There is a fundamental law of product and business innovation that says that systems integrate intotheir super-systems over time. What does this mean? Let's take an example. You are in the businessof making paint roller pans. You have worked hard over the years to add stability to these simpledevices so that they don't tip over on ladders, added coatings to minimize sticking, and even made disposable ones in the hopes that people will buy your paint pans. You may have even gotten togetherwith a paint roller supplier in a joint promotion at a local hardware store. Then you go down to your local Home Depot, Lowes, or Menards and see theBlack and Decker Paint Stick(R)requiring no paint pan. Your product has been replaced by the void in a hollow stick, normally thought of as only a means forreaching places too tall for the painter. Being replaced by a void must really hurt an ego!

This is only one example. Here are some others to trigger your thoughts:

1. The elimination of labels on men's underwear shirts (don't know about women's!) eliminating the needfor sewn labels and the materials used in making them. The shirt is the label.
2. The elimination of bank deposit slips through optical scanning of checks, eliminating the paper, all the chemical used in producing paper from pulp, and theprinting inks used in making them. The check is the deposit slip.
3. The incorporation of toothpaste into the handle of a toothbrush, eliminating the need for the toothpaste tube and all the metal used in making it. The toothbrush is the toothpaste tube.
4. The incorporation of a toothbrush head into the end of a flosser, eliminating the need for a normaltoothbrush and all the plastics used in making it. The flosser is the toothbrush.
5. The incorporation of a punch out spoon in the lid of a yogurt container, eliminating the need for a separate spoon and the plastics or metal used to make it. The lid is the spoon.
6. The use of the Internet for newspaper publication, eliminating the need for millions of pounds of paperused for printing, and once again, all the chemicals and machinery used in making the paper. The Internet is the newspaper
7. The incorporation of multi-functinality in office machines, eliminating the need for tons of plastic and metal used in manufacturing these separate devices. The fax machine is the copier
8. The incorporation of multi-functionality into home lawn products, eliminating the need for the plastic andpaper materials previously used in making these extra product containers. We have also seen the incorporation of a lawn care business under the umbrella of the services of a termite service provider, eliminating the need for two separate business structures and their associated costs. We now have a "home service" provider. The termite provider is the lawn care provider.
9. The selling of duty free products on overseas flights, eliminating the need for a "duty free" store on the ground and all the costs and jobs associated with building and running it. The stewards and stewardesses are the duty free shop.
10. The integration of a tire structure into a wheel by Michelin, eliminating the all the rubber, additives,and the jobs used in the production of conventional tires. The wheel is the tire.

What's the point here? There are two very fundamental ones.

1. First, if you are providing a service or product to someone, rest assured that no matter how much they like you and your product, someone inthat company or organization is trying to figure out how to get the function you provide without you. No offense intended, but there's a lot of money to be saved and possibly the invention of a new product or business that will delight their customers. Look at your product or service and and how or why it is used by your customer and ask how could its function (not what it is) be provided within your customer's product or business. Then help make that happen and patent the concept to allow for at least some royalty payments when your product is not needed any more. Or maybe buy your customer and implement the idea!
2. Secondly, if you're the buyer of something, start figuring out how to get the function providedby what you purchase without buying it--preferably by incorporating that function into what you already sell. This will most likely delight your customer and give you some patent rights that could be very valuable.

Can you teach other people to be innovators? Or can you teach yourself to be more innovative? TRIZ practioners learn to generate innovative ideas, but they don't always get their ideas adopted in their organizations.

Sarah Miller Caldicott is co-author of Innovate Like Edison and author of a very good blog on innovation: http://www.powerpatterns.com/newsletter/newsletter_jan2010_online.htm This month she combines some of her experience and Edison-based research with the work of Dr. Jacqueline Byrd on innovation in 14,000 organizations.

I won't repeat the full research discussion -- see Caldicott's blog or Byrd's book for more details, but some of the exercises may help TRIZ Journal/Real Innovation readers see why I think this is research that will help.

Byrd finds that there are 8 corporate competencies that interplay with each other in the course of innovation, that can be defined on a two-axis matrix of Creativity vs. Risk-taking, with the 5.1% who are high on both parameters identified as the Innovators.

She finds that there are 4 ways to encourage creativity and 3 ways to encourage risk-taking.
Creativity increase exercises: Encourage the ability to deal with ambiguity, to work independently, to be inner-directed, and to be unique and value uniqueness in others. I would personally add development of TRIZ tools and methods here, to give people a WAY to use what these attitudes encourage.
Risk-taking increase exercises: Encourage authenticity, expand resilience, and strengthen self-acceptance. I need to learn more, since there seems to be a lot of overlap between authenticity as a risk-taking element and the independence and uniqueness elements.

The other corporate competencies have their own ratios of creativity to risk-taking (for example, the Challenger is high on risk-taking but low on creativity, and the Synthesizer is high on creativty and mid-level on risk-taking.) Future issues of the newsletter will look at ways to improve these competencies, and the interplay between them.

Weaving Caldicott's research on how Edison brought new people into his research lab with Byrd's research on 14,000 companies should give us all some new insights into the process of learning innovation.

I decided to be fit this year and reduce my personal carbon footprint by introducing a bicycle in my daily life. I spent more money (considering this will be a worthy, onetime investment) than I would spend in a high class fitness center on this. This one is an imported bicycle, weighing about 5 -8 Kg (I heard there are cycles weigh just about 5 Kg!), and attracts lot of attention when I ride :)

As we all know, the reduced weight is an important aspect of racer bikes to provide enough comfort, speed, modularity etc to the rider, but the reduced weight is also a big problem in India for the high end cycle consumer base, and may be in many other countries too. Here is why;

I want to use this cycle for all my local travels, including going to shops, going to restaurants for my dinner etc. But, I'm really afraid to take the cycle for anything other than a morning fitness ride so that I don't have to "park" anywhere. I'm afraid of the theft if have I parked, even after locking the rear wheel as usually done; the reduced weight means even a 10 year old boy can lift the cycle and simply walk away!

One obvious option is that I lock with a long chain, but we need some fixed, "intermediary" object to do that. This is the common solution available in some countries, but the super-system (government, perhaps?) has provided the options.

Well, this is not my own problem by the way. I did a small search including the shop I purchased this. Interestingly, all the high end bicycle consumers are not using their cycles as much as they would like due to this reason. The bicycle industry is in India is growing. Unlike in the past, there are bicycles available for USD 4000.00 (costs more than a Tata Nano) and interestingly there are buyers (any bicycle above USD 500 will have a lead time of 3 weeks) for these varieties.

Other obvious solutions are :
- Encourage government to provide parking areas for bicycles, including the "fixed, intermediary" option to lock it : About changing the system
- Dismantle the parts and take away the small parts with you, without which the cycle is not usable. Still, not sure..
- Encourage people around where I park the cycle to keep an eye on :) Use the free resources around me..
- Insurance coverage for bicycles: One company in India is already providing this for high end cycles, but at a premium, and nowhere close to the 10% of the cost

As usual, I have tried to use this problem as a case study in my TRIZ sessions, and also wanted to hear from others through this commentory. While this is explained here only through the contradictions, application of 9-Windows, IFR and Trends would be more interesting for a real solution.

Looking though the sub-system contradiction: I want a light weight cycle(for all the good thing I mentioned above) Vs I want the cycle to be heavy (So that no simple lifting is possible). There are more contradictions we can talk about, at sub-system, system, and super-system. What do you think are the contradictions, and solutions?

I also shared this problem with my TRIZ friends, and here is an interesting illustration of TRIZ applied by Dr. Ragunath.

In fact you cannot have a meaningful system contradiction with improving parameter being (weight of moving object) and worsening parameter being (weight of the stationary object) as the contradiction matrix for this is empty!

If OTOH you read the classical TRIZ books you will find similar problems about ships to be light & heavy at different times and the solution being filling in/emptying out of sea water into the buoyancy chambers in the hull. This is separation in time principle for the resolution of this physical contradiction. Assuming that the weight of the bicycle does not change when it is moving or when stationary (except for your weight :) ), what other parameters are there to conflict resolution?

if you forget the fact that heaviness is insurance against theft, what worsening parameter do you map theft to? Loss of substance :)? I used to attend college in Canada where lots of students come cycling. They used to detach their seats and front wheels and bring along with them to the class leaving only the frame and back wheel chained! The fear there was people used to steal the detachable parts of the bike :(

Probably people won't steal what is not a whole bike (?)

