The afternoon program at the Business Innovation Conference kicked off with a great presentation by Thomas Jacobius and Robert Anderson of the IIT Interprofessional Projects Program, which is a very unusual example of academic innovation. Students at all levels do projects in many different disciplines with sponsors in government, NGOs, non-profits, and small, medium, and large corporations, learning teamwork, project management, customer relationships, and the specific systems and methods needed to solve the problems that they discover in their projects. See http://ipro.iit.edu/ for details on the program and case studies of some recent outstanding projects.

IPRO teams have developed water purification systems for impoverished regions, a homerun predictions system for the White Sox Baseball Team, create a museum exhibit explaining the first artificial kidney, create an inflatable greenhouse (not yet implemented), and the Bosnia and Kosovo war crimes documentation project, which played a key role in reestablishing the legal system. A system that was proposed by students themselves was eMotion, combining hardware (a necklace) with software/social networks to provide a safe environment for young teens to network and communicate. This project has won several business plan competition and is getting venture capital now.

Anderson's emphasis was on intellectual property, and the students' role as fresh eyeballs in the sponsors' organizations. He himself is a fresh set of eyeballs, coming to IIT after 37 years in large, medium, small and start-up industries. Automotive projects include control systems for electric systems, lighter Li-ion batteries, simpler better differentials, plug-in hybrid systems (that the automobile companies say can't be done.) His discussion of rule breaking is better than optimizations was a classical TRIZ approach to eliminating tradeoffs - - my reaction was "maybe there's hope for academia yet!" On the other hand, his emphasis on needing to encourage students to get crazy, to use their diversity to come up with wild, crazy ideas, seems based on an old paradigm of creativity, ignoring the systematic innovation approach.

Participating in this session means I missed the sessions on sustainability and on using innovation to strengthen core values--heard a little about them during the coffee break, then went on to "Deploying Controlled Idea Generation and Idea Managment Processes" by Brian Glassman and Abram Walton from Purdue University.

The paper was based on Glassman's Ph.D. research on innovation systems in successful companies. He had extensive data on the practices for idea generation, collection and management, NOT including idea evaluation in companies in a number of different businesses. The audience got vocal (OK, I got vocal, along with several other people) about how many of these "best practices" were really highly constrained systems that keep ideas confined to conventional channels, which leads to the rather depressing conclusion that we now have extensive academic research on the practices of companies that are engaged in micro- or sustaining innovation, and that the breakthrough processes are the exceptions to the system. (I missed the simultaneous papers on Design Innovation and on Supply Chain Innovation Dynamics, and heard great things about them.)

The concluding plenary session was presented by serial entrepreneur (8 companies!) Alex Bratton from Lextech Global Services. His theme was "Opportunistic Innovation" which has three requirements:

1. Infrastructure (including a willingness to fail and learn from experiments/failures, as well as physical environment, tools, software, systems, etc.)
2. Opportunities (including awareness of opportunities created by technology changes, opportunities created by customer DISsatisfaction and satisfaction, ways to help your customers make/get money so that they can afford to pay you for your work, use social networks) Much of what Alex calls "Opportunities" would be called use of resources in TRIZ-talk, and much of what he calls "Research" would be called benchmarking/use of effects from outside your industry.
3. Execution or "ruthless execution:" Alex used a lot of the high-speed concepts from the disciplines of Agile software development--you can't improve if you aren't doing things. Don't let anything be stable. Many rapid prototype cycles beat few deliberate cycles. Know when to kill an idea; don't let the fact that you've spent money/time on something prevent you from killing it if it isn't moving toward success.

Audience members loved/hated Alex's ideas--nobody was neutral.

Praveen concluded the session (and got us ready for the reception) by having the participants introduce themselves.) Great first day!

Three breakout sessions = tough choice. I will report on the session by Irena Suznjevic from SimBex company in Croatia, who reported on her research AND application of methods of personifying innovation. That means I passed up session on Homeland Security innovation and on leveraging centers of excellence--kudos to our colleague Praveen Gupta and the Illinois Institute of Technology organizers for a speaker line-up that makes choosing a session so hard.

Irena defined innovation as new solutions to known problems, and as new views of the problem to make the solutions visible. SimBex makes medical products and supplies for mothers and babies, and operates clinics. Fast and simple solutions are preferred because of the speed of change in the customers' lives and the speed of change in the producers' and competitors' environment. They make a lot of use of web-based technology, but have made extensive investigation of how to make it user friendly, and non-technological at the point of user contact.

Two types of innovation are those you can feel and see, and those you can't feel/see. The first type includes all technology innovations. The company has great emphasis on the second kind--they are known throughout Europe for their smiles and for their caring for each other and for their customers. They create an identity for a personification of their products, using a general concept that I would call "avatars." The identity has a name, a color (be careful because of the extensive psychological baggage that some colors bring with them, and be willing to use different colors for people--your end user, distributor, and salespeople might need different colors), a purpose & goal, a face and arms and legs--then the innovation is alive! An unusual example was the internal innovation process of getting the ISO 9001 certification: it was blue (clear, water, transparent), the purpose and goal was to have processes that are not dependent of specific people, the image was a person relaxed and smiling at his desk, the arms and legs were the employees. This was an experiential talk--there was no research comparing this to other methods, but Irena's examples were quite persuasive.

The Chicago Innovation Awards are 8 years old now, and have had an exciting career both rewarding and stimulating innovation. See http://www.chicagoinnovationawards.com/ for details, history, and this year's process. Winners have lunch with Mayor Daley (and the organizers) and get lots of publicity through multiple publicity channels, as well as the award. Founder Tom Kuczmarski told stories that ranged from charming to astonishing about the Bionic Wrench (product), Threadless Tee-shirts, (business model), Ocean Tomo intellectual property auctions (business model), CDOT Green Alley Program (product and service and business model), Tundra Fire Extinguisher (packaging revolution), TurboTap beer dispenser (product, multiple benefits to different customers), Walgreens prescription lables in 14 languages (service, system).

Tom's data comparing "the Best" companies to "the Rest" got a lot of audience discussion, particularly the observation that Best companies have almost double the portfolio of new to the world OR new to the company products and services, even though the failure of these innovations is typically 80% -- makes it obvious that the 20% is worth a lot! (He left it to other presenters to talk about decreasing that 80%) He used Yahoo, Blockbuster, and Motorola to illustrate the transitory value of being first in a new market. I won't reproduce his list of ten best practices of innovation (yes, he has a book for sale) but it was fascinating to watch the audience's reaction, especially in areas where he disagreed with Hartung, the earlier keynote speaker. In contrast to some rather passive conferences I've been at where people politely listen then go back to what they've done before, it was a joy to see people get interested -- even angry! -- about innovation practices.

Lunch break was very informal in the atrium at the university conference center, with many people talking about the morning's papers and presentations, with a refreshing lack of consultants all pushing their own systems and methods.

Real Innovation Commentator Praveen Gupta is the chairman of the Business Innovation Conference that is running this week at Illinois Institute of Technology in Wheaton, a suburb of Chicago IL USA. This is a personal travel report, on the sessions that I am participating in--for the full program, see http://www.bnpevents.com/BIC/

Monday was the tutorial day. I had a great group of more than 40 people who really wanted to learn TRIZ. In a half day they learned ideality, use of resources, and resolution of physical contradictions, and they did their homework (go online and learn how to access The TRIZ Journal and find articles on their field of interst). Other topics with equally vigorous audience participation were on developing organizational innovation cultures, right brain integration of customer data with design methods, and innovation measurement systems. Praveen led the group on a late-afternoon car/train/cab journey to the Microsoft Research Center for a fascinating view of Microsoft's global perspectives on near, medium, and long term innovation.

