the current problem.

Don't accept compromises. Eliminate them.

The quality improvement profession embraces these principles because quality thinking integrates benchmarking, which is strongly related to the first principle, and eliminating root causes rather than just improving symptoms, which is related to the second.

To illustrate the concept of "Somebody, someplace, has already solved your problem," consider the situation of dairy farmers in California. Producing milk requires handling large quantities of manure. In the past, the manure was dried in large ovens for deodorizing, ship--ping and recycling as fertilizer. But with the increasing cost of energy, drying ovens became uneconomical. The TRIZ method for looking at other technologies for potential solutions starts with restating the problem in general terms, emphasizing the functions being performed, rather than the technology itself. Thus, dairy farmers didn't search for better ways to dry manure; they looked for ways to separate a liquid from solids. A simple search with TRIZ techniques turned up a method, using a hydrophilic gas, in which the gas carries the water molecules away. This method has been used for more than 40 years for concentrating orange juice. ³

Other examples of this principle include:

The pharmaceutical industry found ways to manage foam in the production process by studying the beer industry.

Medical information technology requires stringent privacy protection under Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (1996) regulations. Many solutions are being found in systems developed for the banking and securities industries.

Paint companies have problems with the accumulation of sludge in processing equipment. The nuclear waste disposal industry has found many ways to prevent the buildup of sludge because removing it is extremely difficult and requires shutting down the facility for a long time.

The idea of eliminating problems rather than accepting compromises goes against the grain of standard business and engineering teaching, which emphasizes tradeoffs, cost-benefit analyses and other methods of compromise. TRIZ recognizes two kinds of compromises (frequently called "contradictions"):

Technical contradictions . These are the classic engineering and business trade-offs in which the desired state can't be reached because something else in the system prevents it. In other words, when something gets better, something else gets worse. Examples include:

 Product gets stronger (i.e., good), but the weight increases (i.e., bad).

 Bandwidth increases (good) but requires more power (bad).

 Service is customized to each customer (good), but the service delivery system becomes complicated (bad).

 Automobile airbags deploy quickly to protect the passenger (good), but the faster they deploy, the more likely they are to injure or kill small or out-of-position people (bad).

Physical contradictions. Also called "inherent" contradictions, these include situations in which one object or system has contradictory or opposing requirements. Everyday examples abound:

 Surveillance aircraft should fly fast to their destinations but also slowly to collect data over the target.

 Software should be easy to use but include many complex features and options.

 Coffee should be hot for enjoyable drinking but cool enough to prevent burning consumers.

 Training should be thorough but not take too much time.

TRIZ doesn't depend on team members' knowledge or their personal creative capability to solve these problems. The first group, the "technical" or "tradeoff" contradictions, are solved using the 40 principles of problem solving. Many people have expanded on the original TRIZ research to demonstrate that the 40 principles apply to a wide variety of disciplines. (See The TRIZ Journal [www.triz-journal.com] for examples of the 40 principles in chemical engineering, sales, microelectronics, education and quality management, among others.)

The second group, the "physical" or "inherent" contradictions, are eliminated using four basic principles to separate the requirements that appear to be contradictory in time, space, between the parts and the whole, and between the supersystem, system and subsystems.

For example, the airbag problem can be solved at the subsystem level by changing the bag material so that it won't grab the skin of
the face and twist the head of a small, out-of-position person. The problem can also be solved at the supersystem level, in several ways:

If the car can't crash because it's part of a supersystem that knows the positions of all objects and controls their speeds (a technology that's fewer than eight years away, according to some predictions)

If the structure of the car absorbs the force of the crash, and the airbag isn't needed

If the social and/or legal system is such that small people never sit in the front passenger seat

TRIZ success stories
The Wolfgang Puck self-heating coffee can is a recent TRIZ success story. Michael S. Slocum, co-editor of The TRIZ Journal, was the vice president for science and engineering at Ontro (now OnTech), a food technology company based in San Diego. From 2001 through 2003, he used TRIZ, quality function deployment, and axiomatic design and robust engineering to solve more than 400 problems encountered in the development of the self-heating beverage container. This container was named one of 25 hot products to watch by Fortune magazine and then noted by the New York Times. ^4,5

A few of the contradictions addressed by the OnTech team included:

Fast heating of the beverage is good, but fast heating of the water--CaO mix creates steam, which can rupture the capsule.

Thin materials are needed between the water-CaO mixture and the beverage for rapid heating, but thin materials aren't strong enough to withstand the pressure created by the process.