If you think of the worsening parameter (due to reduced weight of the (stationary)cycle - param 2) as Object Affected Harmful Factors (param 30), you get the following principles as applicable:

2 : Taking out

19 : Periodic Action

22 : Blessing in Disguise

37 : Thermal expansion

Is potential theft of a light-weight cycle an object generated or object affected harmful effect? OTOH if you take the worsening parameter to be param 31 - object generated harmful factors you get the following principles:

35 : Parameter Changes

22 : Blessing in Disguise

1 : Segmentation

39 : Inert Atmosphere

If the bike is so flexible that it can be rolled up and pocketed then may be parameter changes works.

Inert atmosphere - is it a benign environment where you leave the bike without worry of theft? Or is it that you don't worry if it is stolen - like you cantrack it through GPS? Looks last solution is feasible but expensive than insurance? Even when one insures, the insurer would like to track, right?

As an engineer and someone involved with TRIZ and innovation audits of organizations, I frequently find myself in discussions and conflicts with more right brained creativity individuals. I will define right brained as those who basically believe that in the fields of creativity and innovation it is quantity that is important. In other words, any approach that increases the ability to generate more ideas, the better.

I have been in these types of session where the quantity of ideas generated was the yardstick for success (not useful ideas, but total number of ideas). I have also seen some exercises such as walking around matrices that are supposed to generate significant new ideas. All of you have seen group sessions involving any number of techniques involving balloons, music, etc that are supposed to improve our creativity.

I think I have finally figured out how to have a rational discussion about these approaches vs. more structured, left brained processes. That discussion revolves around understanding the difference between attitudes and tools. To be more innovative requires a desire to do something different than is normally done, a competitor is doing, or something that might be needed in the future that is not obvious. There is no point in learning tools that may be needed to allow this to happen without a basic change in attitude. This attitude cannot be changed for any length of time by executive edict and especially not if the edict is not followed up by sincere and continuous support. If an organization has a long history of incremental improvement, listening only to current customers, and doing only what the boss says, there must be an attitude change, up and down the organization. Replacing people may be necessary.

Some of the soft tools such as breakouts, adventures, and internal parties and kickoffs, are frequently necessary to let people know that there is a step change coming and management is serious. However, if requests for freedom and financial support to do something new and different are denied because we will never do something like that, the boss will not like it, or we have no money to do that, then the truth will echo around the organization as fast as EM can travel.

There must be a fundamental shift to think and act differently. It is critical at this point to also understand and acknowledge what the climate is and that means understanding the profile of the organization, using one of many organizational assessment tools. If an organization is composed of 80 percent Myers Briggs sensors and strongly adaptive individuals as identified with Kirton KAI, the challenge to think outside of the box is going to be extraordinarily difficult. People will be frustrated and the results desired will be almost impossible to achieve. The attitude of wanting to change the status quo must be there. Someone who does not see the value in change is going to be difficult to motivate toward true innovation. By the way, it would be no easier for the opposites of these individuals to deal with a short term structured emergency or a quality control procedure analysis. If there is a basic shift in attitude, then we can discuss how to accomplish the goal of the change in attitude.

What is needed now are tools for innovation that support the change in attitude and environment. If the problem is not too challenging, simple tools such as CPS, or DeBono processes may be sufficient. If it is one that has serious contradictions, is complex, or has been approached unsuccessfully for years, it may take more complex tool kits such as TRIZ. There are areas of overlap between them and ways to combine can be very effective. Each of these tools requires a different kind of attitude shift. All require some level of belief in a structured approach and process as opposed to random brainstorming. To be effective these tools and processes must be used broadly, not just by the troops, but the senior executives who are touting the value of them without having used them. The first use of them should be at the executive level to analyze the challenge of innovation inside their organization.We need to understand there is a difference between attitude and tools. If we want innovation and change, we need to change both and it may require different approaches to each.

Many of you may have seen Google's earnings report announced on Friday, January 22. In the 4th quarter of 2009, their sales (just one quarter!) were $6.7 BILLION and profits of $2 BILLION. This was 5 times the profit of the previous quarter. Let's think about this a second. How would you like to make 30% profit on this large a sales volume without MAKING anything that you can touch and feel. Just information!!

Companies like Intel and Exxon spend over a billion dollars in capital just to build a state of the art chip factory or petrochemical plant. Now Google has offices and spends a lot of money air-conditioning the building that hold all its servers, but this is a fraction of what is required in traditional manufacturing of cars, steel, chemicals, and semi-conductors. And none of these industries make 30% on sales. In a very good year, they might make 15-20% return on their capital investment (not sales and maybe a 30% return on sales on a few real specialty products for which patents haven't expired). These plants have to be constantly maintained, updated for constantly changing environmental and safety regulations, and plans for ultimate disposal of the property and equipment.

Wouldn't it be a lot more fun just to collect and sell information? Isn't that a lot easier? Well, of course it's easier if that's all the further your thought process goes. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. Despite the challenges of Microsoft and Yahoo, Google is still number one and is stretching its business vision beyond web searches. This tell us that information, itself, it pretty cheap and a commodity. It's all around us. But to sift through it, analyze it, and get only what you want is the real challenge.

Information is a critical resource. We know this but not everyone recognizes this. Sometimes it's egos that get in the way--we don't collect information that might be bad news or we "spin" it (now don't get huffy here, but consider the last several elections where the results ("information" as well as votes) are trying to tell the politicians something and possibly not just that "they don't get it").

I'll bet that many of you collect tons of information in your process control computers and your customer interviews. What do you do with it? Store it? Or analyze it? How? Do you recognize all the informational resources around you? When was the last time you asked one of your employees their opinion about something vs. telling them to be a "team player"? Have you ever asked your folks what skill or talent they have that you are not taking advantage of? Have you ever asked them about what they observed on the midnight shift? What they saw on the last customer visit that wasn't on the agenda or meeting plan? Have you considered what else you might do with the information that's already out there?

Let's consider a very recent example to illustrate these points. If you are a public agency responsible for traffic control and emergency medical repsonse to a traffic accident, how have you managed this for decades? You sit in readiness and wait for someone to call in an accident. Then you respond appropriately. This takes a certain amount of time. What if you could shorten that time? Clear the road quicker? Possibly save someone's life because you responded quicker with an ambulance? What information is at your disposal that could accelerate your response? Before I tell you the answer, think about this for a few seconds without reading further.......

What do people do today (that they didn't do 5-10 years ago) when a situation like this happens? Don't they get out their cell phones and call someone? Maybe it's their kids--"I'll be late to pick you up". Maybe it's a colleague with whom a meeting is scheduled. "I'll be a little bit late". Maybe it's picking up someone from work. "Don't worry, nothing happened, just stuck in a traffic jam--not sure what's going on". Everyone who does this generates an electromagnetic signal that is going to a cell phone tower. The dramatic rise in the level of cell phone calls is a resource and it is measurable. So if there is a sudden increase in cell phone calls, there's an accident! I know where to go because there calls are triangulated by geography and the signals now tell me where to go, almost instantly. Air Sage is doing this and selling the service.

I also recall a talk some time ago by someone from McNeil Pharmaceuticals about their putting cameras in the homes of people who were using their OTC medications (Tylenol(R) for children for example) to observe what customers actually did with their medicines, not what a consumer panel said they did. This allowed them to re-think packaging, dosing instructions, etc. The information was there all along, but no one bothered to make the extra effort to collect it. (It's a lot easier to just send surveys out, isn't it?).

Think about how football strategy has changed now that someone up in a booth, being able to see the whole playing field, can wirelessly communicate to the coach and tell him what the opposition did that he couldn't see from his ground position. What else is possible to do with this new resource of cell phone signals? Norwich Union Insurance is using this information to know when a car is on the road vs. in the garage. Why pay for accident insurance if the car is in the garage? How about monitoring how fast your teenager is driving? (This now combines cell phone signals with the "new" resource of GPS satellites).

What are the lessons here? First, information is an important resource. Second, it is easy to get overloaded. Thirdly, analyzing and sifting through information is what is critical. Fourth, new informational resources appear frequently (the cell phone example would not have been there 20 years ago), so it's good that we take re-inventory resources and ask how this new resource could be used. Last, and most important, ask those around you what they see and observe. Ask yourself if the information you have is really direct information or indirect. Information and its analysis can be the difference between success and failure in innovation.

