AMETRIZ (The TRIZ Association of Mexico) changed the dates of the III Congreso Iberoamericano de Inovacion Tecnologica to participate in the inauguration of the new (Magnificent!) Expo conference center of Guadalajara with simultaneous meetings of Universitronica 2008, Creanimax (animation and video games) MexEEDev (Mexico Electronics and Embedded Developers Forum), and honoring the International Week of Learning, Innovation, and High Technology (my translation!)

Because of the date change, I was unable to participate in Day 1. Zinovy Royzen's tutorial on the TOPS method of function analysis had 50 very active participants in the morning, who then learned to apply TRIZ to processes in Edgardo Cordova's tutorial in the afternoon.

Day 2 is the plenary session, which opened with greetings from the officials of the state of Jalisco, the conference center, and the organizers. We were represented on the podium by Rafael Farga, the local organizer of the Congreso. Thanks to Rafael, and to Noel Leon and Edgardo Cordova who organized the technical program, for a great meeting. As always in these commentaries, this will be a personal report—if readers want the full program, see http://www.ametriz.com/schedule_third_conference_triz.php. The conference proceedings will be available for purchase from AMETRIZ after the conference.

Randall Marín, Senior Test Engineer from Intel in Costa Rica delivered the kickoff speech for our session. He presented the history of the semiconductor industry and Intel's place in the industry, and the development of TRIZ at Intel. This is the same story that Amir Roggel has presented to audiences in Japan, the US and Europe, but Randall made it fresh with new stories from the Intel user conferences--applications of TRIZ to solve problems and to prevent problems in the most stressing manufacturing environment now in use. Randall's slide show tour of the Costa Rica Innovation Center made a lot of people jealous—a great environment for TRIZ, both the physical place and the problem-solving orientation of the culture. The match between the Intel culture and the TRIZ emphasis on removing problems, not just making trade-offs has helped TRIZ propagate rapidly throughout the manufacturing sector of the company.

Photos: Marin, Hipple, Royzen, Brown

Jack Hipple is well-known to the TRIZ Journal and Real Innovation audiences. His talk on "Parallel Universes" got the audience involved in several case studies. He showed how the air traffic control display developers greatly improved the ability of a controller to notice a bad situation in time to do something about it (hey, this is important to me—I'm a pilot and a passenger!) by studying what is done in chemical plant control systems, nuclear power control, and computer game design. Jack's illustration of the key skill of translating jargon into general language, so that you can look for the parallels in other technological "universes" was both helpful and entertaining. Thanks, Jack!

Mansour Ashtiani is the President of the Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies and the TRIZ advocate at the Delphi company. He gave the audience a very concise history of the development of TRIZ and the work of the Altshuller Institute to promote TRIZ, and suggested some future North-America wide collaboration with AMETRIZ.

Margarita de la Fuente y Xavier Gonzalez is an expert in many areas of innovation, including the de Bono and Goldratt thinking systems. Today she talked about the process of administration of innovation programs in business, based on the experiences that she and her co-authors have in the food and food processing industries (KFC, Frito-Lay, Nabisco and other big brands.) A key finding from their study is that organizational culture and organizational alignment are essential to innovation, seen as 2 legs of a stool. The third, essential leg, is the realization that innovation applies to all aspects of the company—service and product delivery, production, business processes, understanding non-users as well as users, regulatory requirements, and many others.

Zinovy Royzen gave an abbreviated paper on the TOP model, which he introduced several years ago and has continued to develop. (TOP= Tool, Object, Product) and showed how to use it to define problems. He injected much interesting historical information about the development of function analysis in TRIZ by many researchers (other than Altshuller). Zinovy's case study on the transformer was a great introduction to the idea of trimming, both for experienced practioners and beginners alike.

I presented my new thinking on teaching TRIZ to beginners (to be published in the TRIZ Journal in December—be patient). What's new? It isn't about TEACHING—it is about LEARNING. And while many of us are teachers, all of us are learners, so learning about how people learn will help everybody. Good news, TRIZ is right: somebody someplace has already solved this problem, and I bring a lot of education research together and show how to apply it to TRIZ learning.

Concluding speaker of the day was Dr. Andrew Brown from Delphi, who has been a spectacularly popular speaker at TRIZCON meetings, and who is a member of several international study commissions on the future of the transportation industry. The audience left in a state of high excitement about the future of transportation, the future of technology, and the future of the world.

The First National Forum for Organizational Competitiveness through Innovation and Quality convened Sept. 26-7 in Zacatecas, Mexico, a World Heritage city and a growing center of business and academic innovation. The conference was organized by Dr. Cuauhtémoc Lemus Olalde ("Temo") and the staff of CIMAT, the mathematics research institute; they brought together an impressive cross-section of research, business, education and government resources to learn from each other's experiences. The government of the state of Zacatecas was strongly represented: Secretaries of Education, Commerce, and Technology participated in the Forum personally, and staff members from several other departments were present.

The business community of Zacatecas is primarily small and medium-sized enterprises, with a heavy concentration of software and systems engineering business, and the applied research at CIMAT focuses on software development that enables and enhances enterprise functions—I had enlightening conversations with researchers working on strategic planning, decision making, failure modes and effects analysis, and balanced scorecard systems (and several projects that incorporate TRIZ elements!) About half of the presentations and workshops at the Forum are specifically oriented to the software-centric businesses, and half were more general.

This is a personal report, not a comprehensive summary of the conference, limited to the sessions that I attended (and my moderate ability to listen in Spanish while thinking in English) or what I heard from other participants. For the complete program, list of sponsors and organizers, see http://www.cimat.mx/Eventos/primerforoinnovacion/ The morning session started with brief welcoming addresses by the government officials, business and academic leaders, on the general theme that we know that innovation and quality are both important, but we don't always know how to get from the general sentiment to application and implementation, and we welcome the Forum as an opportunity to advance our capabilities.

Roberto Saco, President of the American Society for Quality, was the lead speaker. His presentation "Innovation from Within: The Soft Power of Positive Deviance" emphasized that all innovation—hardware, software, organizational structure, operational systems—requires behavior changes. The theory of positive deviance emphasizes using the resources of the community to solve its own problems by finding the unusual (deviant!) members of the community who are thriving, and learn from their solutions to help the rest. Roberto had a pointed and emotionally moving case study to illustrate his points, showing how the Save the Children program in Vietnam used the creativity of 2 world-wide staff, local community participants and the parents of the children to make radical improvement in the problem of low-weight children using only the local resource (the nutritional value of the same vegetables that are in the ordinary diet can be dramatically increased when they are cooked in different combinations, for example.) Positive deviance was a new concept for me—look for more "commentary" columns as I learn more about it.

"Why Business Needs to Innovate and How to Do It" is my translation of the title of the talk by Rodulfo M. Rodriguez Gutierrez, visiting Zacatecas from the Polytechnic University of Catalunya. He emphasized the increasingly rapid cycles of product introduction, and the increasingly global competition in all fields, which combine to make innovation the only survivable business strategy. He gave numerous examples, emphasizing that service businesses need the same emphasis on innovation as product businesses.

Manuel Liñan is a six sigma master black belt and business consultant from Monterrey, with projects in Spain, France, Poland, US, and elsewhere. His talk, "TRES: The strategy for competitiveness" used the model of Technical, Alignment, Structural, and Social elements (TRES in Spanish-trust me) for understanding customers, your own company, and the environment, in order to decide how to be competitive. He showed the extension of the principles of lean process improvement to the lean enterprise as an example of how it might be necessary to change all 4 elements of a company's operation to be competitive in a changing world.