Multiple-layer materials are much stronger than single-layer materials, but they're expensive to manufacture.

The customer wants to drink the beverage right away but will be disappointed if the beverage isn't hot.

The top of the can should be metal to make it easy to use a conventional pop-top opener, but it shouldn't be metal to avoid burning the customer's lips.

Clearly, the OnTech team faced a mixture of technical contradictions and physical contradictions. The product's success is a tribute to OnTech's application of TRIZ to the solutions.

OnTech's package development has many examples of the interplay between solving a technical contradiction and a physical contradiction. For example, one difficult physical contradiction is that the outer wall must be thick so that it stays cool and users aren't burned when they pick up the coffee, but the outer wall must be thin so that the contents can be raised to a high temperature quickly during sterilization.

OnTech solved this problem by using six layers of material to separate the properties of the whole and the parts, but that solution created a technical contradiction: The complex six-layer structure was expensive to manufacture, and it was very difficult to get a good yield, especially in the double-seaming step where the edge of the wall meets the top and the bottom of the can. Using the TRIZ matrix (a portion of which can be found in the figure above), which expresses all technical contradictions in tradeoff terms, the tradeoff was:

The complexity of the system improves (Parameter 36, "Device complexity")

The ease of manufacture worsens (Parameter 32, "Ease of manufacturing")

The matrix tells us that the principles most frequently used to solve this problem are 26, 27, 1 and 13. Although the "best" answer may come from any of the 40 principles, the ones listed in the matrix are always a good place to start, because they are the ones that have been successful for other people.

In this case, the OnTech team used principle 1, "Segmentation." They divided the manufacturing process into smaller steps--instead of producing the complex system by precision blow molding, they used die stamping to cut the material to shape. The complexity of the product remained the same, but the cost of producing it went down enough to make manufacturing feasible.

Another recent TRIZ success is Jim Kowalick's application of TRIZ methods combined with techniques from the Taguchi method of robust engineering to improve direct mail advertising. He and his partners used TRIZ to create a system that triples customer response. They used techniques from the diet food industry to attract interest in a patio-building company. During the process, they resolved contradictions including:

The customer wants thorough knowledge of the product, but doesn't want to spend time reading the information.

The advertiser wants more response to the ads, but only from customers who are serious prospects. 6

Conclusion
TRIZ has been incorporated into the general corporate culture for global companies in a wide variety of industries--Siemens, Samsung, LG, Unilever, Agilent, Hitachi, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson and Delphi are among those that have talked about their TRIZ experiences at recent conferences. Small and medium-sized organizations with less- familiar names are adopting TRIZ to support quality improvement in services, products and systems in fields as diverse as restoring the vitality of a downtown to creating software to improve sales of eyeglasses.

How do you recognize when quality requires creativity? When the solutions that your team creates don't get rid of the root cause. That's a strong indication that unrecognized contradictions are blocking you from finding a good solution, and that TRIZ will be the next tool you need.

References

1. Larry Smith, "Six Sigma and the Evolution of Quality in Product Development," Six Sigma Forum Magazine, Nov. 2001. (www.asq.org/pub/sixsigma/past/vol1_issue1/evolution.html)

2. Ellen Domb, "Enhance Six Sigma Creativity With TRIZ," Quality Digest, Feb. 2004.

3. Andy Raskin, "A Higher Plane of Problem-Solving," Business 2.0, June 2003 (www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,515713,00.html).

4. "25 Breakout Companies," Fortune, May 16, 2005 (www.fortune.com/fortune/pdf/2005/051605/hot_breakout.pdf).

5. Michael S. Slocum, Ellen Domb and Catherine Lundberg, "Solution Dynamics as a Function of Resolution Method (Physical Contradiction vs. Technical Contradiction)," TheTRIZ Journal, Jan. 2003. (An earlier version was published in the proceedings of the European TRIZ Association TRIZ Futures Conference, 2002.)

6. Tomas Kellner, "Reengineer That Ad," Forbes, May 23, 2005 (www.kowalick.com/news/forbes.html).

About the author
Ellen Domb, Ph.D., is the editor of The TRIZ Journal, an online publication available at www.triz-journal.com. Domb is the principal TRIZ consultant for the PQR Group in Upland, California.

The problem-solving problem

Edward De Bono

Current thinking habits are obsessed with problem-solving. In fact, there are plenty of people who regard all thinking as 'problem-solving'. This is a problem in itself.