The conference banquet on Monday night was held in the university's reception hall. We sat at large round tables and shared many dishes, which enhanced the opportunities for conference delegates to get to know each other. The banquet was an educational and cultural opportunity which introduced many of us to a variety of cultural elements. The entertainment included music, dance, and demonsrations of classical caligraphy (See 3 Pictures--more will be on the ICSI website soon) followed by members' talents--I was serenaded in Mongolian, and we were all amazed by Daniel Sheu's karaoke skills.

I gave the day 3 keynote speech on global success stories in TRIZ and Systematic Innovation, which led to significant discussions throughout the day about whether other companies' success stories are useful or not in getting people to try something new. The keynote was followed by 3 parallel technical sessions--I heard some very interesting follow-up to topics from the Computer-aided innovation conference in August by Denis Cavallucci and Derek Tate, among others.

The conference concluded with a tour of local technology site: The Realtek company showed us their approach to innovation and employee education, and part of their art collection, we toured the headquarters of the Hsinchu Science Park, and we visited the ITRI Creativity Lab, a cooperative for companies that want to learn to "play" with ideas.

Start planning now--the Second International Systematic Innovation Conference will be in Shanghai March 24-26, 2011, and the organizing committee is already working to make it even better than this one!

The tutorial speaker for day 2 at the Systematic Innovation Conference is Professor Jay Lee, whose primary work is at the U. of Cincinnati in the US and Shanghai Jia Tong University in China. His talk on "Dominant Design for Product and Service Innovation" introduced the audience to a very organized system of methods for integrating product and service offerings. "Dominant" refers to your market position if you do this! Examples from John Deere, GE Aviation and GE Medical, and GM, all adding information and service components to well-established hardware products were quite persuasive. His Cargill example (matching a US farmer who grows very specialized corn products with a Japanese chicken farmer to produce branded low-cholesterol eggs) was a great example of moving from product (Cargill doesn't sell the corn or the eggs) to an information-mediated service.

Key attributes of service innovation in Lee's model are:

1. Be Customer Intensive
2. Use System Instrumentation (smart agent)
3. Work through Smart Operation Analytics
4. Incorporate Knowledge Management in Business
5. Avoid Potential Issues for Customers

His primary tool is a matrix (no surprise to this audience) that maps the customers' raw needs, both visible and invisible, against the market opportunities. His stories about moving from industry to the university consortia then back to industry as an academic were both illustrative and entertaining! (Picture of Prof. Lee)

The featured talks after lunch were "real world" success stories from Samsung and Hyundai. Mr. SeHo Cheong from Samsung told his personal story of TRIZ learning mixed with the Samsung company story in a very effective way, starting with his trip to Russia in 1999 to hire TRIZ experts. (Picture of Mr. Cheong)

He showed us a great variety of case studies, starting in 2001, with washing machines, refrigerator door design, and the whole developement cycle of the OLED product family. Some early case studies were considered significant because they persuaded senior management to support TRIZ, and some are significant because they gave Samsung early market dominance in their fields. Now in all product development reviews, engineers are asked if they use resources, if they focus on major contradictions, if they have a concept for future super systems and sub-systems, and other TRIZ-based questions. Since they know the questions will be asked, they use TRIZ extensively in development. In SMD (Samsung Mobile Device) only 9% of projects were defect improvement projects; the majority were new products, or processes for creating the new products. Mr. Cheong offered serveral lessons from experience:

1. Verification is important. Verify new ideas immediately. Waiting kills creativity
2. Top-down project selection is very important. This protects projects from getting cancelled early.
3. Select people for the "Creative elite" (internal TRIZ promotion and education team) who have both the technical ability and the personality to help other people succeed.
4. Use a task force for big projects , with the project team and the TRIZ team as partners, dividing the work.

The Samsung teams use a very basic flowchart, with many tools of TRIZ/ARIZ/OTSM used where appropriate for the specific project. There was considerable interest by the audience in the training system, and particularly in the note that the CEO had graduated from the basic level class! The TRIZ training is accompanied by a support system of consultants and patent writing advisors. A TRIZ Festival is held annually--last year the 12 best of 62 projects were selected, and 7 awards were given, to promote TRIZ. Samsung has an internal "webzine" and a conference for their own TRIZ association (6 of the Samsung companies share their experiences.) Future plans are to develop a broad base of projects (not just top-down), to increase the number of people with higher-level tools, to modify tools and methods for business problems, and to continuously improve the effectiveness of the education and support systems.

The second paper in this remarkable session was from the TRIZ organizer at Hyundai, and formerly at LS Cable, Mr. Young-Ju Kang, who personally has more than 52 patents from his work in the automotive industry, using TRIZ with Value Engineering and Axiomatic Design. (Picture of Mr. Kang, holding the plaque showing the conference picture.)

He echoed Mr. Cheong in the rejection of benchmarking, choosing instead to create new paradigms to win in the market. TRIZ is used in multiple areas: patent circumvention, system improvement, cost reduction, process innovation, technical forecasting, and general creativity improvement. History: 1995 -2005 TRIZ in the LS and LG companies, with more than 60 patents, and an internal TRIZ Association started to support all the related companies. In Hyundai, 2007-9 there have been more than 40 projects and the development of internal training and support systems. In contrast to Samsung, at Hyundai the TRIZ team selects the projects.

Mr. Kang also discussed the problems of TRIZ propagation, especially the difficulty of assessing the return on investment, and the difficulty of overcoming ignorance and psychological resistance (what can you do if people are convinced that the system cannot be changed, or that all problems can be cured by spending more money?) An equally important problem was selecting easy, unimportant problems as case studies--then the results were not They are now very disciplined about finding the right question before starting work on the solutions. He reminded the audience that early pilot projects were published in the TRIZ Journal in 2005, and that this helped draw attention to the work.

He had a very nice analogy between the complete technical system for a product and the complete technical system for a TRIZ implementation (Picture of Mr. Kang's slide).

Both LS and Hyundai use cash awards and public honor as motivational rewards, and have internal TRIZ conferences to show project results and reward the participants. Similarly to the Samsung efforts, they are now modifying methods to use for business problems, and reaching out to universities and other companies to develop a network of resources.

Mr. Kang concluded with a case study of a wheel system improvement that simplified the brake system, reducing cost and improving energy efficiency, and a patent circumvention case of waterproof optical cable--both cases emphasized trimming in very different ways. His conclusions were somewhat different from Mr. Cheong's, particularly starting bottom-up, then going to top-down in the organization--the audience reacted very positively to his step 4: be ambitious and confident.

Mr. K. Lee then joined Mr. Kang invited us all to the Korean TRIZCON 2010 in March.

The technical progam concluded with parallel sessions in 6 classrooms on a wide variety of subjects related to innovation, and the social program concluded with the banquet

This conference has been planned for over a year, and features many innovations in conference organization, as well as the many papers, tutorials, and discussions of all aspects of systematic innovation. For example, tutorial sessions were planned for Saturday and Sunday morning, so that people could participate who might have trouble leaving their jobs for conference sessions. Skype was used (with mixed success due to an overloaded wireless connection) so that Mark Barkan, President of MATRIZ, could give his personal and organizational greetings to the audience. A mix of government agencies, universities, professional societies and organizations were all sponsors of the conference. (See photograph of Welcome sign.)

Even the coffee break was innovative, with the snacks arranged to form a map of Taiwan, with each food item placed in the province where it was made (see photograph of food map.)

Yesterday, participants from the China, Japan, Korea, Russia, the US, Taiwan, and the UK took a tour bus from Hsinchu to Taipei and toured the Chaing Kai Shek memorial, the 101 building, and the National Palace Museum, for a cultural orientation to Taiwan. Today, I was the first tutorial speaker, focusing on the TRIZ aspects of Systematic Innovation, and emphsizing ideality, the use of resources, and the resolution of physical contradictions. The audience of over 100 was participative (well, they laughed at my jokes and made a good effort to apply what they were learning to their own work situations) and appreciative.

The main conference started with a group photo of the 150 participants from 14 countries. We were welcomed by Professor L.J.Chen, President-elect of the National Tsing Hua University, which was both sponsor and venue for the conference. He invited us to take advantage of Hsinchu's resources as the science center of Taiwan, as well as the universitiy's scenic, technical, and cultural resources.