I was the concluding speaker for the morning. "Enhance Business Innovation with TRIZ" was a 40 minute TRIZ introduction, emphasizing the universality of TRIZ for small and large, local and global, hardware and software, and emphasizing that the audience members who are hearing about TRIZ for the first time can start using it, and can learn by using it. Fortunately, Darrell Mann will be speaking tomorrow on TRIZ for software, and will have time to give the software participants some specific guidance.

The speakers were then organized into a panel for questions and answers. Most of the questions were about how to start innovation initiatives, and the panel differed widely, from the strongly traditional (reward systems, measurement systems, traditional bonus systems based on following the rules, etc.) to the radically un-managed (create a positive environment then let things happen, don't try to control it.) Questions about how to improve the competitiveness of Mexico, or the competitiveness of Zacatecas, were mostly answered at the global level, with the emphasis on doing what your customers need, and taking advantage of your local resources (for example, the strength of the software industry in Zacatecas is due to the local university and research centers) and using government agencies to build infrastructure and reduce inhibiting factors.

After lunch we had 6 workshops, then a cultural evening. Zacatecas was originally a mining center, and the miners used the rhythms of their work to create very rhythmic music. Somehow, this became a festive event Callejoneada Típica Zacatecana where musicians walk around the town with a donkey who carries the drums and the supply of mescal, followed by all the participants in the event who sing, play the drums, and drink the mescal. (OK, the donkey is a myth. We carried the mescal, and the musicians carried the drums and we danced and walked and drank and danced.) AFTER that is dinner!

My second day in Orlando was about as busy as the first so forgive me if I gloss over some of the details as I try to share as much as I can from my audience view.

The first two keynotes focused on architecture. "How Architecture Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Collective Intelligence" was presented by Dr. Gunter Henn (Henn Architekten) and Tom Allen (MIT, Sloan School). They co-authored The Organization and Architecture of Innovation and shared some of their findings from their years of research. A main finding? Internal technical communication is needed to excel at innovation. "Eighty percent of all innovative ideas arise from face-to-face communication."

Henn and Allen explained that innovation can't be organized, but the innovation process can be. They broke down the idea further by saying that innovation happens with a synchronization between time and space. (The challenges of remote team problem solving was looked at in the June 2008 issue of The TRIZ Journal – take a look for more on this topic.)

Next up was Dr. Andrew Lippman from MIT's Media Lab on "Architectures for Innovation: The End of Products." Things are changing in that agility and relationships trump stability in today's global marketplace. Globalization isn't unimportant, but socialization is more important. It boils down to a "we" vs. "I" debate – the "solution" vs. the "problem." Once again, the importance of defining the problem comes into play!

This afternoon I headed back into the Guru track. First up, Jeffrey Phillips (VP, Innovation at OVO, also this track's chair AND a Real Innovation author) with Kim McEachron (VP, Human Resources at Medtronic) on "Innovation: A People Centric Process."

Who should be on an innovation team? Someone comfortable with ambiguity! They identified four primary roles:

1. Innovator or idea generator (involved in the first step)
2. Scouts or trend spotters (often spread out in companies, so they can be hard to take advantage of/synthesize)
3. Idea sponsor (usually a more senior employee – business owner or project manager)
4. Evaluators (often an ad hoc process with a broad array of people involved)

Along with those necessary team members, there are also five barriers to developing a successful innovation team:

1. Compensation
2. Evaluation
3. Training
4. Recognition/reward
5. Cultural barries

Along with that, another message repeated throughout this conference: fail! And fail early. Failure is not mistakes. "Mistakes produce no new or useful information and are without value." Failure, and learning from those failures, can lead to later successes.

The last session of this track was a shared presentation among three speakers: Frank Tyneski (Executive Director, Industrial Designers Society of America - IDSA), Lou Lenzi (SVP, Product Development, Audiovox Accessories Corporation) and Bruce Claxton (Motorola). They each talked about industrial design and its importance in the product development process. A favorite buzzword was "no compromise!" For those of you who have delved into TRIZ, you know that eliminating trade-offs/contradictions is an important tool of the methodology. Although TRIZ wasn't mentioned in the presentation, the importance of designing the ideal and not accepting compromises was clear.

All in all, it was an interesting two days of engaging speakers and conversations. Thanks for sharing the experience with me!

I'm in Orlando for a few days attending the Product Development and Management Association's 32nd Annual International Conference. It's been a busy and fun day; I'll try to sum it up here! I do have to say at the start that it's been great to talk to people who know what TRIZ is!

The first of the morning's keynotes was "From Passion to Reality: The Story of iRobot" by co-founder Helen Greiner. (Before she got into the business of her talk she satisfied the curiousity of the audience about her accent – a mix of London where she was born with Long Island and Boston thrown in for good measure!) One of iRobot's big lessons was to incorporate users into their product development; what users do is often a mystery and surprise until the developers/design see them using the products.

Next up was "The Next Generation of 'Fast:' Visual Problem-solving & Decision-making Using Oobeya, the 'Big Room'" by Takashi Tanaka (QV System, Inc.) and Don Kieffer (formerly of Harley-Davidson). Oobeya means "big room" in Japanese and is one small piece of the Toyota Management System.

The big room is all about human interaction and finding clear targets (even if they are unreasonable or unachievable) and accountabilities. Not for the first time today, the importance of finding/defining the root problem was raised. If the targets aren't correct, the execution will not matter.

Focus on a quick and clear resolution of conflicts in an open and collaborative way. Picture a wall covered in Post-its (I have photos, but forget the cord to connect my camera to the laptop so pictures will follow later!) and using them to specify the progress/problems/make decisions.

This afternoon I sat in on the "Inside the Guru's Studio" track. First up? Matt Calman, SVP and innovation executive from Bank of America with "Inside Bank of America's Global Tech & Ops Innovation Lab." The lab is a team of seven at this time: 3 concept developers, 2 prototype developers, a technical lead and a lab director. They are a mix of ages, education and experience levels; everybody does everything.

The innovation lab focuses on everything "from 'twinkle' to launch." They prototype (pure creativity), which leads to proof of concepts (a combination of prototyping with existing technology/systems). They use the prototyping to build requirements, not vice versa – another great way of being sure to identify the "right" problem. With a great deal of collaboration from discussion groups, voting systems and expert assessment they are able to progress to deciding to take an idea to market.

Next up was Adam Nash, Sr. Director, Product at LinkedIn.com with "Building a World Class Web 2.0 Product Organization." Their focus is how to make business people more productive. To do this, they use (many) small, cross-functional teams with the product managers as force multipliers who help define/set prioritizations for the business. Transparency is important in LinkedIn's processes as well with a corporate wiki - specifications are open and transparent to all. The roadmap is a public document that helps reinforce the message that it is okay to be wrong and make mistakes.

And, in another repeated message of the day, Nash touted the importance of framing the problem as it "defines the solution!" Going along with that, rather than focusing on ROI, they focus on making LinkedIn useful and engaging, "knowing" that ROI will follow.

The last of the Guru sessions this afternoon was Rob Wallace from Wallace Church, "Reinventing Innovation: The 10 Best Practices of the Design-led Innovation Process."