The word 'problem' tends to mean fault, deficiency or something undesirable. These are legitimate grounds for thinking. However, other areas exist where no obvious problem is apparent – nothing is lacking or wrong. Creative thinking should be applied to these areas too.

Problem-solving holds clear attractions. It makes convincing others of a new idea much easier. If the new idea is shown to solve the problem, then it will be embraced by anyone who wants the problem to disappear.

But in the absence of an apparent problem to solve, you can still come up with powerful, useful new ideas.

There are times when value can be added. You can take a product and make it more convenient, more flexible or simpler to operate.

In general, things that apparently do not need thinking about do not get the benefit of creative thinking. The biggest enemies of creative thinking are satisfaction and complacency.

Creative focus can be divided broadly between two types: purpose focus and area focus.

Purpose focus is the type with which people will be most familiar. We define a need and then seek to use our thinking to satisfy the need we have defined. We are aware of what we are thinking about, and we are aware of what we wish to achieve. So there is a definite and known target. 'Problem-solving' is the classic example of purpose focus.

We may need recourse to creative thinking for this if the usual analytical approach breaks down. Or we might choose to use creative thinking even when the problem has been 'solved' with an adequate solution but want to keep looking in case a better solution is found.

Creative thinking might also be necessary to achieve a defined task. If there is no routine way of carrying out the task, creative thinking is essential. In these types of situation, creative thinking is part of design thinking.

'Improvement' is a third type of purpose focus. We might be carrying out an operation and decide that the process can be improved upon. It is useful to define the direction of improvement. We might wish to do things faster. We might wish to do things less expensively. We might wish to do things in a simpler manner.

Area focus differs significantly from purpose focus. It might even be the most important creative focus. With area focus it is not necessary to focus on one particular area. You focus on a particular area because you choose to. There is no problem to solve or deficiency to correct. You are not even looking to improve something. You are simply choosing to define an area as your focus for creative thinking.

With area focus you define any area you want to. With area focus you look to produce ideas within a defined area. But you do not determine the nature of those ideas.

This article comes from www.management-issues.com

Eight critical ingredients for successful corporate innovation

By Jeffrey Baumgartner

Over the past few years, I have talked to a lot of people about their firms' innovation structure, I have advised a number of them on how to improve that structure, I have written extensively on innovation in this journal and have had the pleasure of corresponding with a number of readers on the topic of organizational innovation. As a result, I have seen a lot of innovation plans, initiatives and strategies. And I have learned a few things.

Irrespective of what kind of organization yours is, there are eight ingredients that are essential to any innovation system if it is to succeed. In addition, there are a couple of optional ingredients that make a big difference to the level of success. Let's look at the eight essentials first.
1. Top management buy-in

If senior management does not buy into your innovation process, no one else will. Obvious and simple, yet widely ignored. In many companies, the CEO talks the talk about innovation but demonstrates an aversion to any kind of change. Of course you cannot have innovation without change. So, employees quickly figure out that innovation is a slogan rather than an action and focus their efforts elsewhere.

On the other hand, when the CEO truly champions innovation, personally launches the initiative, demonstrates a real interest in the results of your innovation strategy and implements innovative ideas -- it quickly becomes clear that the CEO's firm is an innovative one and employees act accordingly.

The exception to this rule exists in large companies with relatively autonomous business units. If the senior manager of such a unit takes the lead with innovation, then the business unit can often succeed in its innovation initiative irrespective of the CEO’s actions. But of course, in such a scenario, the business unit is effectively a business in its own right.
2. Budget

Budget is intimately connected with the first ingredient. One of the most effective ways for senior management to buy into innovation is for them to allot budget for the initiative. This makes it clear that innovation is not just a slogan, but an investment for which a return is expected. Moreover, middle managers keen to get a portion of the budget will devote time resources to innovation initiatives in order to get a piece of the budget.
3. Communication

This is a bit of a no-brainer, really. If no one knows about your innovation initiative, no one can participate. Hence, once your initiative is ready to launch, it is critical that people know about it, what it is meant to accomplish and how they should participate.

The main recipients of your communications strategy should, of course, be participating employees in your organization. Nevertheless, an effective innovation communications strategy should also target investors, customers, business partners and the general public. The more all concerned understand that innovation is a critical component of your firm's identity, the more it becomes the case.
4. Rewards

Complementing communications is a rewards scheme for participating in your innovation activities. Rewards should be relatively small and recognize participation rather than good ideas. Rewarding innovation is a complex issue.
5. Dedicated innovation people

In many firms, once the CEO decides that innovation is important, an announcement is made and managers are expected to manage their own innovation initiatives. However, because innovation is not each manager's priority, initiatives are unlikely to be very effective. They will be designed to appease quickly top management rather than achieve results. A much better approach, of course, is to assign an individual, individuals or a team the mandate of managing your organization's innovation strategy.