Professor D. Daniel Sheu, Chairman of the conference and President of the Society for Systematic Innovation, welcomed us and gave a detailed overview of Systematic Innovation, to establish the context of the conference. He mentioned some of the innovations in conference organization, including the launch of the new Journal of Systematic Innovation (an academic, reviewed publication), developed in parallel with the conference, and announced the planning for the second conference in 2011 in Shanghai. (See picture of Daniel welcoming us informally at the reception on Friday evening.)

Darrell Mann's keynote address challenged the audience to expand their skills in innovation beyond TRIZ and beyond many of the standard tools that are usually related to TRIZ (QFD, strategic planning, TOC, DOE, Stage Gate, ...) to the dozens of tools and methods that are now part of Systematic Innovation. He developed both a high-level matrix for selecting tools (the rows are the people in your organization, with a row each for senior executives, marketing, product development, and operations, and the columns are the 4 stages of the S-curve) and a "periodic table" showing a way of grouping 60 or more conceptual tools. Since many participants were "graduates" of Darrell's classes in Taiwan in the last several years, they were well-oriented to appreciate the elegance of this form of organization of the constituents of systematic innovation. Of course, Darrell took advantage of the opportunity to announce the publication of 3 new books, as well!

The afternoon was capped off with six simultaneous breakout sessions, with 4-5 papers in each (3 in Chinese, 3 in English) and a poster session with 15 papers in Chinese and English. There were many case studies from a wide variety of industries. I was chairing one session, so I could not move around much, but I saw examples from automotive safety, steel processing, paint production, and university research management. The session chairpeople were asked to recommend the best papers in their sessions for futue publication, so I anticipate that Real Innovation and TRIZ Journal readers will see a sample of the best of these papers in the next few months.

More tomorrow...

About two years ago, I wrote a commentary on teaching innovation as it has been my passion to pursue, source of inspiration, and reason to develop teachable innovation methods. About the same time I also started teaching Business Innovation. Students have loved learning about innovation.

Among all the commentaries I have written during 2007- 08 at RealInnovation, the Teaching Innovation has been the most active one. . Many inquiries were received for emailing the course syllabus that I teach at Illinois Institute of Technology. Having fulfilled all requests, I have yet to hear from most of the people who asked for the information. I have no idea what happened after they received the syllabus. Has anyone started teaching innovation? Are there any challenges experienced in teaching innovation? I would be very interested in learning more about various programs initiated or designed for teaching innovation. I believe all of us would benefit from our collective wisdom.

Continuing my work on teaching innovation, IIT has developed an innovation certification program. Maybe, we should create a group on RealInnovation to raise awareness to teaching innovation. I believe new jobs can only be created, or standards of living be raised by creating new businesses based on new discoveries. To achieve these objectives we need to prepare a larger pool of innovators that can only be accomplished by teaching innovation.

What do you think? I need to hear more voices about teaching innovation besides hearing myself.

On December 7th this lively panel discussion was hosted on CSPAN by Mathew Bishop, Business Editor of The Economist. The panel of excellent innovators includes: Dean Kamen, Inventor, Segway; Kai Huang, Co-Founder, The Guitar Hero; Rob Carlson, Principal, Biodesic; Dwayne Spradin, President and CEO, InnoCentive.

They shared their thinking about the state of the economy, economic and business innovation, and opportunities for growth. Among the topics they addressed were use of technologies, alternative energy uses, and health care. They also responded to questions from the audience.

For those of you who would like to watch the discussion--50 minutes, here is the link: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/290481-3.

We head into 2010 with uncertainty. Things look like they may be turning up a little, but many people are still cautious, considering all the financial turbulence. In times like this, it's always best to fall back on things and principles we know will stand the test of time. Let's review a few of them as we plan our business and innovation strategy for 2010:

1. Cost reduction pressures will not cease, especially with continued globalization of business and technology. So how do we decrease costs? We lower the price of what we pay for raw materials, capital, and people. We beat up on our suppliers. Incremental improvements in these areas come from renegotiating contracts, changing delivery times, reducing overtime, automating--all the things that have been known for years and everyone else knows too. So what can you do that is special? Don't reduce costs--eliminate them! How do you do that? By not using the materials or resources at all. Now I don't mean brutal downsizings--there has been enough dumb non-innovative practice of that. I mean the scientific concept of "trimming." Black and Decker uses the empty volume in a paint stick to help people avoid paying for buckets and paint pans, while at the same time not paying for wood or aluminum volume not needed. CNN uses I Reporters to save all the time of jetting around their reporters around the country and gets the news faster and at NO cost! Put the toothpaste in the handle of the toothbrush--save the plastic as well as the cost to the consumer of buying a large tube they won't finish in a year's time. Email your bills--don't spend postage. Get rid of the tire--use the Tweel (R)! This is downsizing done with logic and science. It may or may not reduce people costs, but it sure opens the door for patentable products, margin improvement, and increased appreciation by your customers.
2. Keep from being "trimmed." Your customers may/should be doing the same thing. So what are you doing to help them get there? How can you reduce their costs, not just yours? How could the function performed by your product be done in a way that doesn't use your product? Think about that before they do. This may force a hard decision about what business you're in, an acquisition that may be needed, or a new approach to your business. If you don't do it, someone else will. Be first to figure out how the function your product performs can be done without it. This is very hard business strategy thinking but it's essential for survival in these times. Don't spend time working on a better "non-spilling" paint pan--it's not going to be needed.
3. We've been brutal with people and their loyalty. How are you going to get it back? How do you change the culture and memory from "shut up and do as you're told or you won't have a job" to "we really need you and your input and ideas".
4. We've written columns about style differences in people. We use all kinds of psychological assessment tools but we really don't USE them. They are discussed and the paperwork stored in a drawer somewhere.We put teams together without any thought to its composition except for the titles and backgrounds of the people. They are asked to work on problem 1. But problem 2 (how the team "gets along") is swept under the table and the problem 2 energy saps that necessary to deal with problem 1. People have different styles of relating as well as problem solving that are very hard wired. Measuring these and making sure that the composition and dynamics of the team are critical to success. Make this the year that this issue comes out in the open and is dealt with pro-actively.
5. Globalization pressures continue to increase. Inventors are figuring out how to deliver PCs and drinking water to third world countries in ways we have never thought of in the West. Potable water is delivered by sucking through a straw with carbon/other adsorbent materials embedded. No central drinking water facility. How much money does that save? What if these approaches are modified and scalable to other situations? Maybe we can learn from these approaches.
6. Egos are still with us. Make this the year you stop using acronyms and jargon to discuss your problems and make them sound fancy, unique, and sophisticated to any one who does not know the special language. Let your hair down and talk to a sixth grader about your problem. Then you'll find out that your problem is not all that special and that video games are the same as air traffic control systems, dissolving heart stents are the same as decomposing garbage bags, and high precision grinding diamond dust generation is the same as blowing the stems out of peppers.

I took some time off writing commentaries for RealInnovation about a year ago. Reflecting over last 12 months for innovation activities, I have seen great interest in innovation all over the world. People are talking about innovation at all levels. Students, teachers, schools, colleges, businesses, professionals, and even national leaders, all have been talking about innovation. However, creating a culture of innovation at a group, community or corporation level still remains a challenge. There is no shortage of strategic planning for innovation however executing the strategy still remains a mystery.

In December 2009 President Obama hosted a Jobs Forum at White House. Everyone is talking about creating jobs, but none is asking the question, "How to create jobs?" It has been forgotten that more people are employed by small businesses than large corporations. Doling out money to large organizations in the name of "too big to fail" will not create jobs. Stimulus packages worth about three trillion dollars have not created many jobs so far.

I believe that instead of talking about creating jobs our leaders should explore creating new businesses. Only thousands of new businesses will create millions of new jobs. I understand that some of the stimulus money goes for workforce development where the money is available for skills development through training or certification that will help in getting a job, Given that economy is shrinking and jobs are not available; any training for teaching innovation and entrepreneurship does not get funded.

I have been wondering when President Obama would do something about his promise of Change and give a vision for Americans to pursue.

I am sure you have your story to tell. I can hardly wait to hear your innovation story.

Trimming is a TRIZ technique of improving something by simplifying it (and a small joke in English.) Most often in TRIZ it refers to products or systems where the complexity has increased cost or decreased maintainability, serviceability, ease of use, etc. My husband and I got a gift that let us experience an extreme form of trimming used to create an innovation in experience.