1. Sharpen the ax (see quote from Abraham Lincoln)
2. Craft the team
3. Fund the process
4. Own an experience
5. Visualize the experience
6. New research methods
7. Integrate the team
8. Implement
9. Synthesize
10. Re-invent
11. (Yes, this was a surprise at the end of his presentation!) Determine ROI

The evening's keynote was Bumper Carroll from The Second City, "Improvise to Innovate." Since The Second City is all about performance and interaction, it should be no surprise that his presentation had the audience interacting in several different ways. I didn't have much time to take notes, but overall his three points were:

1. Set the stage for everyday innovation
2. Invite customers to co-create
3. Killer ideas are rare; idea killers are a dime a dozen.

Whew! That was a busy day! More to follow tomorrow!

Paul Filmore is reporting from The Third TRIZ Symposium in Japan.---------

I have arrived to my second Japan TRIZ conference near Kyoto. The official title is ‘The 4th TRIZ Symposium in Japan'. After a 12 hour flight, three trains; I have finally arrived. And ‘arrive' is the operative word, because to arrive in Japan is like few other countries. Immediately one is aware of ‘contradictions'. A land very flat with sudden dramatic mountains, beautiful forests and dense industry, frantic activity and inner peace, modern architecture and ancient temples, to name but a few i.e., a TRIZ practitioners paradise!

Out my bedroom window I see Lake Biwa; a lake as big as a sea. In the foreground are long sticks appearing from the water in regular patterns. What is the ‘function of these I wonder?

My Japanese friends here tell me these are to guide fish to a small area where nets can be placed. This system works by the knowledge that when fish find their way blocked they tend to always swim towards deeper water. As one can see from the photos the sticks are often further apart than a fish's dimensions, but work I assume because when the fish starts to swim from a blockage, they keep going in one direction. This approach seems to be symbolic of a key area of TRIZ, that of really understanding the underlying functionality (or physical principle) in any process. Please get back to me if I have missed something here! I was also wondering if the heights of the sticks allow transmission of vibrations from the wind to produce an acoustic fence underwater, enhancing the fish channelling effect?

The day started with an exquisite breakfast (with hardly any food I recognised). A warm greeting waited at registration for the pre session delegates. The choice (?) was to learn about TRIZ in Japanese or for a detailed discussion of sharing individual TRIZ experience. The second option proved to be interesting not least in catching up with colleagues' developments from a year ago. It also developed into interesting speculation of where TRIZ is going.

The formal opening was after lunch, by Toshihiro Hayashi, chairperson of the Japan TRIZ Society Board. He presented an interesting analysis of the growth in participants over the last four years to this conference. Although the total number of participants was lower (167) this year (due to a number of reasons), those presenting had increased from 34 to 46. The first Keynote was from Amir Roggel who gave a presentation of Intel, innovation and the TRIZ developments at Intel worldwide. Two significant points stood out. Firstly that Intel has recognised that TRIZ has made Intel ‘many millions', far offsetting ALL the costs associated introducing TRIZ. Secondly that TRIZ is being significantly ramped up with over 1000 employees having gained level 1 (5days), over 200 at level 2 (another 5 days) and ~40 at level 3 (20 days).

After the Keynote, there followed a number of sessions in parallel. All presentations were dual projected in English and Japanese, with translation provided for question sessions. I gave a paper which followed on research from last year's presentation of identifying indicators associated with highly effective engineers and then linking these to TRIZ tools. This year I presented the results of associating Lean and 6Sigma tools with the same indicators. What I found from initial analysis was that Lean, 6Sigma and Lean Six Sigma had ‘less rich toolsets' associated with these indicators. This rather implying that TRIZ has some significant advantages over traditional approaches! One other session of note was from Dr Toru Nakagawa reporting on the latest developments of USIT. This approach is gaining strength in Japan, judging on the number of papers to be presented using this. I rather liked Toru's ‘Six Box' overview of the USIT procedure developed using Data Flow Diagram visualisation (see diagram). I have always felt that the ‘four boxes' representation of ‘general' TRIZ, used often to promote TRIZ, trivialised TRIZ in the minds of new comers.

The evening began with a buffet dinner allowing people to move around and ‘communicate' with each other. This worked very well and gave many opportunities to talk and link up. The evening closed with an optional classical guitar concert from Ireland's premier guitarist, Catherine Thom.

Toru Nakagawa exclaimed, ‘a very beautiful and relaxing recital'.

What a day! I look forward to tomorrow.

Links for further information

• Conference: http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/
• Hotel & Lake Biwa: http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/elinksref/eJapanTRIZ-CB/e4thTRIZSymp2008Pre.html#Venue
• Catherine Thom: www.CatherineThom.com

Day 3 of the Business Innovation Conference opened with the address by Dr. Gautam Sardar on "Innovation at Tata Consultancy Services" –since the Tata group of companies is everything from the 1880's original tea producers to the $2500 car and Jaguar automobiles and giant IT companies in many countries, he had a lot of history and a lot of current activities to draw on. His main theme was co-innovation, building collaborative frameworks using the innovation "ecosystem" of IT and human knowledge resources, using Tata's resources and the resources of their entire client community to help solve each new problem. The cost of creating sophisticated systems, such as virtual reality simulations, is very high, and creating the co-innovation community shares the costs among participants. The delicate issue of intellectual property in shared knowledge situations is still in active development. (Photo: G. Sardar)

Reminder: this is a personal report, NOT a comprehensive review—see www.businessinnovationconference.com for the complete agenda. I chose Track 1, which started with Raj Datta, VP of Mindtree, discussing the knowledge management system at Mindtree, and how it is a key element of the innovation system. He introduced a mixed audience to the structure, vocabulary, and methods of knowledge management, so that we could understand how Mindtree has used KM as a key element of innovation. Get-Share-Apply-Learn-Innovate is the "virtuous cycle" of Knowledge. In many cases KM is only Get or Get & Share, and that is the broken cycle and not effective. Many participants were fascinated by the self-organizing knowledge communities (and the similarity to Kim Johnson's report yesterday on the 3M GRIT and TechForum communities.) The emphasis is on peer learning and face-to-face interaction.

Mindtree is an active TRIZ-using company, and it was interesting to hear the observations on TRIZ of a non-advocate. Datta said that they encourage people to find the methods that work best for them (TRIZ, lateral thinking, mind mapping, many other methods) and to learn and use the methods that are the best fit, both on their own work and on collaborative projects.

Krishna Kumar of Microsoft had a bunch of very scary statistics (3000 new books are published every day. By 2010, information will be doubling every 72 hours….) as the lead-in to his talk about teaching students in all global environments how to be prepared for jobs that don't exist that require continual innovation.

Sarah Caldicott's presentation was based on her book, "Innovate Like Edison" and the five competencies of innovation. Both the historical framework (she is Edison's grand-niece and part of the research team that is analyzing his notebooks) and the practical how-to orientation made this talk a highlight of the conference. Each competency has 5 supporting concepts—here's a sample:

1. Solution Centered Mindset
2. Kaleidoscopic Thinking
1. Maintain a Notebook
2. Practice "Ideaphoria"
3. Discern Patterns
4. Express Ideas Visually
5. Explore the Road NOT Taken
3. Full Spectrum Engagement
4. Master Mind Collaboration
5. Super Value Creation

Sean O'Toole President and Chief Executive Officer, GiftCertificates.com did the lunchtime keynote speech, emphasizing that his experiences at his own company, American Express, and McKinsey all taught him that trust among the members of the team and trust of management in its own judgment (they KNOW that cutting the training budget is dumb!) are the key elements of an innovation environment.

Roy Luebke of Innovationedge moved us toward the end of the conference with a nice approach to getting people to summarize their learning from the conference, and, as a graduate of the Institute of Design at IIT, tied the learning back to Whitney's talk last night.