Adam Hartung, newly appointed columnist for Forbes, was the keynote speaker for Tuesday Oct. 6. He instantly engaged the audience with his topic "Overcoming Barriers to Innovation" and his reflection on the negativity of the title, which led to reflection on past management catastrophes. He has identified "the Phoenix Principle" which is NOT about the issues that other authors credit: it is not about core, not about focus, not about leadership, all of which he claims come from spurious correlations of past behaviors, not from rigorous causality analysis. His thesis for innovation success, and all of business success, is the process of managing lock-in, the well-known but poorly managed phenomenon of smart people getting locked in to the paradigm that had been responsible for the success of their company. The dramatic story of the last 60 years in making copies -- from carbon paper to offset printing and mimeographs, to Xerography and desk-top publishing to non-paper systems, and the relationship between business innovation (the Xerox click meter, which made leasing on a per-copy basis possible) and technical innovation -- made the point very dramatically. His history of Xerox's rejection of desk-top publishing, as a Xerox PARC project to drive more demand for printing (raster scan, laser printer, graphical user interface, mouse, ...) which resulted in the foundation technology that Apple, Adobe, and dozens of other companies benefited from surprised and engaged many of the innovation community members in the audience.

Hartung's research with more than 850 companies shows that 4 practices, organized as his "Phoenix Principle" account for success:

1. Be future oriented (the whole browser world, pre-Microsoft)
2. Obsess about competitors (not customers, competitors! Great story about how Tom Monahan at Domino's Pizza, after going broke 3 times in 18 years, realized that his advantage was delivery, not the dubious quality of the pizza)
3. Disrupt yourself (Honda making full-sized trucks, walking robots, health care systems, airplanes...)
4. Create and maintain white space (Idea submission at Virgin from insiders and outsiders follow the same pathway, Fould's Pasta learned to compete on premium, not commodity pasta, etc.)

Hartung concluded by challenging the participants to evaluate their own opportunities to apply these 4 practices to their own businesses, and to experience the conference in terms of the 4 practices. This is what a keynote speech should do!

I'll report later today and tomorrow on both plenary sessions and breakout sessions.

Tomorrow (Wednesday, Sept 30), Ellen Domb, founding editor of The TRIZ Journal, will be on Steve Wilson's show Quality Conversations, hosted by BlogTalkRadio.

Steve has interviewed a plethora of quality professionals in the past. Guest apperances include Tom Kubiak, Forrest Breyfogle, Mark Graban, and from Real Innovation's sister site, iSixSigma, Jessica Harper and Michael Marx.

Below is the promo introducing the show. Check it out tomorrow 8:30 a.m. Pacific.

"Standard quality improvement methodologies such as DMAIC and PDSA have always incorporated brainstorming as a key method for finding creative solutions to problems. Brainstorming is designed to liberate a team's thinking from past patterns and and uncover ideas that people might have unconsciously suppressed. When it works it's great. But what happens when it does not work...if the solution lies outside the experience of the team? Ellen Domb, long time expert on the subject of TRIZ and founder of The TRIZ Journal joins us today to talk about the need for the use of TRIZ in Six Sigma."

ICED – the International Conference on Engineering Design – is the flagship event of the Design Society. The Seventeenth Conference was held last week at Stanford University in the USA. Over 200 papers were presented by a wide range of participants. Cause for celebration for Real Innovation and TRIZ Journal readers: Two of the 5 papers on TRIZ (written by friends of the TJ!) were honored as 2 of the 4 best papers at the conference, and 2 of the 37 "Reviewers' Favorites."

The full program, with abstracts, is available now at
http://stanford.edu/~merkuron/icedprogram/ICED%2709%20Program%20Web%20View.pdf so readers can see the august company that the winners were in, and how significant these awards are. It was eye-opening for me to see the academic side of the study of the design process.

The papers honored were:

• "A Dialectical Approach to Solve Inventive Problems Using Genetic Algorithms and TRIZ: Searching for a Computer Aided Innovation Shell" by Roberto Alejandro Duran-Novoa, Noel Leon-Rovira, and Eduardo Uresti from Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, México (presented by Roberto at the conference)
• "Functional Modeling for TRIZ-Based Evolutionary Analyses" by Gaetano Cascini from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, Federico Rotini from Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy, and Davide Russo from Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Italy (presented by Gaetano at the conference)

Our congratulations to the winners on being honored by their colleagues. It is very interesting that there was a special session of the conference on the relationship between design prizes and design methodologies and popular acceptance of design innovations. I wonder whether the award of prizes to papers will have a similar effect on TRIZ as a popular method in future design conferences? Please use the comment feature of this column if you have any thoughts on this.

Day 2 of the Computer-Aided Innovation Conference in Harbin, China, kicked off with the keynote by Prof. Gaetano Cascini, newly elected chairman of the IFIP working group 5.4, president of the European TRIZ Association, and great friend of the TRIZ Journal. His talk engaged the audience in lessons learned from past experience to develop new systems for inventive problem solving from concept definitions through solution implementation, in general and within the computer-aided system context. The role of problem solving/invention as one (but only one) phase of innovation has been one of the primary discussion topics for the conference, and Gaetano added useful discipline to the definitions that underpin that discussion.

I was able to build on many of Gaetano's points as the second speaker, focusing on the challenge of using ideality and the ideal final result in the context of Computer-Aided Innovation.

Noel Leon spoke next on many of the exciting applications of CAI at Tecnologico de Monterrey, including the genetic algorithm and simulation work that we reported on last year. The system is designed to create a Computer-Aided Inventing Environment, merging TRIZ concepts with the genetic algorithm research. His application of the 3 laws of dialectics put a new perspective on some frequently over-simplified TRIZ concepts. His matrix of hybridization opportunities is an exciting tool, easily adapted to many approaches in addition to his proposed transgenic hybridization system.

Professor V. Berdonosov from Komsomolsk-na-Amure State Technological University in Russia has extensive experience teaching TRIZ in China. His paper explained his method of teaching TRIZ, and his experience teaching in both Russia and China. His data on the change of IQ scores showing an increase of 10 points after TRIZ training will cause considerable controversy (study of students in the Machine Building Program.) His formulation of the fractal nature of TRIZ and the fractal nature of university teaching will be useful to many people in many disciplines.

There were parallel sessions again in the afternoon. Session 5 featured Udo Kannengiesser (Australia) on Understanding Innovation as a Change of Value Systems, written with John Gero (US). Their thesis is that both the innovator and the customer change their value systems in the process of innovation. This work is based on a function-behavior-structure ontology developed over the last 2 decades. The value systems are the design properties that are related to usefulness, in a specific situation. This is a VERY brief summary of a lot of work! Changes of function can be either sustaining or disruptive (sustaining = parameter change, disruptive = situation change.) Value systems can only change if the situation that encapsulates the value system changes. Change can be induced in both the adopters and in the producers, by a variety of means - - social, economic, communications, feedback, etc. Numerous questions demonstrate the appeal of this work to the CAI audience.

Xianjie Shi presented his team's work at Harbin Engineering University on an innovative solution of a typical engineering problem based on function modeling, using the improvement of the energy required by a coal mining shearer (the device that moves the coal from the point of mining to where it is collected) as the example. A great number of physical and technical contradictions were identified from the function model; TRIZ methods easily eliminated these to create an innovative method for operating the shearer. Questioners were disappointed to learn that this was theoretical only - - they wanted the real machine!

Zihui Wei explained a method call the Length-Time kinematic system and table, in which all physical constants are represented by powers of L and T, and transformation of a system is represented using the biological analogy of parents transmitting characteristics to a child. Horizontal lines in the table are the TRIZ patterns of spatial evolution, vertical lines are the temporal patterns of evolution, and diagonals are some of the Su-Field trends (based on the work of Alexandr.) He illustrated the application with a paper winder: the faster it goes, the worse the force on the paper, and the harder it is to control the force on the paper. The LT method suggested solving the problem using friction, and an elegant application was shown, with a functioning prototype. Prof. Tan then thanked the TRIZ Journal, where he and Wei discovered the paper that introduced them to this method.

The afternoon concluded with 2 special sessions. Daniel Scheu conducted a session (in Chinese) about introducing companies to TRIZ, and his experiences in Taiwan. Prof. Tan started a roundtable discussion (in English) about the current issues in TRIZ. He told us about the Association for Innovation Methods, which currently includes people from TRIZ and Six Sigma studies, and is sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology. The afternoon concluded with thanks to all the organizers and good wishes for the next session, 2011 in Strasbourg, France.

Prof. Tan Runhua, Prof. Denis Cavallucci, and Prof. Zhao Xinjun

Prof. Tan Runhua, Prof. Roland De Guio, Prof. Derek Tate, Prof. K. Venkata Rao

Report on the Computer-Aided Innovation conference in Harbin, China. Day 1, afternoon session.