When a manager's job description is exclusively to manage an innovation strategy, she is far more likely to design and implement a well thought out plan. Moreover, she has a substantial stake in the initiative's success and so can be expected to continue to invest in the initiative over the long term.
6. Collaborative innovation tools

Small companies in a single location can probably get by without collaborative innovation tools. In a small organization, people can readily meet with each other in the office in order to share and develop ideas. But medium and large enterprises need collaborative tools in order to facilitate the collaborative generation, development and evaluation of creative ideas across the entire enterprise.

Some organizations get by without a purpose built idea management system. Usually, however, they use e-mail, shared documents or a simple in-house database tool for sharing ideas. While such tools enable some collaborative idea development, they tend to be labor intensive and fail to exploit fully the creative potential of employees.

In this ingredient, I have not included personal creativity and innovation tools such as mind mapping tools and the like as these are very much a matter of personal preference. Some people find mind-mapping software to be a great creativity aid. Others feel it is an unnecessary gadget that gets in the way of creative thinking.

Each individual has her own tools and methods for creative thinking. Rather than demand the use of a particular personal creativity tool for all employees, firms should give employees the freedom to use the tools that work best for each person.
7. Effective evaluation system

Assuming you have in place the ingredients I have described so far, you have the recipe for generating and developing ideas. The next step is to identify those ideas which have the greatest potential to become profitable innovations.

For all but small, incremental innovations, you will probably have a multi-step evaluation process in which each step acts as a filter that removes less promising ideas.

However, it is important that your evaluation process is not a purely critical one. It is easy for evaluators to find all the weak points in an idea. But this can result in very promising ideas being rejected. So, evaluators should be asked not merely to criticize ideas, but also to provide suggestions on overcoming the problems they have identified.
8. Willingness to invest in innovative ideas

One of the consequences of an innovation strategy is the development of potentially innovative ideas. Surprisingly, many organizations invest in creativity and innovation tools, but then fail to implement the most innovative ideas they generate.

This is usually the result of excessive risk aversion, large approval committees, too much internal bureaucracy or a combination of these. Whatever is the cause, the result is a creativity program which generates ideas rather than an innovation strategy in which creative ideas are implemented in order to keep ahead of the competition and increase income.
Bonus ingredients

In addition to the essential ingredients to an innovation strategy I've described already, there are a few additional ingredients which, although not critical, are very helpful in insuring success.
9. Enthusiasm

Every now and then I talk with an innovation manager, in a prospective client firm, who is extremely enthusiastic about his or her job. What starts as a demonstration of Jenni idea management soon turns into a highly energetic, thought provoking discussion on organizational innovation in which we share ideas and get really excited about the possibilities.

I have learned that these managers are not only more likely to become clients than non-enthusiasts, but also that they are far more likely to lead successful innovation initiatives.

While enthusiasm is useful for any activity, business or otherwise, it seems particularly beneficial to innovation. Enthusiasm encourages participation in the initiative (always a challenge!), makes people feel good about their participation and tends to encourage more radical thinking. If employees know that their crazy ideas are enthusiastically welcomed, they are encouraged to push their creative thinking ever further.
10. Diversity

If your firm is full of young engineers from MIT, you doubtless employ some of the best engineers available. But when it comes to generating creative ideas, you will find that they tend to take a similar approach to problem solving. Their backgrounds will be similar, their training similar and their familiarity with each other too close.

On the other hand, if your firm employees a wide range of people with different educational backgrounds, different kinds of experience and of different cultures, your firm will have the advantage of breadth of knowledge, experience and thinking. That results in a wider range of ideas and a higher level of creativity. Assuming you have the eight essential ingredients of an innovative firm in place, those more creative ideas can become more incredible innovations.

Diversity is not essential to innovation, but it does facilitate a higher level of innovation.

So there you have it. The eight essential ingredients for an innovative enterprise. How does your firm stand? And what do you think? Have I missed an ingredient? Do you disagree? I'd love to hear from you! Please share your thoughts in the comments area below.

Jeffrey Baumgartner is the founder of Bwiti bvba, a Belgian-based company that helps organizations to become more innovative and more creative. He writes and edits Report103, a weekly newsletter on creativity, ideas, innovation and invention in business, and operates the JPB.com website.