The conference ended with discussion of adding all the attendees to the Innovation Network so that conversation and networking could continue on-line and at informal events throughout the year.

Many thanks to Praveen Gupta for his hard work and dedication to making this event happen. He is now looking for people to join the organizing commitee for future events. (Photo: Keynote speaker Tony Reyes -left, Chairman Praveen Gupta -right.)

The audience was immediately fascinated by the opening talk by Prof. Charles Cooney, director of the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT. The Deshpande center is a unique institute that sponsors academic research on the process of innovation. Cooney surprised the audience with his claim that both the academic and venture capital communities are risk averse (in different ways) and that rather small grants in the right way at the right time can bridge the gap between them. None of the money goes to developing business plans—that comes much later in the innovation cycle. His "value chain" is easy to remember: "Idea®Invent®Innovate®Impact " and his lessons learned list has a small number of critical risk reduction steps at each interface. Most interesting to the Business Innovation Conference audience were

1. The method of evaluating the proposals for potential market application, 2-3 years in advance of venture capital investment.
2. Replicating the model in multiple countries and universities, which is just starting now.

I was the chair of track 2 for the rest of the morning, so readers interested in track 1 should consult the conference website, www.businessinnovationconference.com. Kim Johnson, consultant from Minneapolis-St. Paul (and PMI, and PDMA, and Scanlon network and …) started track 2 with a great anecdotal talk about 3M's GRIT—the Grass Roots Innovation Teams. Those not familiar with 3M were amazed by the "McKnight Principles" from 1948, which had a very "modern" tone regarding the innovation culture of the organization.

Langdon Morris from Innovationlabs presented a structure for creating an innovation culture. He used many visual metaphors and analogies to explain his model, which the audience found very helpful, and illustrated the theory with the Coca Cola innovation case study. The difference between the Status Quo Culture and the Innovation Culture are remarkable—no need for me to take notes, since Langdon generously offered the audience (and our friends) free downloads of his book "Permanent Innovation" and the conference paper, from www.permanentinnovation.com

Bill Burnett from W. Burnett LLC presented "Steps to become an innovative company" that had some points in common with Morris' method and some significant differences. The story of Nummi (the joint GM/Toyota automobile assembly plant started in 1985) is relevant, since it demonstrated radical change with the no change in the worker population. Nummi had the highest rate of suggestions (product and process improvements) and the highest rate of line shut-down (to prevent quality problems from continuing) in part because of policy changes to remove fear from the system, and in part from creating an infrastructure so that the employee got positive feedback: suggestions were implemented, problems were fixed. A key strategy (illustrated with several stories) was removing vocabulary that has implications of Adult-Child (manager-worker, superior-subordinate) and replacing it with Adult-Adult vocabulary (colleague, teammate, team member).

This was a very full conference agenda—even lunch had a speaker. Tony Reyes, CEO of CartonCraft, gave a delightful, informal talk on how he acquired a company doing less than $5 million/year in business and grew it to triple that size in 5 years by creating a culture of daily innovation based trust and learning. Photo: Tony Reyes networking with the participants.

"Market factor co-evolution" is the theme of Tom Duening, director of the Entrepreneurial Program at Arizona State University. He took us back to basics, to Drucker's statement that "the objective of all healthy enterprises is to strive constantly to create greater customer value." Their curriculum includes "opportunity recognition"—the breakthrough was realizing that there a method for opportunity recognition, and it is teachable and learnable. He used the examples of Cirque du Soleil and Yellowtail Wine, from the Blue Ocean strategy book to illustrate the method of seeing opportunities.

I had the challenge of introducing TRIZ in one hour to the Business Innovation Conference attendees who had never heard of TRIZ—we told delegates who had knowledge of TRIZ to go to the other session. We should get a lot of new TRIZ Journal readers from this, and many people going back to their organizations to ask new questions.

Praveen Gupta had a very interactive session on Measuring Innovation. The audience challenged all the methods of measuring innovation and the need for making the measurements. He brought the whole range of views together by pointing out the relationship between outcomes and process measures.

Even the reception had a keynote speaker! Patrick Whitney, Director of the Institute of Design at IIT talked about the role of design in translating customer needs for services and products into concepts that can be developed, produced, and delivered.

Continuing thanks from the TRIZ Journal and Real Innovation readers to Mikhail Rubin for his report from the TRIZ conference in St. Petersburg. Day 3, July 26, 2008

Today a public conference was held in Saint Petersburg. 60 specialists from the entire world participated in it. Specialists from Russia, USA, Israel and Estonia read their results of research in TRIZ problem solving methodology. More than 20 topics were read by authors and analyzed by the audience.

Summit delegates had a meeting with mass media. There were some questions discussed on that meeting that concerned relationships with Saint Petersburg State University, some questions were focused on the further extending of TRIZ in the world. Delegates discussed organization aspects of TRIZ certification. In the end of that meeting the most important problems of developing TRIZ as a science were set.

Participants summarized the results of the conference and defined the way of holding TRIZ summit 2009. There were a lot of suggestions that will be systematized in the summit general report. Particularly there was a conclusion to enlarge the discussion time of the presentation and toughen criterions for presentation choosing.

There were a lot of suggestions on how to organize the following summit. In the end summit sections facilitators supported the idea of choosing the ARIZ as the main theme of TRIZ summit 2009 to be discussed. The conference of the third day was complete.

Speakers and Facilitators: L.S.Chechurin, S.Ikovenko, A.V.Kudryavtsev, S.S.Litvin, V.M.Petrov, I.L.Tukkel, M.S.Rubin, V.S.Chernyak.

The Conference Hall:

Details of the program:

Section 1. Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the Basis of Contradiction Resolution

• A.V.Kudryavtsev. «Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the basis of Contradiction Resolution – Analysis and Directions for Further Development».
• A.I.Noniashvili. «Resolution of Engineering Contradictions Using Notions of Operative Zone and Operation Time»
• E.E.Kurgi. «Analysis of Engineering Contradictions: Key Steps and Perspectives of Development»
• A.B.Bushuyev. «Vector Analysis of Resources»
• Rikho Viyk. «Application of Regulatory Steps in the Exploration and Classification of Techniques for Eliminating Engineering Contradictions»
• A.S.Tokarev «Alternative System of Contradiction Elimination Techniques»
• G.V.Kizevich. «Two Paradoxes and Four Strategies of ARIZ»
• M.S.Rubin. «Essays on Paradigm Changing in ARIZ Evolution»

Section 2. Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the Basis of Su-Field Models

• V.M.Petrov. «System of Generalized Models» .
• M.S.Rubin. «Representing Su-Fields as Matrices»
• Yu.S.Murashkovskiy. «Application of Standards Depending on Superproblems. Possibilities for Supplementing a System of Standards by Analogy with Non-Engineering Systems»

Section 3. Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the Basis of Function Model.

• S.S.Litvin. «Practical Recommendations on Function-Oriented Search (FOS)»
• N.B.Feygenson. «Function-Oriented Information Search (FOIS) - history, potentialities, constraints, and suggestions on efficiency enhancement»
• A.M.Pinyaev. «Elementary Functional Transformations when Solving Inventive Problems Using Functional Prompts Method»
• V.M.Petrov. «Functional Approach»
• M.S.Rubin. «Multi-Aspect Function-Oriented Search (FOS)»
• A.V.Efimov. «Extending the Problem Frames for Raising the Probability of Successful Problem Solving»
• S.I.Pernitskiy. «Multi-Functionality as a Tool for Inventive Problem Solving»

Section 4. Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the Basis of Trends of Engineering System Evolution (TESE). Facilitator of the 2nd section - V.M.Petrov.