Two parallel sessions for the afternoon gave a wide variety of speakers an opportunity to tell the conference about a wide variety of research in both TRIZ methods and CAI applications, in 10 minutes each. A few examples:

The group from Hebei University Mechanical Engineering presented a method for fusing plastic pipe based on TRIZ. They pointed out that the problem is not a simple contradiction: they used the 40 principles, the separation principles, and 5 of the standard solutions to develop a real breakthrough solution

Denis Cavallucci presented a system for monitoring the impact of solution concepts within a given problem. He illustrated this with a case study done by INSA with Arcelor Mittal, dealing with steel roll processing. He showed how graph theory can be used to analyze the function model and the cause-effect diagram to identify the problem that has the highest priority for solution, and will remove the greatest part of the over-all problem. 90 contradictions came from 30 problems, and were resolved using 4 techniques. The system is self-improving, since the solutions are categorized and matched to the graphs, and the confidence of the researchers increases with the improvement of the system. This improves the willingness of the group to use innovative methods.

Prof. Derek Tate from Texas Tech University presented work by Christopher Adams and himself on Computer-Aided TRIZ Ideality and Level of Invention Estimation using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. This is part of a project to give feedback to innovators for improving the probability of success of an invention. I predict a lot of interest in this work, and a lot of future development.

TRIZ-based hybridization of topologically optimized density distributions was presented by Gaetano Cascini, on behalf of co-authors A. Cardillo, F. Saverio Frillici, and F. Rotini. The overall goal is to define a paradigm for CAD systems that overcomes the rigidity of conceptual design that locks out inventive concepts early in the design process. They obtained in one step the same result that took 600 generations using a genetic algorithm, for examples of wheel design and plate design, and a number of other simple structures. He proposes applying the density distribution method in combination with genetic algorithms to explore a more complete solution space.

Lihui Ma presented the paper from a group at Hebei and Tianjin: UXDs-driven transferring method from TRIZ solution to Domain Solution. This is a problem for many people learning TRIZ. (UXD's are unexpected discoveries.) He presented an example that used their advanced algorithm to create a domain solution for the problem of dispensing traditional Chinese medical products, which are very viscous, through a small dropper, which gets blocked by the product. The early results are very encouraging.

Humberto Aguillo presented his paper with Noel Leon on Predicting Innovation Acceptance by Simulation in Virtual Environments. Virtual Selection is an emerging concept that eliminates poorly-performing variants early in the development process. Toyota's success with the Scion, tested and refined in the virtual marketplace, was shown as an example, and explained with the Kano model. A current example is the Future Green Chatham homes now being tested in the Etopia community on Second Life. Humberto presented a plan for future research that will combine the results from the customer experiences with the strategies for genetic variant development.

One sign of a good conference is that the coffee breaks become debates…we reconvened for the second session. Reminder: since I could only be in one room at a time, these are just examples of the papers. Please see the full program for the many excellent papers that I missed.

Fuying Zhang reviewed the concept of Ideality and the IFR, and the challenge of designing to achieve ideality. Her research proposes a 4 stage design process familiar to TRIZ practioners that starts with formulating the IFR, analyzing the problem, resolving the problem, and then improving the solution to increase ideality. Her example of a reciprocating seal was very clear, and showed how the focus on ideality prevents the designer from using complexity to solve the problem.

Weidong Yang presented the application of TRIZ in patternless casting manufacturing. Patternless casting refers to systems in which a device is deposited or grown, rather than cast. There is a pattern, but not a mold – most rapid prototyping systems and 3D printing systems qualify as patternless, in Yang's terminology. The practical problem addressed was getting the resin content right for the product.

The final presentation of session 3 was Yan Yang's study on the application of extended matrices based on TRIZ in constructing a collaborative model of an enterprise network. Her group is at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. They applied the concept of contradiction to the concepts of trust, control, relationship and interaction which their research identified as the essential parameters of enterprise network function.

The afternoon concluded with the brief business meeting of IFIP working group 5.4. The new chairman will be Gaetano Cascini, who is also current president of the European TRIZ Association, and a well-know author for the TRIZ Journal. Congratulations, Gaetano! And many thanks to Noel Leon for his chairmanship. After dinner, Prof. Tan hosted a tour of Harbin for some of the speakers who had arrived too late for the pre-conference tour.

Hello to TRIZ Journal and Real Innovation readers from the great city of Harbin, China. I will report live from the 3rd IFIP Working Conference on Computer Aided Innovation (CAI): Growth and Development of CAI. Many aspects of CAI were discussed at previous meetings, but the theme of this year's meeting is TRIZ. The chairmen, Runhua Tan and Noel Leon are well-known to our readers - they have brought a great variety of international speakers from Italy, India, US, China, UK, France, Germany, Mexico, and other parts of the world to Harbin, an industrial center about 800 km NE of Beijing.

This will be a personal report on my experiences, and because of parallel sessions I will not be able to report on all papers. See the full official program at www.computeraidedinnovation.net

We started with a ceremonial session, a photo of all the participants (hundreds of participants, up from about 40 in 2007 in Detroit!) and addresses by the Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology for all of China and the Vice-governor of Helongjiang Province. The ministers made important comments on the growth of innovation culture and the need to develop concepts of intellectual property that encourage development without delaying development in a rapidly changing world. (And the translators were great, or I wouldn't be able to tell you this!) The propagation of TRIZ in China, particularly in the last 2 years, has been dramatic, using the cascade model (experts train trainers, who have trained people from all walks of life in both industry and academia.) In this province alone, more that 2000 people have been trained, and more than 70 international patents have come from the TRIZ applications.

Noel Leon, chairman of the IFIP Working Group 5.4, gave some historical perspective and the present state of the development of the CAI research.

I chaired the first session, introducing keynote speakers (and TRIZ Journal authors) Darrell Mann (UK) and Denis Cavallucci (France.) Denis reported on his extensive survey (437 respondents from 14 countries) of how TRIZ is perceived and used. He suggested the TRIZ Consortium model started at INSA in 2006 with Accelor/Mittel (steel), EADS (aerospace), and Alstrom (high speed trains) for use in other areas.

Darrell addressed 3 kinds of contradictions that challenge the development of CAI: Commercial, Technical, and Emotional issues. The commercial contradictions are shown by the statistics - - for every $100M in research, $3M of revenue is generated (academic research statistics - - and this was the best group!) and in industry more than 90% of new products fail in the market place. Overall, Darrell concluded that the technical solution is less than 20% of the reason for success. How does CAI help with the business issues, consumer understanding, coordination of resources, and other issues that are the other 80% of what is needed for success? How can CAI incorporated the TRIZ finding that self-organizing systems are better than rule-based systems for many situation. His final challenge was to ask "who wants CAI?" Darrell says that it is coming, and it won't matter who wants it and who fights it, it is coming, as we gain enough understanding to use the systems.

During the coffee break Prof. Tan, Denis Cavallucci, and I had a press conference with journalists from Hong Kong, Chinese national news agencies, and local Harbin papers. They asked many questions both about TRIZ and about CAI and about the effects on the local economy of the development of TRIZ - - so many questions that I was late for the next session and only heard a small part of Daniel Scheu's paper on systematic innovation. His example of the Fresnel lens showed the dramatic range of uses that the TRIZ/Systematic Innovation approach can create for one basic technology.

The last speaker of the morning was Gustav Olling. He drew on his background in international automotive companies to talk about the end-to-end product development process, and all the areas where innovation is needed. His theme was the need to capture experience and intelligence to develop systems that can cope with the complexity of product development in an unstructured environment. His comments on the education that is needed for this kind of capability were of great interest to the audience.

End of the morning session - I'll report more this afternoon.