We walked into Opaque, a dimly lit empty nightclub in Santa Monica, California. (There are others in Vienna, Paris, San Francisico and elsewhere. See www.darkdining.com) We are greeted and given menus with limited choices--2 salads, 4 entrees, 2 desserts, wine by the glass only. After choosing the meal, we are introduced to Michael, our guide/waiter/helper, who is blind. I put my hand on Michael's shoulder, Bill puts his hand on my shoulder, and we "elephant walk" into the darkest room I have ever been in except for a cave exploration trip. Yes, what has been trimmed from this dining experience is light, and the diner's ability to see the food, the table setting, the presentation of the food, and one's companion. The theory of the restaurant is that taking away light will enhance the diners' other senses and focus the diners' attention on the taste, texture, and aromas of the food. And yes, they reject all the dogma of the restaurant industry that presentation of the food is important, "we taste first with our eyes."

Michael guided us through sitting down: "Put your hand out. This is the back of your chair. Touch the seat, now move forward a half step and sit down. In front of you on the table is a napkin, wrapped around the fork and a butter knife...." We started with an amuse bouche that was a tiny tomato stuffed with herbs and goat cheese, served on a ceramic spoon, as a single bite. This was the easiest part of the meal! When Michael brought the bread basket, the butter was in a small dish which Bill and I each put fingers in trying to find it, and we eventually just dipped the bread in butter rather than using the knife. The salads were very good, but it took a combination of fork and fingers to get the greens.

I was surprised that Michael did not give us orientation to the entree plate. The steak was cut into fairly large pieces, and we did get sharp knives in case we were brave enough to cut it smaller, but we didn't know where the broccoli or the spinach was. Aroma didn't help, since everything was heavily garlicked.

Desserts were both soft (eat with just a spoon) and probably the best food of the meal, but again, there were surprises: the chocolate lava cake was decorated with raspberries which we found after eating the cake, and the mango panna cotta also had hidden fruit. Michael guided us back to the lobby, where we washed up (very little damage), paid, and departed just as the nightclub part of the operation was getting started.

Did the "trimmed" experience work? The diners definitely focused (hmmm, optics analogy) on each other and on the experience. We tried to guess how many tables there were, what the relationships between the other diners were, why the chefs and designers had made certain choices about the food and the method of presenting the meal, etc. Unfortunately, the food and the wine were just OK, not excellent, and that interferes with my ability to evaluate the experience of the blind dining. It was definitely interesting, but too expensive to repeat for the actual dining.

Trimming lesson: In this case, they removed one element of the experience in order to be unique, not in order to simplify the experience. They succeeded in being unique, but the question is still open whether they will be a commercially successful innovation.

You could duplicate this experience at home, if you have a room with no windows, or try it in your city if you have one of the other "Dark Dining" venues. Readers' comments are welcome! Best wishes to all our readers for a happy, healthy, and INNOVATIVE 2010!

ISPIM (International Society of Professional Innovation Management) Meeting, New York, NY Dec 7-9, 2009: "Stimulating Recovery: The Role of Innovation Management"ISPIM (http://www.ispim.org) is primarily a European based innovation organization with a combination of academics, consultants, and industrial practitioners. They hold two meetings a year and occasionally one of these is held outside of Europe. This year's meeting was hosted by the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. FIT is a very practically focused art and industrial design school. Below are commentary on several of the presentations over the first 2 days which I attended, and editorial comments with both my general innovation and TRIZ hat on.

Dr. Rita Gunther McGrath from the Harvard Business School discussed "Growth in Uncertain Times". She made a very interesting presentation on thinking ahead in starting up a new business--asking the important questions first and looking at upward integration for value, which is not a new concept for those familiar with this line of evolution in TRIZ thinking. She illustrated this point vividly with the example of Build-A-Bear, a toy store company (and also on line now) in which a shopper chooses a "basic" bear and then outfits it with whatever clothes, ribbons, etc. that wants, in the store.

This model (the same one used in "cutting your own" Christmas tree farms, or the Chucky Cheese franchises (where the emphasis is on the party and not the pizza) allows individualization of the shopping (and innovation experience) and generates 70 times as much sales volume per square foot as a typical Toys R Us store, upon which they had benchmarked and simply could not generate the sales volume desired in the space they could afford. This also allowed "quantification" of the fantasy as seen by the shopper. Another point during this presentation, as this company's development was reviewed, was the constant tracking of assumptions in a new innovative business.

We all make assumptions and Build-A-Bear made a list of there assumptions, dates, changes that occurred, etc. and then reviewed these on a rigorous time basis. All this takes is a simple spread sheet. The learning here is to constantly review the assumptions made and react before their changes become crises.

A very simple new business innovation tool.Dr. Jody Holtzman from AARP discussed the challenges faced in trying to expand innovate within the traditional structure and original mission ("retired persons") of AARP. The dropping of the "retired persons" from the organization title and moving simply to the AARP acronym has not been successful in removing the stereotype image and prevents a barrier to new business and product offerings to younger individuals. This non-profit organization currently has 40 million members with $1 Billion in annual revenues, 65% of which comes from the sale of auxiliary products, endorsed by AARP. Membership dues, by themselves, are a losing proposition.

The linkage they have discovered for new product offerings and potential broadening is the 18-34 old age segment which is linked to their traditional older membership by the "sandwich" generation issues associated with elder care and college costs. In the US, 10% of people aged 18-34 still live with their parents, 1/2 of whom are retired. AARP has now formed 400 on line communities to share ideas, listen, launch test visions of new products and services. They have 400 on line communities for market research under the heading of Lifetuner.org This is providing support and market research to overcome resistance from senior management. They "fly under the radar", and work remotely, but still report to senior executives in the organization. These on line communities are a vehicle to learn and minimize cost of failure of new ideas. The expert advice supplied as part of this effort is not linked to any sales effort.

An observation made by Jody was that people question methodologies but not results. The key in this effort has been to link the needs of younger people to the current needs of their present membership. (TRIZ principle of using existing resources) This effort has allowed this innovation effort to not threaten the current organization business and structure. There's a lesson here for innovators---linking innovative ideas to an existing business or structure, not only not to be threatening, but also enhance existing product offering. A point made by Jody was that what seems to be "radical innovation" for a given organization may not really be radical innovation in its traditional sense.

It's important to know the difference.Dr. Gina O'Connor from RPI reported on a long term research study tracking the life of internal venture groups, showing the familiar story of less than a 5 year life in the early days of these programs (this author has led and published a similar study also reviewing the psychological profiles of these groups vs. the corporate surroundings). Beginning in 195 through 2000, these efforts took on a different character, using multi-disciplinary teams to produce "radical innovation". After 2000, these efforts focused more on capabilities rather than specific products or businesses, allowing them to respond to a broader variety of challenges. This mirrors the emphasis in TRIZ on understanding the function of a system and analyzing that vs. focusing on a specific product.

Her vision of a radical innovation hub includes a mandate and scope, the skills and talents required, appropriate processes and tools, and integration with decision makers. These observations parallel those made in the 2001 study of failed innovation champions published in Chemical Innovation.Robyn Raybold from Microsoft provided some fascinating statistics on the Web as well as the thinking behind their new Bing search engine product. Since 1997 there has been a 10 million fold increase in content on the web, an increase from 700K to 160 million web sites, and an increase from 256 million to 1 trillion URL's. During this time there has also been a huge increase in video and audio content. She also stated that their research showed that searches drive by visual content and images was 23% faster than with word content.

An example of what they have tried to do with Bing (Note: I have no first hand experience with this search engine) would be someone searching in the new car area would automatically be provided picture and rating information without being asked for it. (TRIZniks: the need identifies itself and comes to you without asking--the IFR). The decision to design the system this way was in part driven by data that says that 25% of user clicks on a web search are to go back for additional information, only 65% of users are satisfied with their search experience, 50% saying their searches take too long, and 42% saying their searches need refinement. An example used was the narrowing of search from "New York" to "New York restaurants" to "Chinese restaurants in New York". She also made the point that a lot of people used to be satisfied with the first cell phone from Motorola (true--do you remember how big and bulky they were? But they did something you could not do before. Think about the original microwave ovens that cost $499 and all they did was boil water!)

66% of people make decisions based on web searches. 43% of searches are in the health care area. It's interesting that in the food industry food products such as Prego now have over 20 variables and Bing is going in the opposite direction with consolidation. Again, from a TRIZ perspective, one can make breakthroughs and make a product or service more ideal by either adding useful complexity or by consolidating and simplifying. A bit of trivia that I found fascinating was that on average, web users check the weather sites 2.6 times a day!

