Commentary by Ellen Domb

TRIZ India Summit Day 2

Ido Lapidot from Intel in Israel opened his talk on TRIZ in large companies with the Tetris project's video on the history of TRIZ, and then a charming demonstration of his personal history using S-curves. Since he started with the announcement that the benefit of TRIZ to Intel was many millions, this got the audience very engaged. Then he astonished us by saying that we need Systemic Innovation, not Systematic Innovation - - in other words, if the culture is right, it doesn't matter if we have TRIZ or any other specific methodology. But, the current Intel theme that power is not the goal, power/performance is the goal, makes resolving the contradiction the focus of the whole company, so there is a high compatibility with between the strategy, the culture, and TRIZ.

There was great interest in Lapidot's chart showing the correspondence

Vision - - Ideality

Mission - - Laws of evolution

Strategy - - S-Curves

Targets - - Ideal Final Result

Indicators - - Ideality equation: Functions/(Cost + Harm) He emphasized the need to have multiple factors in the indicators.

Lapidot gave the audience very practical advice while simultaneously illustrating the application of TRIZ to cultural change. He used both the separation principles and the 40 principles to show some of what he does; for example, combining the principles of local quality and self ��"service, have people develop their own examples of TRIZ applicability for their own problems, instead of having an expert supply generic examples. His history of the adoption of TRIZ through the company from 1996 through 2010 was sobering for those who wanted an instant solution, and his statement that they do not use metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of TRIZ was a challenge to those who use conventional management.

Lapidot then became a member of the panel for the discussion of embedding TRIZ in large enterprises, with Jagdish Ramaswamy, Chief Quality Officer from Wipro (Software and IT services), and T. Mukhopadhyay, Senior VP and head of R&D for CavinKare(shampoo and other personal care products.) (Picture, Left to Right, Ramaswamy, Lapidot, Bhushan, Mukhopadhyay) All panelists agreed that there is no one formula for introducing TRIZ throughout the organization, and that they used methods similar to Intel's for different people, different departments, and different jobs within their companies.

There was an extensive discussion of what constitutes innovation in software, which extended to innovation in systems and applications as opposed to the innovation in the software tools themselves, and potential areas for TRIZ applications. The audience questions then returned the panel to practical issues of the time spent on training and on projects when introducing TRIZ into a company. Navneet Bhushan gave a very complete description of an experimental approach, in which the people learning TRIZ are encouraged to experiment with it, not just treat it as training, over a 9-month period. The message from day 1, that TRIZ software / hardware / systems / services all benefit from TRIZ became much more concrete for the audience as they heard the commonality of approaches and results at Wipro, CavinKare, and Intel. Both Wipro and Intel have extensive Six Sigma deployments, and there was considerable interest in the TRIZ/Six Sigma hybridization (building on what I talked about yesterday, but with real examples from the 2 companies.)

After a short break, a second panel convened to discuss intellectual property. Krishan Prasad, inventor of global warming solutions and founder of Carbonda Global, Prof. Mary Mathew from the Indian Institute of Science, and Pinaki Ghosh, head of IP at Infosys joined Navneet Bhushan to discuss the methods used by inventors now, and the potential for TRIZ. Ghosh and Bhushan both emphasized that TRIZ is useful both for evaluation of ideas as well as for generation of ideas. Karthik Iyer asked the challenging questions: my favorite was, since TRIZ is successful for patent circumvention, will inventors be discouraged and will they stop generating new patents? The panelists had a vigorous discussion of the difference between the legal, ethical approach of patent circumvention and the improper use of patent information that results in infringement. (Ask your lawyer about this!)

The next paper built on the interest in patents. Priyaranjan Mishra from Philips India teamed with N. Bhushan to show how they search for relevant patents using TRIZ and the patent citation analysis method that was presented yesterday afternoon. Mishra emphasized the financial benefits of a good, fast, accurate, high confidence search system. Bhushan showed a case study using Perfusion Imaging, which combines MRI with cellular metabolism measures. There is a fascinating correlation between the high-ranking patents in their system and high level of invention, using Altshuller's 5 level scale.

Prasanna C. from Infosys Technologies reported on the use of TRIZ to determine qualitative parameters for estimating IP value of intangibles. They start by analyzing the contradiction that is solved by the invention, using D. Mann's business parameter matrix and the principles of invention that are cited by the matrix. The strength and frequency of use of the principles becomes the foundation of the analysis.

Bala Girisaballa, Director of R&D for Yahoo India, opened the afternoon session with a broad analysis of innovation in business models as well as technology, leading to discussion of open innovation methods. Yahoo's view of innovation includes business system patents, mostly from a defensive point of view, since the lifecycle of innovation in their business is 1 week-3 months, and innovative patentable ideas are published, not patented, as a business decision. The scale of Yahoo! is mind-boggling: 9 billion advertisements per day, 600 million people… They have a strong discipline for deciding what areas will be innovative, with a hierarchy of employees, partners, network associates, and their ecosystem. Yahoo! has an extensive suite of methods for engaging and rewarding employee innovation initiatives, some familiar to all readers of the innovation literature (reward fast failure, communicate cross-functionally) and some unique (internal hack days.) The need for common vision, trust, and open communication is the same for both employees and for partners, but very different in details of application. The network and ecosystem relationship are much less close, aimed at long-term relationships that will result in future partnerships. The challenge is to create a system that promotes the diffusion of new ideas from the outside layers to the inside, where they will be developed into implemented concepts. In parallel, they have a concept called radiation, in which problems go out through the layers, to the people who have the most interest in solving it.

Bala Ramadurai from MindTree spoke next about a unique what /if and function /attribute /analysis method to generate exhaustive system test case scenarios. The method was developed for a complex system, where classical analysis produced 80 scenarios, then WI ��" FAA produced 300 scenarios for a much more comprehensive test set. The deceptively simple method uses standard TRIZ function analysis: A does something to B, then ask what happens if the action is effective, missing, insufficient, excessive, or harmful, and what could cause an effective action to transition to one of the other modes.

Bala Girisaballa, Navneet, Venkatesh VR (Sr. VP and head of external innovation at Wipro) and I were the panel for a discussion of open innovation and TRIZ. My view was that TRIZ could be used to refine the definition of problems, and to focus the solutions, so that the mass idea submission approach of open innovation is unnecessary (I'm not sure thatI was a real contribution to the discussion!) The audience had a lot of questions about the technicalities of open innovation and IP, and a very vigorous exchange began, which will continue outside the conference hall.

The final presentation of the conference was planned to be Darrell Mann by remote connection from the UK speaking on TRIZ: Evolution to Revolution for Innovation. Technical difficulties caused cancellation, so Ido Lapidot, Isak Bukhman, Bala Ramadurai, and I did a quick panel discussion with the audience on high points of the conference, and next steps. Summarizing, the challenge is to DO TRIZ, don't just talk about it and don't just study it, DO IT! Second challenge is to keep the momentum going after the conference using all possible mechanisms. There's a live blog of the conference at http://trizindia.org/profiles/blogs/live-updates-trizin-2010 for those who would like a different perspective. Then there was lots of thanking each other and hugging, and people started for their next adventures.

RSS