This report was provided by The TRIZ Journal's popular author Darrell Mann, who organized the UK TRIZ Forum # 1, hosted in Clevendon. Here's Darrell's report:

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The UK is generating a lot of TRIZ content but it rarely gets presented in the UK. That was the starting premise for the May 14 session where we started to put the situation right. Forum#1 then was the first UK TRIZ practitioner and researcher TRIZ event. In true TRIZ-community fashion, three weeks before the event a grand total of three people had registered. Hence we decided to run a low-key mini-meeting at SI HQ in Clevedon. No sooner had this announcement been made, the whole world and his dog decided they wanted to come along. A pity since the office couldn't cope with more than 20 people. Nevertheless, despite the frustrations of turning people away, the day was deemed to be a success by the lucky 20 who secured their place in time. In all, twelve papers were presented:

1. John Cooke: How To Have Your TRIZ Cake And Eat It Too (More Impact From TRIZ For Less Effort)
2. Paul Filmore: The Effect Of Myers-Briggs Type On Engineering Innovation
3. Shuo-Kai Tsai: The BRIGHT Hypothesis, A Method For Introducing TRIZ
4. Conall O'Cathain: Pushing The Boundary Of Architectural Education With TRIZ
5. Darrell Mann: Unheard Voice Of The Customer: Understanding Populations Better Than Populations Understand Themselves
6. Olga Bogatyreva: A Tool For Solving Problems That Are Unknown Yet - How TRIZ Helps Astronauts In Their Missions To Mars And Moon
7. Adrian Cole: Unravelling And Resolving Hybrid Electric Vehicle Design Conflicts
8. John Cooke: Two Ways To Solve The Same Problem – A Comparison Of TRIZ Tools In Action
9. Darrell Mann: Updating TRIZ - 2006-2008 Patent Research Findings
10. Elies Dekoninck and Thomas Howard: Comparing the effectiveness of TRIZ stimuli with three other creative stimuli tools in company brainstorming sessions
11. Mir Abubakr Shahdad: From Computer-Aided Invention to Computer-Aided Innovation
12. Julian Vincent: TRIZ Is The Key To Biomimetics

The papers were followed by a panel discussion, (Self-)Organising the Future of UK TRIZ.

One of the best aspects of having a small audience was that the level of participation was high. Every paper received a slew of downstream questions and, for the most part, all egos were checked at the door on the way in to the room, answers were genuinely listened to and minds were open to receiving alternative views of the TRIZ world.

The short discussion session at the end of the day concluded that there was interest in running a follow-up event later on in the year. (More details of that event as soon as dates have been identified.) In the meantime, anyone who wasn't able to make it to this event, we are hoping to make a CD containing the presentations and a clutch of supplementary materials submitted by attendees who couldn't be accommodated into the formal programme. Interested parties should send an email to s.k.tsai@systematic-innovation.com.

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Darrell Mann is an engineer by background, having spent 15 years working at Rolls-Royce in various long-term R&D related positions, and ultimately becoming responsible for the company's long-term future engine strategy. He left the company in 1996 to help set up a high technology company before entering a program of systematic innovation and creativity research at the University of Bath. He first started using TRIZ in 1992, and by the time he left Rolls-Royce had generated over a dozen patents and patent applications. In 1998 he started teaching TRIZ and related methods to both technical and business audiences, and to date has given courses to more than 3,000 delegates across a broad spectrum of industries and disciplines. He continues to actively use, teach and research systematic innovation techniques and is author of the best selling book series Hands-On Systematic Innovation. Contact Darrell Mann at darrell.mann (at) systematic-innovation.com or visit http://www.systematic-innovation.com.

Great news! Toru Nakagawa has announced that the Award-winning presentations of the Japan TRIZ Symposium 2008 are now publicly posted in their Official Pages, in the form of PDF slides both in English and in Japanese. http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/

Because these are slide presentations, not articles, we don't publish them in The TRIZ Journal, but there is a lot of excellent TRIZ work that is shared at the conference, and this is a way that our readers can get some benefit. (OK, you know that in every "Commentary" I will remind readers to GO to conferences for the full benefit, but I also recognize that we can't all travel all the time!)

In the last Japan TRIZ Symposium, Japanese participants were requested to vote for 'Best Presentation for Me' among the presentations given by Japanese authors. The top three of oral presentations and poster presentations, respectively, were chosen. Professor Nakagawa has done the TRIZ community a great service by posting his summary and introduction to all the papers in English in his 'Personal Report' on the conference (posted Oct. 26, 2008). I'm quoting some extracts from the summary of the award-winning papers here, so that the Commentary readers will know the kind of work that was presented at the 2008 conference, and so that readers can make plans now to go to Japan for the Fifth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, to be held on September 10-12, 2009 in Saitama, near Tokyo.

1. Oral 1st Place: "Why Water Striders can stand and slide on the Water?: A Summer Homework by Son and Father with TRIZ" by Taichiro Miyanishi (2nd Grader, Kenroku Junior High School/Son), Katsuya Miyanishi (Father) – The story presented at the Symposium started when a 12 year boy, Taichiro, said to his father: "As summer homework, I want to learn why water striders can stand and slide on the water surface." They tried to think of various ideas for standing on the water surface, with reference to various phenomena and effects. Then they checked their ideas at the library, and further built toy models of water striders with the materials available at home. Thus their work is neither a book/Internet survey of knowledge, nor observation of the facts, but rather idea generation and verification on the basis of TRIZ thinking.
2. Oral 2nd Place: "Case Study of Introducing and Applying TRIZ to Real
   Projects for Obtaining Results (= Benefits): Innovating the Product Development Process by use of QFD, TRIZ, and TM together" BY Tomohiko Katagiri, Toshiaki Tsuchizawa and Takeshi Yamanouchi (Koganei Co., Ltd.) – Koganei Co. is a manufacturer of aero pneumatic equipments, having about 800 employees. Under the severe competitive situations, the authors were convinced two years ago of the needs of innovating their product development process. Thus they started to introduce and apply the set of QFD, TRIZ and TM (Taguchi Method) to their three pilot projects.
3. Oral 3rd Place: "Usage of TRIZ and USIT in Developing a Novel Duplex
   Printing Machine" by Hiroshi Kanno (Tohoku RICOH Co., Ltd.) – The author describes the whole story of TRIZ-based thinking during the development of a world-first Automatic Dual Digital Duplicator, which is an inexpensive high-performance printing machine based on mimeography. Since mimeography uses pseudo-drying without any special image fixation process, it was difficult to print on the back side of the wet-ink printed paper without getting dirty. With the basic TRIZ concepts of mini-problems, resources of vacant space, etc., the author developed a novel idea of printing two sides on a single drum. The wet-ink problem was solved with SLP, where a few tall SLP on the roller get dirty for protecting many small SLP and their tiny spots on the printed paper can not be recognized by people. The author learned USIT as well and used USIT much in solving subsequent problems. Their new machine can print 240 A4 pages/min on both sides, doubling the former 120 pages/min on single side, with essentially the same machine size. This project has made the customers' 20-year dream of easy dual printing a reality.
4. Poster 1st Place: "Contemporary Issues of TRIZ to be a Scientific Method" by Shinsuke Kurosawa (The SANNO Institute of Management)
5. Poster 2nd Place: "Introduction to ISW (Idea Search Working) Activities: Learning, Applying and Penetrating TRIZ" by Fumiko Kikuchi and Akio Fukushima (Pioneer Corp.)
6. Poster 3rd Place: "Practical Application of TRIZ to Novel Electrical Devices Development" by Shuji Wakaiki, Koichirou Adachi, and Hiroshi Kotaki (SHARP Corporation)
7. Poster 3rd Place: "From Idea Creation to Patent Acquisition by TRIZ: For Improving the Living Situations Just after the Evacuation from Natural Disaster" Toshimitsu Kataoka (Patbrain Co.,LTD), Yuji Mihara (Creative Technology Institute Co., LTD)

My thanks to Toru Nakagawa for all his work promoting the conference and providing the English-speaking world with access to the creative and constructive uses of TRIZ in Japan. This is a very time-consuming and intellectually demanding task, and he has done a beautiful job. I encourage our Real Innovation and TRIZ Journal readers to take advantage of all his work, and the work of the Symposium authors.
http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/

The Lean Product and Process Development Exchange is happening in Hilton Head, South Carolina, USA this week. I'm not a dis-interested participant, of course: my co-author Katherine Radeka is the conference chair (see http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/2009/04/04/ for our article linking TRIZ to LAMDA, one of the basic tools of LPPD) and I did a TRIZ tutorial in the pre-conference session. If the first three sessions are any indication, this will be a unique "Exchange."