Published on 7/3/2008

Ammo for the Uncreative

By Peter Lloyd

Even if you're among the most uncreative, you have the tools to stifle innovation, invention, and new ideas that constantly threaten your comfort and security.

I'm not talking about mealy-mouthed nitpicking. No, sir. Most creative people are clever enough to deal with that. When a really hot idea is about to upset your apple cart, you need strong ammunition. And I'm going to give it to you.

1. What's wrong with the old way? As soon as you're handed a new idea, toss that hot potato right back in their laps. This technique will those clever creative whippersnappers scurrying. And nothing is more satifying to an uncreative bully than the sound of creatives whimpering like a bunch of ninnies.

2. Has this idea been killed before? There's no such thing as a new idea. Find out how the innovation you've just been presented was shot down in the past, take aim, and fire! The most powerful weapon of the uncreative is an old objection.

3. Appeal to common sense. Especially if you have a sympathetic audience. Your mediocre minions will cheer, vice presidents will applaud, and your fellow uncreatives will kiss your feet.

4. Ask who it will hurt? Don't ever take a creative idea sitting down. Rally the opposition. The change-o-phobic are everywhere! Wake up everyone who stands to lose. Stir up those sticks-in-the-mud. Then watch those creative dogs lick their wounds.

5. Rip their clothes off. Creative people always have something up their sleeves. (That's why they wear baggy clothes.) Find those anticipated award, raises, promotions, and expose their creative need for approval. "You're just out for awards. We want sales!" gets them every time.

Of course, if you can, you want to nip creative initiative in the bud, before it bites you in the butt. So be proactive. Shower creatives with phony promotions. Constant lip service works, too. Don't forget to regulate. Standardize. And above all, measure, measure, measure! What creative person can argue with numbers?

A word of warning. Be careful. You can stifle creativity, but you can't kill it. No matter how hard you try.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest business problems.

Why So Stupid

Why So Stupid?

We have excelled with mathematics but have done nothing with our ordinary thinking for 2,400 years.

Our achievements in science and technology mean that we are proud and complacent about the rectitude of our thinking. So we have made very little progress in human affairs.

The thought model we use most of the time is to analyse a situation, identify a standard element, then come up with a standard answer.

When Greek thinking came into Europe, at the time of the Renaissance (through the Arabs in Spain), the universities and schools were run by the church. They had no use for perceptual thought because the starting points were not matters of human perception but fixed dogmas. There was no use for creative thinking in religion and they did not need design thinking.

You can analyse the past but the future has to be designed

What they did need, however, was thinking that was concerned with truth, logic and argument. They needed this to prove heretics wrong. Therefore this kind of thinking became the standard software for Western thinking.

You can analyse the past but the future has to be designed. While there are people who do provide the 'design' element in society, design has never become as important or as central as analysis. Design is a matter of combining known ingredients to produce value.

In one sense, creativity is always involved in design. There is something new which delivers value. That is the essence of creativity. But the design can be logical at the same time.

For instance, applying current computer technology to home shopping might be a new design, but the combination of the elements may be completely logical. Architecture design is usually perfectly logical despite the overall idea being new. In some ways design is opposed to routine.

Creativity might feature in providing a new objective or overall concept. You might reach the objective in a logical way. Alternatively, the overall concept or objective might be logical, but require some new thinking and creativity to be achieved.

There isn't much point in separating logical and creative approaches. Logic and creativity are both parts of thinking and you need to exercise both. Also, in hindsight, any valuable creative idea will seem logical - that is the nature of asymmetric patterning systems. But because something is logical in hindsight, it doesn't mean that the idea could have been reached by logic to begin with.

There is always some risk with design. If a design is new, you can't be certain that it will work out and deliver the desired value. Judgment and routine behaviour is low risk so it is the preferred method of thought.

That's not a problem so long as the importance of design is acknowledged. It is even more important to recognise the situations where design is demanded because the routine approaches have failed.

The basic difference between judgment and design must be recognised, as must the importance of design. Design skill and creativity need to be developed, then the human race can increase the scope and power of its thinking.

Edward De Bono

What Not To Do: Six Ways to Ruin a Brainstorming Session

By Paul Sloane

The brainstorm (or "thought shower" as it is sometimes called) is the most popular group creativity exercise in business. It is quick, easy and it works. Many organizations, however, are frustrated with brainstorming sessions and have stopped using them, believing that the tool is old-fashioned and no longer effective. But the real reason for the frustrations is that the brainstorms are not facilitated properly. A well-run brainstorm is fun and energetic; it will generate plenty of good ideas. A poor brainstorm can be frustrating and de-motivational. The following describes what not to do during your next brainstorming session.