• V.M.Petrov. «Innovation Technology»
• A.T.Kynin, V.A.Lenyashin « System-Based Consideration of Engineering System Evolution »
• A.V.Efimov. «Analysis of Evolution According to S-Curve: Goals and Main Principles»
• A.L.Lyubomirskiy. «Trend of usability flow enhancement»

It is planning to run the TRIZ Dissertation Council on the 27th of July with the following Council members: Gafitulin M.S.(returning board chairman), Gubanov S.N., Kudryavtsev A.V., Kynin .A.T., Litvin S.S.(Dissertation Council Chairman), Lyubomirskiy A.L., Petrov. V.M., Pinyaev A.M., Rubin. M.S., Sibiryakov V.G., Fedosov YU.I., Yakovenko S.

Facilitators of the TRIZ Developers' Summit, TRIZ Masters:

A.V.Kudryavtsev, S.S.Litvin, V/M/Petrov, M.S.Rubin

July 26, 2008

Mikhail Rubin has generously devoted some of his time at the TRIZ Developers Summit this week in St. Petersburg to sending photographs and a report on the activities at the meeting. Thanks very much, Mikhail! We hope that many of the articles will be available in English so that we can publish them for the Real Innovation/TRIZ Journal readers in the coming months.

M. Rubin's report: TRIZ Developers Summit 2008

July 24, 2008

The 1st day of TRIZ developers' summit held in Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnical University joined together twenty specialists from Russia, USA, Israel and Estonia. That was a meeting focused on emerging issues of development of inventive problems solving tools.

The following topics were presented:

Section 1. Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the Basis of Contradiction Resolution

Facilitator of the 1st section - A.V.Kudryavtsev.

• A.V.Kudryavtsev. «Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the basis of Contradiction Resolution – Analysis and Directions for Further Development».
• A.I.Noniashvili. «Resolution of Engineering Contradictions Using Notions of Operative Zone and Operation Time»
• E.E.Kurgi. «Analysis of Engineering Contradictions: Key Steps and Perspectives of Development»
• A.B.Bushuyev. «Vector Analysis of Resources»
• Rikho Viyk. «Application of Regulatory Steps in the Exploration and Classification of Techniques for Eliminating Engineering Contradictions»
• A.S.Tokarev «Alternative System of Contradiction Elimination Techniques»
• M.S.Rubin. «Essays on Paradigm Changing in ARIZ Evolution»
• G.V.Kizevich. «Two Paradoxes and Four Strategies of ARIZ»
• V.M.Petrov. «Practical ARIZ»

Section 4. Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the Basis of Trends of Engineering System Evolution (TESE).

Facilitator of the 2nd section - V.M.Petrov.

• M.S.Rubin/V.M.Petrov. «Systems of Trends of Engineering System Evolution. Analytical Review»
• A.L.Lyubomirskiy. «Trend of usability flow enhancement»
• V.M.Petrov. «Innovation Technology»
• A.T.Kynin, V.A.Lenyashin « System-Based Consideration of Engineering System Evolution »
• A.V.Efimov. «Analysis of Evolution According to S-Curve: Goals and Main Principles»

The 4th section continues on the 25th of July. Each section proposes recommendations for inventive problem solving tools development.

In the rest of the day of 24th of July the preliminary presentation of TRIZ dissertations was organized.

1. Axelrod Boris Moiseyevich, Saint Petersburg. Thesis - "Action-Based Problem-Oriented Search (APOS): systematic application in innovation projects." Scientific Supervisor - TRIZ Master, S.S.Litvin. Opponent - TRIZ Master, Yu.I.Fedosov.
2. Kashkarov Alexander Germanovich, Saint Petersburg. Thesis - "Substance-Energy Transformations in Engineering Systems. Methodology for Constructing ES Models, for ES Model Analysis and Problem Statement." Scientific Supervisor - TRIZ Master, Yu.I.Fedosov. Opponent - TRIZ Master, V.M.Petrov.

The program facilitators of the TRIZ Developers' Summit are the TRIZ Masters: A.V.Kudryavtsev, S.S.Litvin, V.M. Petrov, M.S.Rubin (Litvin and Petrov are well-known to the TRIZ Journal readers as frequent authors of papers in English, too.)

Rubin caught all the speakers making dramatic gestures in these candid photographs: Pinyaev, Petrov, Murashkovskiy, Litvin (standing) and A.L.Lyubomirskiy (seated)

Report from the 2nd day of TRIZ developers' summit held in Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnical University.

Section 4. Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the Basis of Contradiction Resolution

• O.Yu.Abramov. «Trends of Engineering System Evolution in Information Processing and Transmission Systems»
• M.S.Rubin. «Creation of Theory for Designing Innovation-Technological Systems»
• Summarizing the work results at the session

Section 2. Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the Basis of Su-Field Models

Facilitator of the 2nd section - M.S.Rubin.

• V.M.Petrov. Survey paper
• V.M.Petrov. «System of Generalized Models» .
• M.S.Rubin. «Representing Su-Fields as Matrices»
• Yu.S.Murashkovskiy. «Application of Standards Depending on Superproblems. Possibilities for Supplementing a System of Standards by Analogy with Non-Engineering Systems»

Section 3. Tools for Inventive Problem Solving on the Basis of Function Model.

Facilitator of the 3rd section - S.S.Litvin

• S.S.Litvin. «Practical Recommendations on Function-Oriented Search (FOS)»
• N.B.Feygenson. «Function-Oriented Information Search (FOIS) - history, potentialities, constraints, and suggestions on efficiency enhancement»
• A.M.Pinyaev. «Elementary Functional Transformations when Solving Inventive Problems Using Functional Prompts Method»
• V.M.Petrov. «Functional Approach»
• A.V.Smirnov/E.L.Sokolov. «Automated FOS System»
• M.S.Rubin. «Multi-Aspect Function-Oriented Search (FOS)»
• A.V.Efimov. «Extending the Problem Frames for Raising the Probability of Successful Problem Solving»
• S.I.Pernitskiy. «Multi-Functionality as a Tool for Inventive Problem Solving»
• Summarizing the work results at the session

TRIZ summit participants received the 2nd release of TRIZ proceedings that are regularly published by TRIZ summit. There was a CD-disk with general results of TRIZ summits 2007 and 2008. The CD also includes dissertation documents of 2006-2008 summits, some historical reviews of TRIZ and other files.

Participants discussed the presentations of the sections and took some decisions on TRIZ Summit 2009 organization aspects. Particularly, the decision on strengthening criterions of choosing the presentations of the summit was taken.

The most significant documents of the sections are:

• A.M.Pinyaev. «Elementary Functional Transformations when Solving Inventive Problems Using Functional Prompts Method
• M.S.Rubin. «Representing Su-Fields as Matrices»
• A.L.Lyubomirskiy. «Trend of usability flow enhancement»

Discussion of the results is going to be held further on the 26th of July. So it will be presented on the public part of the conference. There are over 60 participants of the conference registered. TRIZ Participants congratulated V.Petrov, the summit was arranged on his birthday.

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is hosting its 32nd Annual International Conference September 15-17 in Orlando.