1. Benjamin Wolff, professor of music at Hofstra University and cellist with a professional string quartet, used the development of a Carnegie Hall concert of a Charles Ives piece as an analogy for lean development—he called the concert date the "firm fixed product launch date," which set the tone for the presentation. A few of the analogies were a bit labored (tuning the instruments requires both mechanical and human work, and a disciplined process in which everyone follows the rules, and the competency of the individuals is "raw materials" that is processed into the product…) but the presentation was a big success—it challenged the participants' preconceptions and opened the conference as a challenge to traditional ways of thinking. Thanks, Ben Wolff!
2. Cathal Flanagan is Director of Equipment Engineering for Kulicke & Soffa, a semiconductor manufacturing equipment company. His talk was not the usual success journey—he had a 3 year story of lessons learned in both application of lean principles to hardware and software (usually called "agile") development processes. About half the objectives in his scorecard showed no progress. So why was this a leading case study for the conference? The honesty! Showing that new concepts are hard! Showing that failure is more predictable than success in organizational change! AND showing that partial success is possible (remember the other half of the objectives) and worth doing. (And a lot of detail on "agile is not the same as lean, but both are useful." Thanks, Cathal Flanagan!
3. Bill Butler is a Six Sigma Master Black Belt and principle engineer who told a story about the TRW and Honda project to develop the roll-over airbag inflator assembly. Once again, thanks to both Bill and the program committee for an outstandingly honest presentation—he emphasized all the ways that the customer (Honda) was UN-happy and what TRW did to create both a useful product AND a happy customer in a seemingly impossible world of constraints of time and resources. The graphic tools, especially the limit curves, were key communication enablers to get the two companies trusting each other's designs. The lessons learned section was heartbreaking—the design failed because a limit curve design rule was violated. The knowledge was developed, but not transferred across the 15 feet and one cubicle wall between people, and the phase gate reviews used the aerospace-derived "cartoon" and checklist reviews that were too late in the process. Thanks very much to Bill and to TRW for telling this painful story so that other people can learn from it.

Be on the lookout for fresh concepts: sometimes you have to start over. ----- UC Riverside: The Arts and Letters Lecture Series: An Evening with Elizabeth Gilbert; March 12, 2009 Palm Springs, California. -----

Elizabeth Gilbert is noted for her number one best selling memoir Eat, Pray Love published by Viking in 2006. I decided to share with you two thoughts that occurred to me regarding innovation as I listened to her talk about her journey writing this book.

1. Be on the lookout for fresh concepts. Most readers of this book are women. Elizabeth shared a story about a man who would read her book on the subway but would hide the cover by wrapping it in a magazine. He didn't want to be "outed." What a great value screen for some innovations - the concept of being "outed." You can add this concept to your value screen list if you like and use it when it makes sense.
2. Sometimes you have to stop and start over. While writing her next book on marriage Elizabeth kept feeling that her manuscript wasn't good, it just didn't feel right. This feeling wouldn't go away. Two weeks before the deadline to the publisher she finally gave into her gut instinct and told the publisher she wouldn't be submitting her manuscript and returned the advance; a gutsy move. This cleared the air for her. She was sparked with new energy, started fresh and wrote a new manuscript that felt right.

Stopping and starting over can be very difficult to do. The trick is recognizing when you need to stop and start over. Paying attention and listening to your feelings - gut instinct (red hat) can help.

I have since discovered that Elizabeth Gilbert made a presentation at the TED 2009 February conference titled "A Different Way to Think About Creative Genius." Click here to watch it. About 20 minutes.

Until next time ...

The day opened with a short business meeting of the Altshuller Institute. Isak Bukhman was elected Vice President and Don Coates was elected Secretary. Mansour Ashtiani continues as President and Richard Langevin continued as Treasurer and executive director.

Noel Leon announced the Computer Aided Innovation meeting in Harbin, China, in August and the 4th IberoAmerican Innovation Congress in Chile in November, and urged the Altshuller Institute members to participate and to help propagate the invitation.

Victor Fey presented the work that he and the certification committee have been doing for several years to create a system of certification. Readers of this column know that I have tremendous admiration for all their hard work, but considerable disagreement about certification systems—not about the details, but about the usefulness and appropriateness of having one at all (this IS a personal report!) Details will be posted on the Altshuller Institute website www.aitriz.org with a target of May 2009. The system will start within a year after all the documents are posted.

The second day keynote by Leonid Chechurin from the Institute of Innovatics at St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University brought us much new information on the state of TRIZ in modern Russia. The Institute for Innovatics was organized in 1998. They have 300 students and 30 faculty in 5 departments. They work with innovation theory, quality systems, management of innovation projects, investment engineering, and technology of complex innovations. There are now 50 universities with Innovatics departments, and the 82 hour TRIZ program pioneered at St. Petersburg is part of the curriculum for all of them. Leonid gave us a very impressive tour of the state of the study of innovation world-wide, as well as at St. Petersburg. His insights on the difficulties of putting TRIZ into universities were appreciated by the audience—he quoted from Gaetano Cascini's research on the publications of TRIZ-related work in academic journals (and I anticipate an excellent collaboration from this!) He also announced plans for an international Student TRIZ Olympics starting in 2010 and a series of university-university and university-industry events.

Alla Zusman's presentation "Producing TRIZ Solutions: Odds of Success" opened track 2. Alla used both historical examples (machining a very long blade) and modern examples (the curved shower curtain bar for the hotel bathroom) to demonstrate her current research (with Boris Zlotin) on the objective probabilities of TRIZ success for problems at different stages of the S-curve of system development. Revealing secondary problems, then using TRIZ to overcome the secondary problems is an important step in the process. Unveiling "hidden" resources at the micro-level in a problem is another important step. Alla suggested that ARIZ, particularly the Smart Little People tool, can be very useful for revealing the resources, and particularly to keep the emphasis on avoiding new complexity and avoiding degradation of the original function. Her work shows that the probability of success increases in this order:

1. Resources previously hidden by psychological inertia
2. Unutilized resources on micro-level found
3. New Enabling technology utilized
4. Hybridization of the given system with another one designed for a similar purpose
5. An alternative way to obtain desired results within the same paradigm has been found.

But if none of these are available, the only way to move forward is to look for the next generation of the system. Alla concluded with very strong findings that real problem solving requires solving the secondary problems as well as the initial problem, and that training cases that ignore practical implementation issues will have negative impact—people will be convinced that TRIZ is not practical.

I enjoyed giving my presentation "Learning TRIZ is not Teaching TRIZ" to a very participative audience. The paper is in the Dec. 2008 TRIZ Journal, since it is part of a series in which I plan to gather teaching methods for a variety of TRIZ elements, to see if we (TRIZ teachers) can help each other make it easier for people to learn TRIZ. If you start using the model in the article, e-mail your results, please!

John Terninko's paper "Implementation Improved by Considering Values and Beliefs: How Can We Improve our Solution Concepts?" primarily used the value system model developed by Clare Graves. John explained the system to the audience, then showed them what their own value profiles are (many participants contributed their own data yesterday) and some research by others on national profiles. He then extended the model to show how mismatches of value systems can be a significant barrier for the acceptance of both the TRIZ methodology and the implementation of TRIZ solutions in problem solving applications.

Phil Samuel's "The Paradox of Enabling and Limiting Structures of TRIZ" used a different, cognition-based model for human behavior. The orthogonality of level of learning and style of learning was particularly fascinating to the audience. The brevity of this report is inversely proportional to the excitement about this concept!

John Cooke concluded the conference with "How to have your cake and eat it too!" He analyzed the whole library of TRIZ methods in terms of effort to use and tool value (defined as benefit / investment.) and showed us some clear segmentation of the tools into clusters—conclusions about which tools either need to be higher value, or lower investment, or less effort to use (or all!) I'll be very interested in learning more about his analysis and his conclusions, but (tyranny of time at conferences) had to be elsewhere.

Pictures of speakers and of some of the group discussions will be posted on the Altshuller Institute website next week, www.aitriz.org

I encourage readers to start planning now for future travels—there are definite advantages, even in these days of 7 TRIZ-related LinkedIn groups and 2 Google Groups and E-mail listservers and Facebook and and and…to people meeting people face-to-face and learning something together. You have lots of choices—China in August, Japan in September, Europe and IberoAmerica in November, Taiwan Cross-Straits in January…start planning now!