1. Have No Clear Objective(s)

A brainstorming session with a vague or unclear purpose will wander and lose its way – set a clear objective. The purpose of brainstorming is to generate many creative ideas to answer a specific goal; it is best to express the goal as a question. A woolly objective is not helpful – for example, "How can we do better?" is not as good as "How can we double sales in the next 12 months?" However, the parameters of the questions should not be too detailed or it will risk closing out lateral possibilities. Using the previous situation, "How can we double sales, through existing channels and with the current product set?" is probably too constrained. Once the question has been agreed upon, it needs to be written clearly, and posted, for all to see.

It is valuable to set objectives for the number of ideas to be generated and the time to be spent on the process. For example, state that "We are looking to generate 60 ideas in the next 20 minutes. Then we will whittle them down to the best four or five."

2. Gather Too Homogeneous a Group

If everyone is from the same department then creativity can be inhibited and the group may get "group think." Choose the group carefully; the best size is somewhere between six and twelve participants. Too few people and there are not enough diverse inputs, but add too many people and the group can be hard to control and retain everyone’s commitment. Sprinkle the group with a few group members from other areas of the business or even from outside the business – people who can bring some different perspectives and wacky ideas. A good mix of people works best – varied ages, men and women, experienced and fresh to the business world, etc.

3. Let the Boss Act As Facilitator

Beware of having an autocratic boss join the brainstorming team. Such leaders can inhibit and/or shape the discussion, rather than letting it flow naturally. If the boss is present, then it is better to have a good independent facilitator – someone who will encourage input from everyone and stop any one person from being a dominant participant. Generally, the worst formula for a brainstorm is having the department manager leading the meeting, while also acting as scribe and censor.

4. Allow Early Criticism

The most important rule of brainstorming is – suspend judgment. In order to encourage a wealth of wacky ideas it is essential that no one is critical, negative or judgmental about an idea. Every idea that is uttered – no matter how &quotstupid" – must be written down. The rule about suspending judgment during the idea generation phase is so important that it is worth enforcing rigorously. A good technique to stop idea judgers is to issue everyone in the group a water pistol; anyone who is critical gets squirted.

5. Settle For a Few Ideas

Do not generate a handful of ideas and then start analyzing them. Quantity is great – the more ideas the better. Brainstorming is one the few activities in life where quantity improves quality. Think of it as a Darwinian process – the more separate ideas that are generated the greater the chance that some will be fit enough to survive. The brainstorming team should have stacks of energy and buzz driving lots of ideas. Crazy thoughts that first sound completely unworkable are often the springboards for other ideas that can be adapted into great new solutions. Keep the wild ideas coming!

6. Ignore Closure and/or Follow Through

Do not end a brainstorming meeting after generating lots of ideas with a vague promise to follow-up. If people see no tangible outcomes they will become frustrated with the process and lose faith in the process’ potential. The team members should quickly analyze the ideas at the meeting. One of the best ways to analyze the suggestions is to divide the proposals into three categories – promising, interesting or reject. If any of the promising ideas are so good that they should be implemented straight away then assign them to a staff member as an action item immediately.

Categorize and collect the ideas. On new pieces of paper write down all the promising and interesting ideas – consider separating them by which are marketing ideas, which are sales ideas, etc. Rearranging the ideas can help a team see new combinations and possibilities. Some people use Post-it notes at this stage so that the ideas can be moved around easily.

If the group is pressed for time, another option for selecting the best ideas is to give everyone on the team five points, with which they can allocate to their favorite ideas in any way that they want. (They can give one point to five separate ideas or all five to one idea.) Then total the points and select the best idea in the group for further action.

The brainstorming session’s facilitator should close the meeting by thanking everyone for their input. The leader should mention one or two of the best, most inventive or funniest ideas that came out of the session.

Conclusion

People enjoy short, high-energy brainstorms that lead to actions – whether large or small. These meetings can motivate people, improve efficiency and drive innovation.

TRIZ - What Is TRIZ?