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TRIZCON 2008 concluded on Wednesday, April 16 with Jack Hipple's seminar on How to Use TRIZ with All the Other Innovation Tools and Assessments You Are Using and my presentation of "Contemporary Su-Field Analysis" which was developed by Iouri Belski and Len Kaplan. Some of the participants had started on Saturday, with the pre-conference tutorials, so they had a full week of learning, and many of them were also presenters in the technical sessions. Picture: Jack Hipple making a point about right brain/left brain creativity.

Why do this? Why spend time (participants came from Korea, Japan, China, Malaysia, Israel, UK, Germany, Mexico, and the US, and probably places I have missed) to travel, inconveniences of travel, money, and the value of the work you could have done if you had stayed home? Why not just buy the proceedings? Or wait until the authors publish the articles someplace else? The TRIZ Journal made agreements with many of the associations to publish no more than 2 articles each month, so that people would not have the excuse that they could get all the articles and skip the meetings. With all the blogs and other sources these days, a diligent student could probably get copies of most of the papers very quickly.

So, why go to the meetings?

The benefit of putting people together is the unstructured communication. Lunch, coffee, between sessions, and even in the tutorial sessions, where people talk about their experiences. Success stories are easy--that's what most of the presentations are about. Failure stories are much harder--what company will give permission to talk about failure? What consultant will stand up in public and says "here's something that doesn't work"? But the failure stories, told face-to-face, are very significant learning opportunities. And once people have gotten acquainted, developed some trust, and learned each other's histories of success and failure, then all the on-line communications can be effective.

Start planning now. The Japan, China, Iberoamerican and ETRIA meetings are coming in September, October, and November. See you there?

Amir Roggel from Intel started the conference with a masterful keynote address—he applied his TRIZ sensibility to create a talk that was both educational and entertaining, and a true "key" note, setting themes for the conference of modernizing TRIZ with the new technologies of the 21st century, and simplifying TRIZ—not eliminating concepts, but eliminating jargon. The history of TRIZ at Intel is fascinating, but I hope that the 12 year history of getting started isn't replicated at all companies of that size and complexity. Thanks, Amir! And thanks for bringing 11 delegates from Costa Rica, Malaysia, Ireland, Israel, and the US. His colleague David Austin from Arizona explained Intel's global strategic integration of TRIZ and the tactical implementation through training and projects, sharing the excitement of both the fast-moving world of semiconductor manufacturing and the impact of TRIZ. (David Austin and Amir Roggel being congratulated by Larry Smith, President of the Altshuller Institute.)

This is a live blog, not a detailed report on the conference—to see the actual agenda go to http://www.aitriz.org/ai/2008/AGENDA-TRIZCON2008-FINAL.pdf . We were graciously welcomed to Ohio and to Kent State University, and the 10th anniversary of TRIZCON was celebrated. Thanks to Prof. Don Coates for arranging for Kent State to host this year's conference.

Since I was the first speaker in track 1, you'll have to read about track 2 in the agenda. Joe Miller and I had a very responsive audience for the presentation on using the complete technical system definition and the system operator as tools for helping TRIZ beginners define the problem that they need to solve—fresh case studies from the business world on call center operations and airline regulatory changes focused on "non-technical" TRIZ.

T.S. Yeoh from Intel in Penang, Malaysia continued the story of Intel's TRIZ implementation with impressive detail. Case study examples from manufacturing test operations showed that Intel is using TRIZ in key areas of the business—these are not "teaching" cases—but very real problems in parts handling and alignment in high-speed testing of very sensitive devices. The success of the case studies was essential to the proliferation and adoption of TRIZ in the Intel manufacturing environment. Picture: T.S. Leong and Janice Marconi model the Altshuller Institute hats!

John Borsa from TRW's Automotive Division presented a unique TRIZ history, coming from the value management /cost reduction systems that had been used to meet OEM's cost requirements. TRIZ compatibility with value management was obvious, but a test was needed. They considered a simple, 5-component system: Traditional VM generated 50 ideas, of which a small % were useful. Then a TRIZ specialist spent 3 hours introducing people to TRIZ, from which 10 new ideas emerged, 20% of which became business cases. John's history focused on the real-world situation of no time, no money, no training opportunities, and a TRIZ process that was initially perceived as too complex and too abstract. Their success has come from focusing on internal training, fully adapted to their industry and their culture. His case study examples of real-world automobile parts simplification (seat belt attachment, air bag stitching, steering system hydraulic service and installation) showed how people with very small amounts of TRIZ training can make large improvements in both function and cost.

Darrell Mann brought his extensive research in product development together with his TRIZ experience to show the range of methods, philosophies, and systems that all need to combine in the toolkit of product developers. In one case, based on the time spent, TRIZ was 2% of a successful product development (packaged gravy—great case for after lunch!) and Darrell was challenging the audience to realize that they need to do much more than TRIZ.

Robert Adunka from Siemens (we're in more countries than any organizations except Coca Cola and the Catholic Church) showed the history and development of the propagation of TRIZ in their company, growing from a historical "invention on demand" process, through facilitated meetings, to the present TRIZ-based system, with structured training and projects. He illustrated their case study method with the story of a safety interlock system, which was the subject of a cost reduction and size reduction project, which started when manufacturing rejected the engineering design and engineering rejected the manufacturing design—what a contradiction! The audience was interested in the teaching and facilitating methods as well as the case study.

Prakasan Kappoth from Mindtree showed the use of substance-field modeling to analyze emotional conflicts in the workplace. This is a very creative use of the tool system, that could be very effective for people who need a structured, analytical approach to the management of groups of people.

Ron Fulbright from the University of South Carolina Department of Informatics demonstrated a project that he did with students, using "ideality-first" to evolve software requirements. The exciting news was that this is a precursor to a full graduate course in TRIZ. The team of professor and 2 undergraduates tackled the problem of how to design software to teach TRIZ-type thinking to elementary school students. Since they had no existing system to start with, they started by studying what kids think is "cool" so that they could emulate the best of the kid-friendly systems (no 7 year old goes to training to learn to use a toy!) They developed a model of the ideal system, that had all beneficial functions, then looked at available TRIZ software to understand the contradictions between adult and child-oriented systems. The product concept combines fun, "cool" and learning, as well as community—students can "talk" to others to combine ideas.

The after-dinner keynote speaker was Ben Berry, speaking about the Airship X-Prize—see the report from Sunday for details. He mesmerized the audience with the story of the competition for the prize, the design of both the vehicle and the open innovation method, and the results of the live TRIZ case study that we did on Sunday to help him with business and technical problems.

More tomorrow….

Day 2 concluded with a delightful dinner show—two "physics professors" who entertained and educated the audience with a fire tornado, bubbles that sink (breathe SF6 before blowing bubbles) and a fast-moving tour through tricks and games from buoyancy to Boyle's law.

Day 3 opened with a keynote address by Greg Yezersky, explaining the General Theory of Innovation, which is the result of his research over 20 years, starting with TRIZ and adding his extensive experience. Greg has an extensive website (www.ipinetwork.com) with tutorials on the method. The audience appreciated his presentation several ways—Greg's presentation of some of the standard TRIZ concepts is very helpful (Where do contradictions come from? Why does the law of ideality exist?) and TRIZ advocates for both companies and universities got many new examples of the critical need for innovation methodology.

Amir Roggel and Nikolai Khomenko

The program committee did an admirable job reshuffling the program, since several speakers did not show up (Ellen's editorial: Unless you have a communicable disease, or unless your family has a crisis, you should show up. If you submitted the paper to the conference, you made a commitment to the audience to present it and discuss it!!!! Saying, "Sorry, I have a business opportunity," is disrespectful of your colleagues—we all gave up time and business opportunities to be here.)