TRIZCON 2009, the eleventh meeting of the Altshuller Institute, is going on this week in Canoga Park, California, where the primary sponsor for the event, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is located. About 75 people are involved in a variety of learning and discussion events.

Monday featured pre-conference tutorials by Zinovy Royzen, Sergei Ikovenko, and Isak Bukhman, and demonstrations by Invention Machine and Ideation International software companies. Tuesday started with an opening address by Altshuller Institute president Mansour Ashtiani, who gave an overview of the challenges of moving from business focus on productivity to a focus on innovation, and the many ways that TRIZ can accelerate the innovation process. Mansour led the group in a moment of silence to remember the many contributions of Wes Perusek, who died in February, and who had devoted many years to introducing TRIZ to children through schools and supplementary programs. Mansour then thanked the members of the board and the committees, and gave the attendees a brief view of the work of the Altshuller Institute, and concluded with the inspiring message that TRIZ will bring hope to people who need innovation to create the future.

The first keynote speaker was Herb Roberts from General Electric (and TRIZ Journal author and commentator!) "TRIZ at GE: Edison, Altshuller, and Imagination at Work" started with Herb's note that GE is not noted for being willing to share their methods, but the benefits from TRIZ have come from other people sharing with them, so they are glad to reciprocate. Herb highlighted how the TRIZ propagation method in the research centers and in the energy business have differences, based on the needs of the employees and the kind of work they do, and that a wide variety of methods (personal, class, and project learning, for example) have all been successful. He sees the future challenge as innovating in business models as well as in technology and technical processes, and embedding innovation in the company-wide metric systems. The benefits of a small audience were immediately visible in a vigorous discussion of many of the points of Herb's talk.

Kiho Sohn from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne introduced his colleague Jeff Jensen, Director of Business Development, to present the second keynote lecture, "Accelerating Innovation," which is a foundation of the 2018 project to add $4Billion(US) to the company—15% compounded growth, which is "unheard of" for an aerospace company. Jeff's major theme is "Innovation is converting ideas into revenue." He had many lessons for the TRIZCON group from P&W's experiences, complementary to Herb's talk. He emphasized that the creative people need to understand the customer needs and the business needs (size of market, speed of deployment, future potential) at considerable depth, in addition to understanding the technical challenges. Current research emphasizes developing collaboration processes and communication systems so that everyone is operating with appropriate information. The benchmarking research was of considerable interest to the audience—companies as diverse as Procter & Gamble and the Mayo Clinic had common trends, such as executive leadership, and differences in implementation tactics (central vs. dispersed research, protected research environments, etc.) Information systems, such as wikis, are emerging in usefulness for collaboration and communication, to make the innovation process faster and more focused.

Mansour Ashtiani chaired a large panel discussion—Sergei Ikovenko, Alla Zusman, Zinovy Royzen, Isak Bukhman, Noel Leon, Jim Todhunter, Leonid Chechurin (tomorrow's keynote speaker, from the St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University) and I were asked to comment on the present global and local knowledge of TRIZ and adoption of TRIZ, driving forces, roadblocks, the role of TRIZ-related software, and suggestions for the Altshuller Institute's role in advancing TRIZ.
For the track sessions, I'll report on the papers that I heard personally. Of course, as in the past, we thank the Altshuller Institute and the authors for agreeing to let us publish a sample of the best papers in the TRIZ Journal!

Track 1 got an excellent start with "The Function Modeling method for New Product Development" by Young-Ju Kang (a TRIZ Journal author) from Hyundai, which has made great strides in TRIZ adoption and in application of TRIZ in areas as diverse as cost reduction, patent circumvention, system improvement, technology forecasting/new product development, and the personal level of improving engineers' creativity. Kang showed that the present modeling methods are based on the present system functions, and that a more comprehensive system is needed to encompass the needs of those who are creating the future of the system. The function modeling system popularized in axiomatic design has proven very useful for TRIZ modeling as well. Kang's examples from injection molding, photography, and data storage were excellent illustrations of how his modification of the function model makes it easy to develop the definition of the TRIZ problem.

Two excellent papers kicked off the afternoon session: Noel Leon's work using TRIZ to develop a Stirling engine powered car, and John Cooke and Darrell Mann's paper showing two ways to solve the same problem (un-stacking aluminum sheets) using ARIZ and systematic innovation. I hope that we'll have both papers for the TJ soon, so that readers won't suffer my problem of choosing! Noel gave an extremely useful review of solar technology and means of storing solar heat to operate the Stirling and Stirling-Brayton engine. The morphological matrix was used to explore families of options for the design approach, using direct solar energy to avoid all the problems of fuel storage and fuel combustion.

Sergei Ikovenko devoted his paper to the "Trend of Increasing Coordination." He included the history of the use of the trends in the development of TRIZ and the recent emergence of the trends from previous use as guiding concepts to the current use as direct problem solving heuristics. The trend of increasing coordination is a branch of the trend tree, a sub-trend to the trend of increasing value, and the trend of s-curve evolution, and is superior to the trends of increasing controllability and the trend of increasing dynamicity (this is called the St. Petersburg model.) Sergei guided the audience through the arguments that a "survivable" system is the most economical system, which is the one that uses the fewest resources, which can do that under multiple circumstances if it is dynamic, which requires control. Sergei presented the 4 sub-trends (coordination of shape, rhythm, materials, and actions) with a variety of examples and levels of detail for each. One surprise to some in the audience was Sergei's dual-direction approach—if the useful approach is (for example) point/line/surface/volume, then to remove a harmful effect try going from volume to surface, surface to line, etc., which he illustrated with the classical pizza box and fishing equipment examples.

Jean-Marc LeLann from the University of Toulouse presented a variant on the use of the contradiction matrix, specifically tailored to problems with multiple contradictions. A topical case study—simultaneously eliminating tars and ashes as byproducts of biomass fuel generation—illustrated the complexity of typical real problems. Both the classical (Altshuller) matrix and Mann's Matrix 2003 were used to explore the contradictions. The principles were applied as in the single matrix, and in a segmented way, applying them at a different level of abstraction from the original presentation. Both of these tactics dramatically increased the umber of "hits"—suggestions from the matrix that replicated the solution of historical innovative problems, or new solutions that were outside the previous research of the team. We had some discussion of how the Toulouse group will validate this method.

Jim Belfiore's presentation "Using TRIZ to Drive Basic Research" was a strong conclusion to the day. He introduced the cultural problems of the ways that research is done in different parts of the world, and the frequently contradictory problem of the expectations that are levied on the TRIZ students (Adult ADD? Do in-depth analysis without spending any time, on situations where you have only superficial knowledge?) I am a great admirer of Jim's work, so I was somewhat distressed by his emphasis on the bad experiences that are a result of bad teaching, bad deployment, bad managements and mismatches between roles and responsibilities—but then he used this introduction to discuss the transition to ubiquitous information, and the accompanying sloppiness of much research. Jim ended on a positive note with examples of improved research techniques based on TRIZ-themed contradiction thinking and systems thinking.

Day 1 concluded with a very sociable dinner.

The last week of January I posted a commentary telling our readers that I had been asked to substitute for a speaker on the subject of "how to persuade your boss that innovation is a good thing." I decided to have the audience members answer the question for themselves, since this requires close knowledge of their own culture. Many thanks to the readers who contributed questions and their experiences that helped me structure the event.

My first question to the group was "When have you had a great success persuading your organization to change ANYTHING? What did you do?" The answers varied widely, from installing email (a while ago!) to changing inventory management methods to replacing conventional advertising with product placement to outsourcing software development, and the methods ranged from the expected (calculated return on investment, benchmarking) to the somewhat surprising (asked customers! took board members to visit customers! used social/peer pressure).

I then repeated the question in the negative: "When have you had a colossal failure to persuade your organization to change something? What was it and what did you do?" Not surprising, on reflection, was that the 2 lists were almost the same, but the efforts were directed at different people. The key element that all our comment-contributing readers emphasized was the need for a good match between the "target" and the technique.

There was very positive response to the two worksheets that I gave the group to organize their thinking. The first was a table with simple columns: People (in your group, in other groups, in the hierarchy), the history with that person (successes and failures, on what issues, using what methods). The participants then picked 2 people and filled out the second worksheet, which was a simple set of questions:

1. What is important to this person?
2. What do you need to have this person DO?
3. Will doing the action(s) in step 2 help this person achieve the goals in step 1?
4 A. If YES, how will you explain it to him/her?
4 B. If NO, what should you change? (The target person – find one with different goals? The action that you are asking for?)
5. If YES, put your action plan here.