Dr. Howard Moskowitz, in his talk and participation on one of the panels, made the analogy of our progress in innovation as the same as moving from astronomy (observation) to physics (understanding the basic science of the universe). In his primary talk, he made the point that the US has virtually given up manufacturing and that the only thing left is knowledge to distinguish it in the future. He also shared his experience in observing and working with customers and clients and made the excellent point that customers do not tell you in clear detail what they want. Better coffee can mean strong and dark or weak and milky and unless you've actually watched them make their coffee, you can't be sure. He's a fan of the fail early, quick, and cheap school and developing what he calls "rule developing" experiments (sounds like the 40 Principles!)

Dr. Jayakanth Srinivasan from MIT reviewed his work with Rockwell Collins emphasizing the combining of lean principles with innovation. He mentioned the "10X" principle, meaning that a true breakthrough idea could be stimulated by such thinking. This is very similar to the IFR concept in TRIZ except TRIZ goes further! Part of this operates as a suggestion box program independent of the business units (I have my doubts about this). His model is a combination of open innovation, technology scanning, and internal R&D. A quote from 1927(Schumpeter): "Changes of the combination of the factors of production as cannot be affected by infinitesimal steps or changes at the margin. They consist primarily of changes in the methods of production and transportation, or in the production of a new article, or in the opening up of new markets or of new sources of materials". A lot of wisdom from a long time ago!

Andres Stuckl from Swiss Post (post office) discussed their approach to open innovation. Two key thoughts. "Industry related factors determine the need for open innovation, while internal culture determines how it is implemented.Sabube Brunswicker from the Fraunhofer Institute discussed how we have begun to use open innovation concepts in looking for technology, but not sufficiently in looking at the open innovation process itself. This was the only paper to mention TRIZ and of course TRIZ is a tool kit and mental mind set that can assist us in looking for parallel universes with similar problems not thought about previously. The key elements of an open innovation program, according to Brunswicker, are (1) define where is the open innovation needed, (2) where to look [Note: this is a key area for TRIZ assistance through generalizing the function that is needed], (3) what to source--the specific function required, and (4) governance and control (details and mechanics of the search). Key factors to be considered in these activities include trend and competency analysis, abstraction of the problem [Amen!], and domain and firm selectionMy short presentation on inventive principles and TRIZ generated a lot of discussion and I was very surprised at the lack of awareness of TRIZ, especially with all the TRIZ activities and organizations in Europe, including many large corporate and organizational users such as Siemens, Nestle, and the Fraunhofer Institute.The next meeting of this group is in Barcelona in March of 2010. http://www.ispim.org

Why do we go to movies? Because for less than $10, we can see famous movie stars that we could never afford to pay to come to our house for a private showing. Why do we use copier machines? Because we could never afford the time or money to hand write all the copies we want. The Gutenberg printing press was one of the most significant inventions in history. Why do we buy records or CD's? Because, as with movie stars, we could never afford to pay for these singers to sing for us individually whenever we wanted. Copies are cheaper.

Why do we benchmark against the industry's best? Because we hope we will learn something that we can apply to our own situation without having to pay for all the consultants and hard work that was done to get there. We want to "copy" them without having to invest all the time and money they did to learn what they now know.

Making copies is also a significant inventive principle and every once in a while we need reminded of that. Over the past few months, two very clever new products have appeared which solve some long standing every day problems.

1. The first is the problem of people stealing sandwiches from group refrigerators within a common lunch area. What would make you NOT want to steal a sandwich? Maybe because it's not the kind of food you like, so you look for someone else's sandwich more to your liking. But what if the sandwich had mildew on it? You wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, would you? A very new sandwich bag is now on the market with pre-printed mildew stains on the film! Not expensive to do and commands a hefty price. Check out: http://www.thisnext.com/item/7BBC47F6/4ED4FA3B/anti-theft-lunch-bag We "copy" the mildew. The mildew performs its function without existing. Note that there are some interesting product improvement opportunities here. What are they?
2. What's another minor inconvenience? You're on a diet and need to measure portions with special cups or spoons and then put the measured portions on a plate. Several new products have come to market in which the portion sizes are painted on the plates or controlled by sectioning. Type in "diet portion control plates" into your browser and see all the products, or take a look at one of your airline or holiday catalogs. Again, the plates now provide the function previously provided by the extra utensils.

In Europe, a painted image of a highway "slow down" hump that's not really there causes cars to slow down. Where else are two items needed to accomplish something where one could be eliminated and its function provided by "copying" it on to or within another system? What product do you have that could perform the function of something else? The other product gets eliminated, you get to raise your price, and maybe even get a patent. What a deal! Copy something! Eliminate the second thing. Raise your price for the "new" product that does two things instead of one.

How good is the new Droid phone? I can't tell you that - but I CAN tell you that the premise of an ad I found displaying on CNN.com tonight has me intrigued.

The ad (shown in the static screen grab here) states plainly "Compromise Deactivated." Being on the search for a new cell phone (no decision yet), I've had trouble making a decision based on the compromise factor.

I've dropped my current phone a few times. So much so that I've to using masking tape to keep the battery attached to the phone. Clearly, battery use is important! But it seems like if a battery is reliable, I'm giving up something else - perhaps the smaller size I prefer. Or the price skyrockets. Or it has more functionality than I need/want.

But if I look for a phone that has the functionality I want (easier texting than my Razr provides), good network coverage, bells & whistles not needed (email, videos, etc. are more than I desire to carry with me at all times), then the low battery time is a major complaint within reader reviews.

I don't know if the Droid will be the phone for me, but the idea of no compromises (a fundamental principle of TRIZ - eliminate the contradictions/compromises - in order to develop the innovative solution) has me intrigued enough to continue my research. Maybe even if some of those unneeded features are there, the lack of compromises on the rest of what's important to me will be right up my alley.

The next time you're confronted with a compromise, think about what you can do to eliminate the contradiction entirely - you might be surprised by the ideas that present themselves.

It is hard to convey the elation and enthusiasm of the audience at this conference, particularly for the student papers. Some are elegant "classroom" exercises, and some are real projects done for real industry, and some are entrepreneurial ventures where the students are both the engineers and the business developers. It is a great joy for all of us to see the spread of TRIZ into the next generations, and to see the students' willingness to learn new ways of thinking at the beginning of their professional careers.

Christopher Nikulin's second paper explained a model for design of new products based in TRIZ, using the value in the market as the decision criterion. The multi-window method was used in an example of developing low-carbohydrate pasta for a student project that is now being commercialized. Other projects being developed are:

• plastic bag recycler
• uninterruptible power supply
• easy to install vehicle covers
• golf cart brake for hillside use
• hoist system using the axle of a 4 wheel drive truck
• magnetic car roof rack

Rodrigo Silva did not "give a paper." His passionate exhortation to the conference could be called a sermon or a call to arms or a harrangue, but not a paper! His topic was the philosophy of value and innovation, and he addressed himself primarily to the students, telling them that they should focus their careers on adding value to the world, not on getting a job, or even getting a good job.
Edgardo Cordova demonstrated that TRIZ itself is a system, and evolves as a system. He gave us a brief guided tour of the spiral of evolution through 6 stages, culminating in the merger of TRIZ into business and design. There's a lot to reflect on in this model, and he has promised me an English version to share with our readers in the near future.

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After lunch, I showed the group that the first day's report was already in the TJ Commentary. The conference audience appreciated seeing themselves in the TRIZ Journal "live" during the conference. I encouraged the faculty to make the TJ available to their students and colleagues!
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Generation of Energy Alternatives was presented by Alvarao Vera. He pointed out that Chile's long shoreline is a natural resource that can be used to generate energy, and reviewed the state of the art of European, US, and Japanese wave and tide powered electrical systems. They selected opportunities where TRIZ could help make concepts more applicable to Chilean deployment. This was not theory - - we saw pictures of the prototype and the cold developers in a small boat leaving the large ship for real open-ocean testing. He gave credit for their success to the interdepartmental nature of the team, with knowledge of how to get financing and organize the project, as well as all the technical disciplines. See www.gea.usm.cl for more of the story, and new projects in air, water, and solar, in Chile and Guatemala, sponsored by business, the UN, and entrepreneurial initiative.