	Bookmark Ts Page Email This Page Format for Printing

By Katie Barry, Ellen Domb and Michael S. Slocum

Projects of all kinds frequently reach a point where all the analysis is done, and the next step is unclear. The project team must be creative, to figure out what to do. 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. TRIZ also provides repeatability, predictability, and reliability due to its structure and algorithmic approach. "TRIZ" is the (Russian) acronym for the "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving." G.S. Altshuller and his colleagues in the former U.S.S.R. developed the method between 1946 and 1985. TRIZ is an international science of creativity that relies on the study of the patterns of problems and solutions, not on the spontaneous and intuitive creativity of individuals or groups. More than three million patents have been analyzed to discover the patterns that predict breakthrough solutions to problems.

TRIZ is spreading into corporate use across several parallel paths – it is increasingly common in Six Sigma processes, in project management and risk management systems, and in organizational innovation initiatives.

TRIZ research began with the hypothesis that there are universal principles of creativity that are the basis for creative innovations that advance technology. If these principles could be identified and codified, they could be taught to people to make the process of creativity more predictable. The short version of this is:

Somebody someplace has already solved this problem (or one very similar to it.)
Creativity is now finding that solution and adapting it to this particular problem.

The research has proceeded in several stages during the last sixty years. The three primary findings of this research are as follows:

1. Problems and solutions are repeated across industries and sciences. The classification of the contradictions in each problem predicts the creative solutions to that problem.
2. Patterns of technical evolution are repeated across industries and sciences.
3. Creative innovations use scientific effects outside the field where they were developed.

Much of the practice of TRIZ consists of learning these repeating patterns of problems-solutions, patterns of technical evolution and methods of using scientific effects, and then applying the general TRIZ patterns to the specific situation that confronts the developer. Exhibit 1 describes this process graphically.

Exhibit 1: The TRIZ Problem Solving Method

In Exhibit 1, the arrows represent transformation from one formulation of the problem or solution to another. The solid arrows represent analysis of the problems and analytic use of the TRIZ databases. The striped arrow represents thinking by analogy to develop the specific solution. This four-step problem solving approach forces the user to overcome inherent psychological bias that is typically the foundation of psychological ideation techniques.

For example, a powerful demonstration of this method comes from the pharmaceutical industry. Following the flow of Exhibit 1, the specific problem is as follows: Tailored bacteria are used to cultivate human hormones, producing a superior product to those refined from animal sources. To produce the product, very large quantities of tailored bacteria cells are cultured, the cells must be broken open and the cell wall material removed so that the useful hormones can be processed. A mechanical method for breaking the cells had been in use at a moderate scale for some time, but the yield was 80 percent, and was variable. A current crisis was a reduction in yield to 65 percent, and a long-term problem was anticipated in trying to scale production up to high rates, with yield much better than 80 percent.

The TRIZ general problem at the highest level is to find a way to produce the product with no waste, at 100 percent yield, with no added complexity. A TRIZ general solution formula is "The problem should solve itself." One of the patterns of evolution of technology is that energy (fields) replaces objects (mechanical devices). For example, consider using a laser instead of a scalpel for eye surgery. In this case, ultrasound can be used to break the cell walls or using an enzyme to "eat" the cell wall (chemical energy) instead of hitting them. This may seem very general, but it led the pharmaceutical researchers to analyze all the resources available in the problem (the cells, the cell walls, the fluid they are in, the motion of the fluid, the processing facility, etc.) and to conclude that three specific solutions had high potential for their problem:

1. The cell walls should be broken by sound waves (from the pattern of evolution of replacing mechanical means by fields).
2. The cell walls should be broken by shearing, as they pass through the processing facility (using the resources of the existing system in a different way).
3. An enzyme in the fluid should "eat" the cell walls and release the contents at the desired time.

All three methods have been tested successfully. The least expensive, highest yield method was soon put in production.

The "General TRIZ Solutions" referred to in Exhibit 1 have been developed over the course of the 60 years of TRIZ research, and have been organized in many different ways. Some of these are analytic methods such as:

• The Ideal Final Result and Ideality,
• Functional Modeling, Analysis and Trimming and
• Locating the Zones of Conflict. (This is more familiar to Six Sigma problem solvers as "Root Cause Analysis.")

Some are more prescriptive such as:

• The 40 Inventive Principles of Problem Solving,
• The Separation Principles,
• Laws of Technical Evolution and Technology Forecasting and
• 76 Standard Solutions.

In the course of solving any one technical problem, one tool or many can be used. The 40 Principles of Problem Solving are the most accessible "tool" of TRIZ. These are the principles that were found to repeat across many fields, as solutions to many general contradictions, which are at the heart of many problems.