There were 2 predominant reactions around the room as the participants filled out the worksheet for their own particular situations.

1. Even though it took about 6 minutes to finish one worksheet, they learned something from the process, and they were astonished (retrospectively) that in the past they had just started talking to people without stopping to think through how to structure the "campaign."
2. The most frequent source of failure was question 3; that is, the requested action would benefit the requestor, but NOT the person being asked to do the action. On reflection, this was considered a primary cause of failure.
3. A significant minority said that they had never considered option 4B; that is, they always kept looking for new arguments for their target, and never looked for new targets/supporters in the organization.

This was a great example of the TRIZ concept of the use of resources that are already in the problem to solve the problem. We used the knowledge in our community (thanks to everybody who made comments!) and the knowledge in the workshop, and their knowledge of their own organizations, to learn new ways to solve the problem of persuasion. Thanks to all of you for the experiment.

Herbert Roberts is reporting from the inaugural TRIZ Practitioners Exchange.---------

The second day of the TRIZ Practitioners Exchange (TPE) continued with open discussions surrounding two additional areas of interest selected from the pre-meeting topics of interest listings were selected for discussions: 1) non-technical applications of TRIZ and 2) integrating TRIZ within a company's existing culture and initiatives. The TPE concluded with a review of the lessons learned over the two sessions.

The non-technical application of TRIZ was a leading point of interest for all of the practitioners. The TPE followed the World Cafe approach provided the necessary infrastructure to keep the discussions on time and kept the user exchanges inclusive in nature. The non-technical discussions were productive enough to expand into two of the allotted discussion time segments. Leading points in this discussion indicated that business managers relate better to business-based solutions than technical achievements.

Within the TRIZ community, non-technical approached to TRIZ are often viewed with skepticism by some TRIZ masters. The view is that non-technical solutions lack the statistical validation than more traditional technical solutions. Some researchers and authors have approached investigating non-technical solutions, and in some cases, some have defined non-technical parameters and expanded solutions to include other forms of modeling to capture non-technical based contradictions and system weaknesses. Several practitioners shared first-hand experiences using TRIZ to address non-technical solutions during the double session, which provided insight into what defines a successful non-technical approach, the process outcomes and the management teams perspective of the processes results.

The discussions about integrating TRIZ in to existing business cultures and initiatives were also supported with discussions of the first-hand experiences of the participating practitioners. Leading the take-aways was the recognition that developing hybrid solutions was common and useful to help build a bridge between the "us and them" separation that TRIZ can develop as a "competing" tools to other more tradition forms of idea capturing and creativity generation tools. A wider discussion focused on the shared perspective of management's "real" level of interest surrounding TRIZ.

The last session of the day focused on recapping the leading points of each of the topics discussed during the exchange. The attendees agreed that the event was useful and supported a level of knowledge exchange that was useful beyond more traditional one-on-one discussions. The information presented and discussed was viewed as compatible to the wider exposure to TRIZ gained at wider open-invitational conferences which can provide a unique perspective on TRIZ's application in the commercial and educational markets. The TPE session ended with plans for at least one more future event and the goal of increasing the participation level to include more active practitioners from other realms of businesses and TRIZ backgrounds.

Herbert Roberts is reporting from the inaugural TRIZ Practitioners Exchange.---------

The inaugural TRIZ Practitioners Exchange (TPE) kicked off at noon on Thursday, January 29th, in Tempe, Arizona and continues on through Friday January 30th. Larry Ball and David Troness of Honeywell International, Inc hosted the event, which focused on the unique needs of industry practitioners. Billed as "not another conference," the event's agenda is based on the suggested topics of the attendees, as collected through the TRIZ Practitioners Exchange Google group site.

The twelve attendees represent five organizations that have developed unique solutions using TRIZ as a learned skill based on causal analysis and problem solving. Identifying themselves as TRIZ practitioners, the exchange kicked off with a vision statement directed at getting "a few questions answered" through an exchange of practitioner based workplace experiences and lessons learned. Following the attendee introductions, the exchange focused on a selected subset of the eight suggested topics on Thursday, with an additional subset of the topics schedule to be covered during the Friday session.

The Thursday session focused on exchanging the practitioners' insights on:

• The lessons learned in deploying TRIZ in organizations,
• The experiences related to teaching and training TRIZ skills and
• Defining useful TRIZ-related metrics for benchmarking and comparative analysis.

Key finding during the exchange identified that deploying TRIZ in organizations has two main approaches in top-down deployment (push) and grassroots-based viral awareness (pull). The practitioners identified that the pull strategy has worked best in educating those employees that will make the best use of their TRIZ education over the long run. It was noted that while having high-level leadership support was useful, the support was not a solid basis for sustainability in the long run.

The practice of teaching TRIZ- and systematic innovation-based skills was best exchanged through a mentorship-based education tied to real work related projects and best learned by students willing to fail and take risks to apply TRIZ skills, even if the initial efforts were poorly executed or misdirected. The practitioners observed that obtaining level 1- and 2-based training skills has not correlated well with student confidence in their TRIZ-related skills or their long-term application of the skills past the initial training exercises.

TRIZ-related metrics were observed to be hard to tie solely to a product or process improvement. TRIZ is seen best as an enabler, ROI analysis is not a good standard to measure the impact of TRIZ skills in an organization. TRIZ-related metrics are best when they fit into the existing structure of an organization's reporting system. Better metrics in the acceptance of TRIZ within an organization are based in leveraging the support of key problem solvers within the organization, and their choice to apply TRIZ skills to solve problems.

A follow up report will cover the practitioner exchange discussions held during the Friday sessions.

----------------------------------------------------

Herbert Roberts is a principle engineer at GE Energy. He is a Six Sigma Black Belt and helped lead GE Energy efforts on expanding the use of TRIZ in support of internal growth within GE's businesses. He has trained and led a range of TRIZ-based research projects and workouts in the U.S., Germany, India and China. Prior to joining GE, Herbert worked at United Technology's gas turbine division for 11 years with a focus on developing advanced technology military products.

"How to persuade your boss that innovation is a good thing?"

I was recently invited to speak at a conference on this topic—way outside my usual comfort zone of "What is TRIZ" or "How to merge TRIZ into your Lean Six Sigma System" or "Innovation for Everybody" speeches. This conference is focused on innovation in general, not specifically TRIZ.

My initial reaction was pretty negative in several ways:

1. If you need to persuade your boss that innovation is a good thing, maybe you need a new boss!
2. Who would trust what a consultant says? Of course the innovation consultant thinks that innovation is a good thing!
3. Why would a consultant be expected to know how to persuade YOUR boss of anything? Never met him/her, doesn't know your culture, and not likely to listen, since of course the consultant is biased (see item 2)

I brought my TRIZ experience to the analysis of the situation, but you don't need TRIZ to see what I did. One of the TRIZ techniques is to use all the available resources to solve a problem, and one variant is to include all the negative/harmful resources. This is the "Make your enemy be your friend" method. So I decided to use the negatives as the basis for the event.

My first thought was that since knowledge of the particular "boss" and the corporate culture are essential; this should be a workshop, rather than a speech. That way, the person who is looking for help gets to contribute all the knowledge of the culture and the person, and the consultant acts as facilitator—giving structure to the event, but not trying to provide content. (Exercise for the reader: express this as a TRIZ Physical Contradiction, and demonstrate the use of the separation principles!)

My second thought was the basic TRIZ concept that "Somebody, someplace has solved this problem, but for a different reason, in different circumstances…" This leads to the idea that one major structure in the workshop should be listing all the change initiatives that the company has pursued, and how management was persuaded to start them. Then a success path could be to look for similar arguments, if they were successful, OR look for opposite arguments if they were not. I've done this quite frequently, with companies that "piggyback" TRIZ onto Six Sigma initiatives, for example.

Readers: this is your opportunity to help me help the audience at this conference. Please use the "comments" feature to tell me any stories you have (note whether I can use the name or not!) about how you persuaded somebody that innovation is a good thing. I'll do another column after the event, with the comments, how I used them, and what the participants contributed. THANKS!