"TRIZ for Reverse Market Research" was presented by Bert Miecznik and Markus Glaser of the Wittenstein AG, makers of many medical technology products. We hope to publish this paper in the TRIZ Journal in the near future—they present both their application of TRIZ methods to understand all of the customers' needs and product features at an abstract level and then show a case study of using TRIZ for product development and TRIZ-guided patent searches to understand the competitive environment. The product is a bone growth system, so that children who have had bone cancers removed don't have to have repeated surgeries to replace bone substitutes as they grow. The double use of TRIZ advances both theory and practice.

Joe Miller and I did a study of the use of the Complete Technical System to define the problem to be solved—usually a big stumbling block for beginners. The presentation at ETRIA was aimed at other TRIZ teachers, so that they can help their beginners. The paper will be in next month's TRIZ Journal, but reading it is not as much fun as being at the meeting and discussing the system with other teachers and practioners!

To conclude the morning I went to "The application of TRIZ methodology in iron & steel making industry" by HeeChoon Lee of the Intellectual Property Group of the Posco Company of Korea. They combined TRIZ with Six Sigma analysis to eliminate the problem of the buildup of harmful deposits in the gas transport system of coal oven gas, which is used as an energy source. The case study demonstrates the use of Su-Field analysis, the 76 Standard Solutions, and the index of scientific effects in a very complex situation.

Claudia Hentschel, Hansjurgen Linde and Gunther Herr

After lunch, I hears about the development of a new artificial intelligence based software by Tiit Tiidemann from Estonia, "PRIZ" = "Program for solving engineering tasks." This is not yet integrated with TRIZ, but it points out situations where TRIZ should be applied.

Simon Dewulf did a dynamic and enthusiastic presentation in the last session of the afternoon showing some of the new patent analysis techniques that he is using for situations where people have resources and want new uses for them. (We have this machine—what else can we do with this?) He has also done extensive work on functional and input/output indexing for the invention list on the Creax "More Inspiration" website. (Free utility, start at www.creax.com.)

Gaetano Cascini chaired the membership meeting that concluded ETRIA—members should go to www.etria.net for the agenda and business meeting details. The good news for everyone is that the 2008 meeting is already planned for Nov. 5-8, hosted by the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Feedback and comments on these daily reports from both Monterrey last week and Frankfurt this week? Please use the comment utility at the end of this column, send me an e-mail (ellendomb@earthlink.net) or post in the discussion forum. Thanks!

The last item from Day 1 was a dinner speaker from the Congel company in Austria, showing food preparation–specifically the process for vegetable preparation for banquets, and the needs, and all the improvement opportunities that are available in the process. He showed an elegant small TRIZ case study that saved 10 out of 14 steps in vegetable preparation, and reduced by 80% the amount of butter used, improving both cost and health. Then, we found out that his company had catered the dinner, which was called Taste of TRIZ—we'll need to add taste and aroma to this website so readers can appreciate the dinner.

Frankfurt's famous bull and bear statues outside the stock exchange building, where the conference is located.

Day 2 started with parallel sessions. Since I am chairman of Session 2, there will be no report on session 1 this morning. First speaker was Meysam Maleki Anvar from the Iranian Institute of Innovation and Technological Studies. He had a first person report on his experience as an industrial engineer, using TRIZ methods to solve a problem in maintenance of manufacturing production line, and trying the Innovation Situation Questionnaire, the Problem Explorer, and the Function and Attribute Analysis methods to define the problem. The list of resources in the production environment, and the careful attention to non-material resources (fields, information, time, etc.) makes this an very useful teaching example.

Valeri Souchkov presented "Selecting Contradictions for Managing Problem Complexity" which was both a historical view of a primary TRIZ method and a tutorial on the modern approaches to the method. His hierarchy of selection criteria, based on ideality properties, will be very useful to people who confront realistic problems with complex relationships between the functions. The audience was most appreciative of the realism of Val's examples, particularly the distinction between causally related problems and independent problems in complex situations (train schedules, RFID luggage tagging, and wind turbine blade design.)

Pavel Jiman from the Technical University of Liberec in the Czech Republic reported on "Development of the Technological System Tool as a basis of TRIZ Prediction." He showed the difference between the traditional TRIZ use of the 9 screen method, starting at the system in the present (center of the box) and a more flexible system that starts at other points. He combines the 9 screens with the complete technical system (which I will also present tomorrow, and which will be in the December TRIZ Journal) and with the pattern of ideality increase, to predict changes in the technical system. The example of information display, and the video of interactive table displays and the glass manufacturing example were appreciated by the audience.

TRIZ Tools and Techniques session speakers (l-r): Valeri Souchkov, Meysam Maleki Anvar and Pavel Jiman.

The morning keynote speech was a departure from the TRIZ community, into the broader study of theories of technical evolution. Denis Cavallucci introduced Vincent Bontems, a philosopher, who introduced the audience to the work of Gilbert Simondon, developer of the theory and method of "mecanology." Simondon organized a hierarchy of drivers for technological change that is similar to the TRIZ concept of progress toward ideality—for example, a system with complex energy transfers is "defective" compared to one with simpler transfers, or no transfers. Examples range from vacuum tubes to diesel engines to Guimbal's turbine—Bontems made several observations about how unusual machine illustrations are in the literature of philosophy.

The afternoon session kicked off in 3 rooms—I'll bounce around and tell you what I see. Roberto Nani from Bergamo, Italy, attracted a large audience to hear "TRIZ tools to evaluate marketing strategy and product innovation: A new start-up case study of silicone technology." Patent portfolios in silicone are dominated by sealing methods, but the products of interest are consumer products for kitchen use. The novel TRIZ orientation is the separation of the intrinsic characteristics of silicone (water resistance, flexibility, moldable) from the extrinsic characteristics of a particular application, in order to analyze the relevant patents. Everyone enjoyed the case study of a flexible colander, with convex (rather than concave) bottom, so that the holes shrink under stress so that small pasta or rice does not pass through, but water does. The combination of the detailed patent analysis and a classical ARIZ approach to operational zone analysis and contradiction identification with a home kitchen example was very helpful.

Peter Schweitzer from Switzerland challenged the TRIZ community with "No Need for Methods?" He explored the psychology of groups and individuals, especially experts in research groups, and the many ways that they reject formal methodologies, even when the methodologies create breakthrough solutions for them. Extensive discussion (participants from Australia, US, Japan, Germany, Austria…) showed that this is a universal problem.

Sergei Ikovenko was wearing 3 hats this week—Gen3Partners, MATRIZ, and MIT, and made many indirect contributions to the program, since many of his former students are now featured presenters. His expertise in the technical issues of patent law and intellectual property development were of great interest to both the industrial and academic communities. Sergei started with the 5 strategies for revenue growth from Michael Treacy's book, Double Digit Growth, and illustrated patent strategies that enhance the revenue generating potential for each of those strategies. MPV-"Main Parameter of Value" analysis is a bridge between classical TRIZ, classical portfolio analysis, and new perspectives on market needs.

Claudia Hentschel fascinated the ETRIA audience with her presentation "Tracing unorthodox use: A TRIZ-related ideation method in systematic product innovation." She had a wide variety of examples over more than 150 years of situations where customers used products in ways never planned by the designer—the most remarkable statistic was that only 8 of 98 companies answered that they use data on unorthodox use, but 97 of 100 consumers say that they use products in non-conventional ways. TRIZ orientation helps break the "functional fixedness" pattern by helping you see the resources that are available in any product or system. TRIZ awareness of analogies helps you find the available alternate situations. Try it! Send your examples to the "Comments" section of this commentary—everything from using cola as a cleaning solution to using a paperclip as an antenna for a radio, to a Sony Playstation as an analysis device for blood analysis ….