Srs. José García Torres and José Rangel Cordero from Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mexico demonstrated the application of invisible resources in TRIZ, specifically for optimizing the use of fuel for internal combustion engines. (And they started with my example of using resources to save the passengers on the Titanic!) They focused on Internal combusion because of air pollution, and the extreme smog problems in both Sangtiago and Mexico DF. Two different improvements have improved efficiency by 12% and by 30%, using resources from the air, which is frequently an invisible (overlooked) resource, and from the momentum of the moving vehicle. Additional catalysis may increase the efficiencies even more. An added benefit may be reduction of maintenance. After the paper there was discussion of the total power balance, and the source of the energy for hydrolisis of the air.

The following paper by Germán Guerra, also from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mexico was a complete change of pace. He introduces children to TRIZ by means of a card game incorporating ideas from the 40 principles. The cartoons are funny, drawn by German (and he says he's not DaVinci.) The audience laughed at the cartoons of Innobot (a robot) and SuperTRIZ (a caped hero) as they demonstrated the concepts in terms that children understand. Segementation was cutting a cake, and Asymmetry was a very fat lady with a very skinny man. His personal favorite was universality: a microwave oven with a cooking surface, because the first time he tried this with 10 year old students, they each had their own examples: a bicycle used as a clothes rack, a backpack used as a pillow. The energy that he got from working with young children was communicated to the audience, to encourage them to take risks of leaving the comfort zone of engineering for the risky world of children.
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The afternoon keynote talk by Sergei Ikovenko returned us to the world of technical problem solving, focusing on applying TRIZ to Patent Strategies. The audience appreciated his sharing personal history of taking Altshuller's seminars several times, and then joining the research group. Sometimes he had personal interests, such as patent law, that Altshuller did not share, so he worked on both his assigned research and his personal interests. Sergei told us that the examples in Altshuller's books are very clear as illustrations, but they are not practical, because Altshuller was interested in the clarity of the teaching, not in the business of making and selling products. When he came to the US, he returned to his interest in patents, because there was great interest in the economic advantage of innovation.

For those who are not familiar with patent law, Sergei gave an excellent brief review of major strategies, and showed us some of his research on the TRIZ methods that are most helpful for each of the major strategies. For examples: patent circumvention does not create the next generation product. What it does is legally avoid violating competitive patents, so, with the fewest possible changes, you have the freedom to operate. The safe, straightforward way to do this is not to add components (since you will be in the zone of dependent patents) but to subtract them. Sergei gave a brief lesson on trimming, so that all functions are performed by a simpler system. His examples are all REAL products, not just patents that exist on paper and an introduction to the intricacies of patent law (doctrine of equivalents, estoppel research) for non-specialists. The case of the Dior sunscreen that senses the amount of sunlight and adjusts the amount of blocking material, and could be bought in the hotel store, was a great illustration of a multinational successful product.
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Prof. Noel León presented work by himself and Roberto Durán and Eduardo Uresti from TEC in Monterrey, Mexico, that challenged the audience with the concept of genetic algorithms, a form of simulation that makes it possible to test many variations of a design, and, by formalizing the definition of a "good" design, makes it possible to evaluate which alternatives are best, and simulate evolution of design. (I first heard about this last year at the Guadalajara meeting and have been fascinated by the possibilities.) They combine TRIZ with genetic algorithms, using the patterns of evolution and principles as the triggers for change algorithms, and the concept of ideality for evaluation. Noel gave us a historical insight into the development of genetic algorithms, and the parallels between TRIZ concepts and concepts in GA. They are now extending the genetic analogy to the concept of antibodies to stimulate alternative solutions to problems.

Carlos Contreras presented the work by himself and his colleagues at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogata, Colombia (Srs.: Luz Torres P - Diego Flores H-. - Oscar Castellanos D.) on the production of derivatives of sugar cane, and on development of the markets, which depend on many political factors (regulation, tariffs, etc.) as well as the technological ones.

The second report from Colombia was on the management of the process of technology evaluation and assessment in the agricultural industry by Srs.: Aida Fúquene – Diana Ramírez – Oscar Castellanos, presented by Laura Egea. Extensive research on the search parameters and statistical data was used to develop opportunities for Colombian products.

Jose Vicente from Valencia Spain had the honor and challenge of being the last presenter of the day. His theme was transition to the supersystem, a primary law of innovation. Jose had a marvelous global set of examples of products and services for each of the concepts that he discussed. He illustrated the need to listen to the voice of the customer, but be careful, with the case of Kawasaki's breakthrough in the world of "wet bikes" that came from recognizing that customers sit on motorcycles, but stand on water skiis, and that hybridizing them would create a large new market. He illustrated the difficulty of innovation with an extensive list of both products and services where the second company to come to market succeeded, while the innovator did not have the business success. The audience had great appreciation for this world-wide collection of well-known names (Royal Crown lost to Coca Cola, RIM lost to Apple, Sega lost to both Nintendo and Sony, DeHavilland lost to Boeing, ...)

Jose used a dramatic, non-technical example of the use of the supersystem: the new horror movie that was made for US$15,000 and promoted via Facebook, and distributed by "friends" and has now made US$ two hundred million. The innovation was not the making of the movie, it was using the supersystem instead of the conventional distribution system. Moving to the technical world, he gave persuasive examples from medical imaging (PET/CT) and from renewable energy resources, and showed how the concepts apply to the business world as well as the technical world. The conference ended on a high point with the decision scene from the movie "the Matrix." Thanks, Jose!

Prof. Sariego concluded the conference by asking the keynote speakers to each say a few remarks, then we took lots of pictures, hugged each other, and promised to meet again.

Daniel Palma opened the Day 2 program with a fascinating study of "TRIZ: a competitive advantage in the Mexican labor market." He and his colleagues looked at the employment experiences of 183 engineering students starting in 2005, and found that those with TRIZ training had more interviews and more job offers, even in the last year of great economic stress. Further study will be needed to distinguish whether the employers value the engineers' problem solving capability, or whether they actually recognize TRIZ and use it as a criterion for granting an interview.

Juan Enrique Aguila showed a work in progress, studying the application of ISO 9000 to education, particularly in Chile. He pointed out many TRIZ-type contradictions in the application of ISO 9000 and the competition with other quality certifications, some of which are general and others that are country-specific or discipline specific. Audience discussion addressed the need for business to know about whatever is new (TRIZ, ISO9000, other quality and innovation methods) to ask the universities for both student preparation in these areas, and to apply these methods to the improvement of the universities themselves.

Rafael Munoz Gomez from Mexico presented a wide range of examples of the application of the 40 principles to environmental engineering, including numerous examples of improving water purification systems, reducing gas emissions from storage areas, and reducing dust and particulate matter scattered during cleaning, increasing efficiency of wind generators, and others. TRIZ has a long history of examining new inventions to identify which TRIZ principles could have been used to generate the invention - - it is a proven method for both teaching and learning, and this list of examples will be useful to many people in environmental technology.

Jack Hipple (member of the TRIZ Journal editorial board, a TRIZ Journal author and commentator, and consultant) reviewed other creativity techniques, and compared them to TRIZ for both structure and usefulness. He then introduced the audience to assessment techniques, including Meyers-Briggs social style assessment and the KAI creativity evaluation, and showed how knowing the characteristics of the people you are working with on a TRIZ project can improve teamwork and improve results, if people can anticipate the human reactions of other team members. Jack's example of the use of TRIZ in designing the human interface for air traffic control computer systems by using experience from video games and from chemical factory control systems was a great example of overcoming psychological inertia.

José Alberto Ochoa, president of the Sociedad de Inventores de Chile presented the perspective of Chilean private inventors - - the people who are not academics or employees of large companies. There are 100 members, who all have at least applications for patents. They stimulate inventiveness through fairs and school activities. He talked about the difficulty of countering the impression that everything has already been invented and the need for a paradigm of inventing and of getting from the invention stage through production and to the market. They have identified opportunities for invention to support the development of the Chilean economy, although their members work independently. I invited Sr. Ochoa to tell all his members about the TRIZ Journal.