Last week I was in Miami for iSixSigma Live! Summit & Awards. (iSixSigma is a sister publication to Real Innovation.) Innovation made its way into the agenda in a few places. (Readers of Real Innovation and The TRIZ Journal are familiar with TRIZ expert Ellen Domb who joined us for two days – talking about TRIZ in a breakout session and a workshop on the final day.)

Innovation was also a topic for the first day's general session – David Silverstein, President and CEO, Breakthrough Management Group International – spoke about "Six Sigma and Innovation: A Distinction Without a Difference."

A few key points from his presentation include:

• "Innovation is about information and data."
• "Innovation is about connecting the dots."
• "Innovation doesn't happen without collaboration."

He also discussed the principle of separation in time. (It's something most of us have probably used to solve problems without knowing "it" had a name!) Separation in time can be explained by the following: you're working on a problem, you get stuck, you go to a colleague's office, you explain your problem and you come up with the idea during the explanation.

The collaboration was with yourself – you could have been in anyone's office, whomever was there listening was irrelevant to the solution. The solution came about because you had to re-process and re-state the problem at another time.

If only every problem could be solved so easily...

The 2008 participants represented Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, US, France, and the Mexican states of Veracruz, Jalisco, Nueva Leon, Mexico, Michoacan, Puebla, Queretaro, Distrito Federal, and Tabasco and there have been past participants from Zacatecas and Baja California Norte in Mexico, and Argentina, Brazil, UK, Iraq, Korea, and Spain.

Photo: R. Marin, Z. Royzen and J. Hipple with mariachis at the reception on day 2.

I will continue to report on my observation of the conference, with short notes on the papers. For the complete program, see http://www.ametriz.com/schedule_third_conference_triz.php.

Noel Leon presented the paper that he wrote with Humberto Aguayo Téllez on the use of Genetic Algorithms with TRIZ. The complementary elements of the two methods have been combined into Evolutionary Conceptual Design. Particularly, the use of biological evolutionary mechanisms in genetic algorithms and of technical evolutionary concepts in TRIZ, were particularly fruitful. They found that the two disciplines had developed similar concepts of ideality and the need to abandon trade-offs to reach the ideal final result (using TRIZ vocabulary) The examples that impressed the audience were both concrete and fanciful: The development of a design for a forged steel machine part that meets multiple simultaneous constraints, and the development of a simulated multi-terrain walking robot. See www.youtube.com/watch?v=oquKOVfzGfk&NR=1 to watch the robot learn! (I like when it starts experimenting with jumping instead of walking –TRIZ ideas of using another dimension to solve the problem!) Later in the day Cesar Villareal showed a case study of design of vertical wind turbines using the combination of the genetic algorithms with TRIZ to solve very difficult technical problems that will be essential for energy production.

Edgardo Cordoba presented the work that he did with Angélica Arellano Palacios on the application of TRIZ in human relations. They have worked with individual, management /administrative and cultural problems, and found that TRIZ makes significant and useful contributions in all areas. In particular, organization leaders increased their creativity and demonstrated ideal solutions at a level that had been inconceivable before their use of TRIZ. Tools that were most useful to the leaders were multi-windows, smart little people, and dimension/time/cost. They looked at the leadership dimensions: transactional, transformational, situational, and visionary, and found that leaders need similar skills in all areas, but they need to know how to apply those skills in a flexible way.

Luz Marina Torres Piñeros presented the work she developed with Oscar Fernando Castellanos Domínguez and others at the National University of Colombia. They studied the relationship between "technological intelligence" and the decision making process in countries ranging from Colombia to India to Ecuador to the US. She has extensive data showing how the state of 3 different industries (tobacco, cacao, and finque) improved as the understanding of the system and the technology developed.

Hilda Del Sagrario Vallín Sánchez and her colleagues Sergio Gerardo Mañón Espinon and Álvaro R. Pedroza Zapata from ITESO (Institute for Advanced Study in the West) in Tlaquepaque, a suburb of Guadalajara, showed a detailed case study of innovative development of battery technology through use of multi-parameter designed experiments.

Avraam Serediski is well-known to the TRIZ Journal readers. He participated in two of the projects that were reported at the conference. He and Gabriel González Molina and

Fidel García Gonzalez (who presented the paper) studied >20,000 graduating students from universities, and received surprisingly negative answers to the question of how the students will impact society. They have formulated a plan which is now in active deployment in the state of Puebla, associated with several universities, for entrepreneurship education and for business incubators, to encourage the students and others to work together for new enterprises.

TRIZ Journal readers are familiar with problems in the construction industry. The conference had 3 very exciting papers on the use of TRIZ to solve problems in materials development for construction to improve strength and life of materials and to reduce cost (both for the producer and for the user, and for society by reducing energy costs.)

1. Sergio Uribe from Cemex showed the TRIZ adoption process, and how Cemex is combining TRIZ with training, software, support, and management systems to increase adoption and accelerate project completion throughout the company
2. J. C. Rubio Ávalos and his colleagues at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo and with the support of government agencies used TRIZ for breakthrough improvements in phosforescent concrete, flexible window materials, strong membranes, and inorganic foams. In each case they used very basic TRIZ principles (such as the 40 principles and the separation principles) plus the concept of ideality, to make extreme improvements.
3. Alfonso Moreno Salazar and his colleagues in Guadalajara reported on developments in the use of foam panels for both home and industrial construction. The new techniques make very energy-efficient buildings possible with much less labor and use of raw materials, using classical contradiction resolution, applied in a multi-parameter environment.

Professor Rafael Oropeza Monterrubio both entertained and educated the audience—as the last speaker before lunch he had the challenge of keeping people engaged! His study of the failures of leadership in traditional organizations and his recommendations for structural changes, based on the application of TRIZ to management problems, were very well received.

Laura Ponce Garcia presented an extensive study of the opportunities for improvement in the hospitality industry, mostly focused on hotels, and the many possibilities made possible by the methods of understanding of customers' needs and the use of information technology.

Christian Signoret & Avraam Serediski (Mexico and France) revived one of the TRIZ methods developed in the mid-1980s to increase the Ideality of a system: the Integration of Alternative Systems. The process was illustrated with an agricultural case study and a student project in rocket design. It produces very dramatic results very quickly, if the practioner has a good understanding of the relationships of the functions and subsystems of the system that is being improved.

Guillermo Cortes Robles Institute Technologica in Orizaba, Veracruz, MX, did two presentations on the use of Alternative Failure Determination to increase safety of industrial machinery. They were very elegant case studies, using the resources of the system to solve the problem, once the problem was understood. His data on the need to improve industrial safety made a strong case.

Pedro Sariego P showed 3 cases from the Chilean mining industry The case studies illustrated specific TRIZ methods, with considerable Six Sigma thinking in the identification of the problems:

1. Elimination of a contradiction: How to position the elecrolytic process in the chain of cathodes in hydrometalurgical processing of copper
2. Su-Field analysis: Problem of an elbow in the discharge of a lime production process
3. ARIZ: Removing large rocks that get stuck in the jaws of a crushing machine in a copper processing system.

Javier Rivera Ramírez discussed his work with Rosario Vidal Nadal on methods of managing innovation in an environment where science, technology and design have evolved without always being focused on the needs of the customer, and pointed out possible ways to manage both the people and the processes to enhance innovation.

Edgardo Cordoba's fascinating presentation on the seventh generation of quality, presented as a new paradigm of TRIZ, had much new data that traced the evolution of the quality control, quality improvement, and pro-active quality movements, and suggested that the predictive properties of TRIZ would contribute to the future of quality in many ways.

Day 4 was devoted to tutorials. I did a half-day workshop on how to teach TRIZ, focusing on understanding the learning process before trying to do any teaching. Jack Hipple did a full-day program on the integration of TRIZ with many other tools and methods, and Noel Leon did an intensive half-day session for TRIZ beginners. I missed the party that the 4 organizations that were sharing the Expo center for the week of innovation presented on Saturday night (had to run to the airport) but I hope that this report shows the organizing committee of AMETRIZ that their efforts were appreciated!

Photo: Rafael Fargas, Noel Leon, and keynote speakers Andrew Brown and Mansour Ashtiani.

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