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SAMSUNG has 41000 employees trained in TRIZ. SAMSUNG files 200 patents every week!!! (As per Dr Oleg Feygnson Principal Engineer Samsung Creativity Centre, Swoon, South Korea).
What is this creativity method, which is mostly unknown in India?
TRIZ (Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive problem solving) is a painstaking life work of Generich Altschuller, a Russian inventor and patent inspector, who, with his students, over 3 decades, studied 40000 ‘strong’ patents to find out if there is an underlying systematic process in inventive thought.
The result was TRIZ.
TRIZ was unknown to the world outside erstwhile USSR till Altschuller and his students migrated to USA in 1990s after breakup of Soviet Union.
Till 2019, 25 million patents have been examined from TRIZ perspective and the basic structure of TRIZ as formulated by Altschuller remains intact.
Thus TRIZ is the extract of human inventive experience of over a century or more.
To understand TRIZ, we need to understand what is an ’inventive problem’.
Every ‘inventive problem’ has at the root, one or more contradictions.
If one tries to improve one aspect of a technical system, some other aspect deteriorates. (Increasing horsepower of a motor increases output but it increases noise, heat generated, power consumption etc).
The general approach is to use compromise also called ‘optimization’-where undesirable factors are lowered to acceptable level while maximizing desirable factors.
An inventive solution does not involve optimization. It solves the contradictions.
TRIZ has developed elaborate methods for formulating and resolving contradictions. Examination of millions of patents have shown that there are only 40 ways of resolving contradictions in all sciences and technologies. Altschuller called them “Inventive Principles”.
Thomas Edison used only 5 of the 40 inventive principles.
The other major aspect of TRIZ is the ‘Trends of evolution of technical systems’.
TRIZ has demonstrated that all technical systems have a definite path of evolution which makes their future HIGHLY PREDICTABLE.
The basic trend is of “S” curve of birth, growth, maturity and decline. As a technical system approaches maturity, there is innovation and a rival system performing same function is born. Initially the new technical system is inefficient, costly etc but it soon overtakes the old one which has reached a plateau causing the latter to decline or even die.
For example, this has happened in case of fixed line phones and mobile phones which made former irrelevant. Now the same is getting repeated between Petrol/Diesel cars and battery operated cars.
Within this universal trend of “S” curve there are nine major trends and many sub trends. The most important trend is “trend of Ideality”, which states that every technical system tends towards its “ideality”. An ‘Ideal’ technical system is a system which has no weight no volume, no physical existence but its functions are performed. For most machines it is a theoretical construct but there are technical systems reaching ideality .For example, calculator, watch, voice recorder and calendar in smart phone. These have no physical existence (they are programs) but their respective functions are performed.
The other trends include trend of miniaturization, “dynamicity” (increase in ‘degrees of freedom’, moving parts etc), progressively lower human involvement, merger with Super system etc).
Understanding position of a technical system on “S” curve and various trends helps to forecast with high probability how the future developments will take place.
The third important aspect of TRIZ is its focus on redefining the problem correctly before even attempting to solve it. Many scientists, after months or years of wasted efforts, had to relook at their problem and re- define it. TRIZ has elaborate methods to re-define the problem and eliminate the ‘psychological inertia’ (preconceived notions, rigidity of thoughts, biases etc) before solving it.
How does TRIZ stack up against other creativity methods like SIX Sigma, Lean, Value Engineering, Theory of Constraints etc?
The strongest point of TRIZ is idea generation (by using trends of evolution, contradiction resolution).Whereas most of the other methods use brainstorming- which is a weak method of creativity.
TRIZ is poorly known in India. As per international TRIZ association (www.matriz.org), who certifies TRIZ proficiency, as on 31.12.2021, there are only 145 persons in India with “Level-3”expertise in TRIZ and no one at Level 4 or Level 5.This is a major contrast against Chinese who have taken to TRIZ in a big way. In 2021 out of 4500 certifications awarded by MATRIZ globally 3000 were awarded to Chinese who have many level 5 experts (TRIZ masters). Malaysia has TRIZ as an elective in all engineering courses and have even introduced simple concept in school curriculum. We need to follow the example of Malaysia.
I am TRIZ level-2 certified by MATRIZ.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.
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