The University Federico Santa Maria division at Vina del Mar made a unique presentation of 3 student projects, from their program of student innovation projects for local industry. Innovation is encouraged in all 3 phases--conceptual design, basic design, and production/parametric design. Sr. Reinaldo Espinoza, director of the Center for Innovation and Creativity at the University, gave the overview of how the university teaches design concepts, which uses the 5 elements of a complete technical system as a fundamental concept, superimposed on the flow model of classical design (energy, material, and information are inputs, designs are the output.) and thanked his colleagues from Mexico for sharing the methodology that they use with their student/industry projects. These projects take about a year, and 500 projects have been "banked" for the use of industry. The university has a unique laboratory for student use for prototypes and experimentation. The student presentations were:

Sr.: Diego Araya - Appplication of TRIZ in the conceptural design phase of designing a laboratory for region 6 of Chile, for students from grades 5 and 6, learning biology, physics and chemistry. There were a number of requirements on the internal and external properties of the lab, because of the diverse climates in different parts of the region, and because of the needs of both teachers and students. One requirement was that the lab could be transported on an 18-wheel truck, which generated many more specific requirements both for durability and for easy deployment when it reached the site.

Srs.: Mario Gonzalez – Christopher Jiménez - Design and innovation of machinery to filet fish (salmon up to 1m and 20 kg) QFD- like matrices were used to translate from general needs to specific subsystem requirements. Eleven of the 39 parameters of the classical TRIZ matrix were identified as important to the design. Application of multiple principles gave the students ideas for making the system self-adjusting for a variety of sizes of fish, and incorporated numerous safety features. Video of the simulation of the design was quite vivid.

Sr.: Ricardo Ayala – Carlos González - Design and innovation of machinery to fill bins for export fruit, which must not be bruised during handling. Process flow and functional analysis and constraints (use of a specific apple sorting system) were basic elements of the design process. They used the 40 principles to remove contradictions, with a very elegant emphasis on ideality for chosing between multiple concepts.

Authors and other participants are invited to add their comments and corrections using the "comments" function at the end of this column. Since my name was spelled wrong in the program, I'm sure that there were others as well, and I have relied on the program for basic data. For the papers given in Spanish and Portuguese, I've use a combination of my high school/tourist Spanish and Google translate for the titles, and the help of the excellent conference translators for the themes.

The audience was fascinated by "Contribution to the development of conceptual design of new high tonnage truck for mining projects" presented by Carlos Dublé. Extensive research on the patterns of evolution of trucks of all kinds, as well as specific economic problems of the mining industry (especially load vs. weight of the truck) gave the analysis team ideas for a number of improvements in the trucks and in the management of the transportation system. They made great progress with the use of gravity as a resource, and the use of the existing structures of trucks in new ways. The audience was also interested in Carlos' observations on the team's learning process and the patent analysis that reached back to 189o, and he even got one offer of collaboration on development.

"Aplicación computacional de modelo Sustancia-Campo basado en las 76 Soluciones Estándar" --
Christopher Nikulin demonstrated an interactive algorithmic modeling system developed at the university for the use of the 76 standard solution. He showed the application to the milling function that had been explained before, applied to preventing the failure of the mill. The program guides the user through a series of question about the substance-field model and guides the user to a class of solutions to apply to the problem. He noted that the nature of the technical language of TRIZ as well as the technical language of the problem can be enablers for knowledgeable users but can be roadblocks for those who try to use the software without understanding the TRIZ vocabulary.

Noel León (frequent TRIZ Journal author and frequent speaker noticed in this column) brought his experience at TEC in Mexico to Santiago, speaking about the "Proposal for automation of the invention process using QFD, TRIZ and parametric modeling " being developed by his students. He gave us a survey of the taxonomy requirements for the system, which focused on functional analysis, and exposed some of the controversy between axiomatic design and TRIZ (if you can resolve contradictions with TRIZ, do you need functional independence prescribed by AD?) Prof. León showed several of the popular flow charts for the use of TRIZ tools and proposed a more general flow that would be managed by the automated system. He agreed with Sr. Nikulin, the previous speaker, that the user must understand the language of TRIZ, OR the automated system must be able to understand the language of the user. Two case studies have been completed (wind turbine and crankshaft) with active interplay between the users and the program.

Blanca Isabel Vicario Lopez from Mexico presented an application of TRIZ to problems of clean production in the chemical industry. This is a very practical case study of preventing explosion in the production of ethylene oxide. The current, expensive method is to use nitrogen gas , which is expensive, and requires heat exchangers which add complexity. Multiple technical contradictions were examined, and some of the 40 principles were applied to the problem. The resource-oriented solution was to use the ethylene oxide gas to protect the ethylene oxide liquid, which requires much less gas exchange than the other methods, saving U$60,000 directly, plus recovering costs in 2 months, and the solution required 2 days of development.

Montiel Hernandez Fabian from Mexico presented a paper which has won the Millennium Prize 2007 World Challenge in Numero 14: Science and Technology, "Using TRIZ to Improve Human Condition." He propses a series of conference of 150-200 people, with breakout groups of 15-20 people, with facilitators to guide them through the application of TRIZ to specific problems of the country. Massive diffusion of TRIZ could result - 27000 people in year 1, and up to 270,000 people by year 10. Latin America already has many people who can be the facilitators, and meeting rooms, etc. He showed examples from trial seminars, for improving water purification systems using direct solar energy and for disposing of contaminated construction materials.

Just before the coffee break Noel Leon gave congratulations to the Chilean TRIZ association for its formation. The websites of both AMETRIZ and the Chilean TRIZ association will invite solutions to the world economic crisis. He also announced a permanent committee for the Iberoamerican congress.

"Análisis de Vida residual, mejora continua en la búsqueda de aumento de confiabilidad y vida útil de nuestros Rodetes Pelton de la Central Hidroeléctrica de Alfalfal" = improving the life cycle of the hydroelectric facility at Alfalfal which has the most aggressive requirements in the world, due to both the speed of the water and the large amount of quartz that is in the water. Maurizio Edwards is the maintenance manager and he gave a dramatic presentation of the challenges in keeping the power plant working. Numerous improvement projects were conducted between 1991 and 2008. Extensive analyis of the metallurgy, the method of manufacturing, the details of the geometry of the buckets on the turbine, and the variables of operation gave them the data for a model of the system and to an understanding of the fatigue phenomena in the plant. The turbines are now very successful, with much longer life, but there were still problems of cavitation at unpredictable intervals. They found that human variability due to exhaustion, dehydration, and particularly to noise in the manufacturing environment was the source. Using robots for the machining removed the variability. This is a classical example of combining designed experiements, finite element analysis, stastical process control, and the discipline to apply the methods when the "experts" are saying that the results aren't right. The useful life of the power plant has doubled (and Maurizio says he is not popular with the experts.) The question session focused on the use of classical (non-TRIZ) methods, and Maurizio said that he is just learning about TRIZ for the first time at this conference, and he will be applying TRIZ in the future.

Jaime Glaría's paper "Causality" reminded all of us that "how" can be more important than "why" in solving real problems. His humor (and rejection of jargon) were appreciated for the late afternoon session. He started with an example of force, defined as a flow of momentum, and used it to challenge people from all disciplines and all kinds of jargon with an elegant example of water flowing out of a tank, and then expanded the example to problems of water management in times of drought.

Edgardo Córdova's paper gave us a view of the history of industrial maintenance, starting from the review of old maintenance manuals, and seeing progress from fixing what is broken, to preventive maintenance, to predictive maintenance, to proactive maintenance. They applied TRIZ to the maintenance systems, looking for ideality opportunities, such that the system can maintain itself, without stopping. He used the analogy of the ideal shoe, which enables the user to both run and rest, to challenge our thinking, and he demonstrated progress in automotive technology - maintenance is done at much longer intervals than 30 years ago, such as the 100,00- mile tune-up, or the sealed (no maintenance) battery, and the car that protects itself from damage by not starting if the driver is drunk.

Rodrigo Bulnes continued the maintenance theme with "TRIZ-based Tribological Maintenance" which is a specialty of the University. He related many of the concepts to TRIZ methods. He began with the analogy between doing blood tests on people to determine the state of health with testing lubricants to determine the state of wear/friction of a mechanical system. The cause/effect diagram for scuffing in a basic machine, such as a journal bearing, was truly impressive. Rodrigo developed the su-field model, showing how a third substance accomodates the speed difference between the first 2 bodies (which causes the damage) and suggests some approaches to overcome friction.

Prof. Sariego gave a brief summary of the day's activities, thanked the presenters, and invited us to conclude the day with a cocktail reception with folk dancing--will try for pictures in tomorrow's posting, with a faster connection.

Readers--do you want pictures of speakers hugging each other? Distinguished people introducing each other? People drinking coffee together? Or summaries of the papers (like this one.) Let us know! AND please volunteer to report on meetings that you attend.

"TRIZ in automotive quality problem: aligning the nozzle of the fuel tank"

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