A fundamental concept of TRIZ is that contradictions should be eliminated. TRIZ recognizes two categories of contradictions:

1. Technical contradictions are the classical engineering "trade-offs." The desired state can't be reached because something else in the system prevents it. In other words, when something gets better, something else gets worse. Classical examples include:
   The product gets stronger (good), but the weight increases (bad).
   • The bandwidth for a communication system increases (good), but requires more power (bad).
   • Service is customized to each customer (good), but the service delivery system gets complicated (bad).
   • Training is comprehensive (good), but keeps employees away from their assignments (bad).
2. Physical contradictions, also called "inherent" contradictions, are situations in which one object or system has contradictory, opposite requirements. Everyday examples abound:
   • Surveillance aircraft should fly fast (to get to the destination), but should fly slowly to collect data directly over the target for long time periods.
   • Software should be complex (to have many features), but should be simple (to be easy to learn).
   • Coffee should be hot for enjoyable drinking, but cold to prevent burning the customer
   • Training should take a long time (to be thorough), but not take any time.

Two personal examples offered by recent TRIZ classes:

• I want my boss at the meeting, but I don't want my boss at the meeting.
• I want to know everything my seventeen year-old child is doing, but I don't want to know everything she is doing.

TRIZ research has identified 40 principles that solve the Technical/tradeoff contradictions and four principles of separation that solve the Physical/inherent contradictions. Additional examples include:

• Entertainment: Singapore needs to find a way to manage automobile traffic on the Sentosa, its entertainment island (aquarium, bird sanctuary, dolphin show, restaurants, music, etc.). Applications of TRIZ developed eight families of solutions.
• IT Product development: A manufacturing company doubled the value to the customer of their patient interview system for opticians offices by applying the feedback and self-service principles of TRIZ to the overall product development, and applying the principles of segmentation, taking out and composite construction to the training and support.
• School administrators: Creativity has been greatly enhanced in situations ranging from allocation of the budget for special education to building five schools with funding only for four, to improving racial harmony in the schools.
• Waste processing: Dairy farm operators could no longer dry the cow manure due to increased cost of energy. TRIZ led the operators to a method used for the concentration of fruit juice, which requires no heat.
• Warranty cost reduction: Ford used TRIZ to solve a persistent problem with squeaky windshields that was costing several million dollars each year. Previously, they had used TRIZ to reduce idle vibration in a small car by 165 percent, from one of the worst in its class to 30 percent better than the best in class.

A recent case study presented from the Dow Chemical Company showed the combined effect of TRIZ with Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) most dramatically.

A Dow Plastics business found itself responding to meet the ever more rigorous needs of a cost-driven marketplace, for a technology tuned over decades. It convened a group of technical experts to redesign its "most effective" standard process technology for manufacturing facilities for this family of products. To stay competitive in costs, they needed to drastically reduce the capital needed to build future plants. Requirements seemed ever-tightening, calling for lower energy use, better ergonomics for operating personnel, and lower monomer residuals in product. The process, being decades old, had technology and equipment systems considered highly optimized – oh, the psychological inertia!

An overall Ideal Final Result helped outline the zones of conflict / pathways to innovation so that sub-groups could divide and attack each opportunity with the most appropriate tools. Substantial use of technical contradictions and inventive principles helped address trade-offs. The group assembled a dozen alternative systems by using a morphological box at the high, conceptual level. A Pugh concept selection matrix helped narrow the candidates to four for which the intermediate level of detail enabled cost estimations. Elements of IFR contributed to the evaluation criteria.

Breakthrough was achieved in control of monomer residuals, handling of raw materials, and reactor design. The reduction amazed even the project team, when the capital cost of a plant built to the new standard dropped by more than 25 percent, from nearly $110 million to < $80 million.

The best way to learn and explore TRIZ is to begin a problem that you haven't solved satisfactorily and try it!

About the Authors:

Katie Barry is the editor of RealInnovation.com. Contact Katie Barry at editor (at) realinnovation.com or visit http://www.realinnovation.com.

Ellen Domb is the founder of the PQR Group and founding editor of The TRIZ Journal. Contact Ellen Domb at ellendomb (at) trizpqrgroup.com or visit http://www.trizpqrgroup.com.

Michael S. Slocum, Ph.D., is the principal and chief executive officer of The Inventioneering Company. Contact Michael S. Slocum at michael (at) inventioneeringco.com or visit http://www.inventioneeringco.com.

Rate This Article: Current Rating: 4.07