Two sessions on the implementation of TRIZ picked up some of Peter Schweitzer's themes. Eckhard Schueler-Hainsch from Daimler and Martin Jandt from the Technical University of Berlin presented "The introduction and application of TRIZ in industrial business in Germany—an investigative study" and Jurgen Jantschgi presented "Joint Application of TRIZ in Groups of several companies in Austria: Approach and Case Studies of Cross-Company Workshop." Both statistical and observational data were analyzed. Key success factors included the expected (leadership commitment, open/fearless communication, personal and organizational interest in innovation) and the less expected (creation of cross-disciplinary and non-hierarchical teams, shared credit for new concepts).

Day 2 will end with a surprise social event, so I plan to post this commentary before, since this group has been known to drink, dance, and talk about TRIZ all night…

The main conference opened in the afternoon with greetings from the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce, and the joint sponsors, Dr. Rolf Herb from TRIZ Centrum and Prof. Gaetano Cascini from ETRIA. Gaetano announced that the membership meeting on Thursday will consider some opportunities to expand TRIZ by association with other organizations—any ETRIA members who are reading this should watch the ETRIA website for news.

Prof. Udo Lindemann from the Technical University Munich introduced both TRIZ and the Conference. The keynote talk by Prof. Lucienne Blessing from the U. of Luxembourg raised the question "Design methodologies: Blessing or Curse?" She has recently become the VP of the university, and reports the challenges of applying the concepts of system design to improving the programs of the university.

The afternoon technical sessions had 2 tracks. I was very happy to see the strength and depth of the contributions in both the academic and industrial tracks. Even though many of the industrial companies are not publishing their actual TRIZ applications for reasons of protection of intellectual property, it is very helpful to have their papers on how TRIZ is being introduced, propagated, and advanced in their companies. In this blog I'll be giving samples of the sessions I attended, which is an eclectic and personal choice.

"Trends of Toyota Production System Evolution TPS-TESE" by Dmitri Wolfson and Sergei Ikovenko used some of the well-known Toyota systems, such as Just-in-Time, Kaizen (continuous improvement) and Jidohka (defect detection, correction, and prevention by means of removing human work from machine work, and making machine work self-maintaining and self-correcting.) as examples for the Trends of Engineering System Evolution. The examples are excellent and will be useful to people in any industry who need illustrations of applications of TRIZ concepts to systems and methods, rather than to products.

"Lessons Learned in the Introduction of TRIZ at Siemens A&D" by Robert Adunka was both serious and entertaining. Robert had 2 years of stories of the internal company politics of the development of their "Patent on Demand" and "Invention on Demand" training methods. He taught a workshop every week for a year, to evaluate both the applicability of TRIZ to the product portfolio, and to test whether the workshop participants would use TRIZ after they had the training. They had excellent results both with problems solved, and with numbers of ideas generated and number of patents submitted. As a result, the course was reorganized into a hierarchy of four courses with a progression of tools, using both TRIZ and other methods (brainwriting, morphological box, mindmapping, DeBono methods, etc.) which are now being used widely. Robert showed a collection of photos of class project inventions that have made big improvements in manufacturing and assembly technology. More than 1000 people have had the beginner level training (1 day and 5 days) and the intermediate (5 days) and professional (15 days) classes will begin this year.

"Intel Corporation's Expert TRIZ Field Guide" by David Conley is a handbook that David developed in the course of taking TRIZ classes, to explain the system to himself. David gave us a view of the use of TRIZ at Intel—95% is applied to manufacturing process improvement, with the rest being business process and product oriented. The manual was needed because standardization and repeatability are cornerstones of the Intel culture—the 5 weeks of expert training, and 1500+ pages of training material can be overwhelming! He gave the audience many ideas about the kind of examples that make abstract ideas come to life for students in Intel, using a mix of concepts from daily life (coffee pots) and applications to proprietary technology. A delightful example ("ten minute consulting") showed how the 9 screen analysis found an improvement opportunity for human resource data management that has saved thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars in software development. The guide is internally published, but David's paper should make it possible for other people to write their own.

The conference Day 1 concluded with a second Keynote: "Innovation Management within Alstom Transport." Presented by G. Vendroux, Director of Innovation at Alstom, which makes a wide variety of transportation systems. He gave a history of their evolution from un-managed innovation to the management of innovation, and how learning to manage the transition from idea to implementation has been the key to financial success.

We then adjourned to dinner and a chance to talk about the day's papers, to see old friends and to make new friends—again I urge all our readers to plan now to attend at least one conference next year. TRIZ is a very open society—you will learn things, you will have the opportunity to share what you know, and you'll meet people who will help you along your TRIZ path.

Robert Adunka (Siemens) and David Conley (Intel) after their very popular papers were presented.

Today is the beginning of the European TRIZ Association TRIZ Futures 2007, in Frankfurt, Germany. Most sessions have either 2 or 3 simultaneous papers. See www.etria.net for the full program—I'll only report on the papers and sessions that I participate in. I'm starting the morning with Dmitry Kucharavy's tutorial session, "TRIZ Instruments for Forecasting: Past, Present, Future." Dmitry is a very experienced teacher, and it was a pleasure to see how he organizes the history and predicts the future of TRIZ, using the methods of TRIZ and his own experiences. He focused on the questions:

1. Is TRIZ a method?
2. What is the difference between a forecast and a prediction?
   1. Forecast- description of emergence, performance, features, and impacts of a technology in a particular point of time in the future, answering what, when, where and why questions.
   2. Prediction-statement made about the future, mostly qualitative, answering "what" and "why" questions. Dmitry used the very popular article by Gahide, TJ 2000 on yarn spinning as an example of prediction (what technology will happen) but not forecasting (no knowledge of when or where it will happen.)
3. Why do we need predictions?
   1. To plan science and technology resources
   2. To plan R&D resources
   3. To plan production and distribution and maintenance and service
   4. (Emerging) to plan recycling and disposal

He then introduced a new question, "Why do we need to forecast?" which was much less about detailed planning, and more about creating the vision of the future in both practical detail (anticipating and removing barriers, understanding socio-technical environments, recruiting participants) and in inspirational, aspirational modality.

The audience shared the tragedy/comedy of the discussion of classical management negligence of forecasting that leads to wasted efforts.

In the second half of the morning, Dmitry took us through a detailed history of the development of the TRIZ forecasting methods, and the evolution of the laws, lines, and patterns of evolution, and some of the difficulties that Altshuller had in getting the concepts of forecasting accepted within and outside the TRIZ community. Jim Kowalick's AFTER-96 method (one of the earliest TRIZ Journal publications) was used as an example of mid-stage development, along with Zlotin's Directed Evolution, Fey and Rivin's Guided Evolution, Shpaovsky's Evolutionary Trees and Mann's Evolutionary Potential Model (all familiar to regular TRIZ Journal readers) and other models such as WOIS and Moehrle's model that combine TRIZ with other systems. Dmitry's own work on making forecasting more quantitative was briefly demonstrated, and more research was promised. GREAT MORNING—Thanks, Dmitry!

(l-r) Dmitri Kucharavy (tutorial lecturer), Carsten Gundlach (conference organizer) and Gaetano Cascini (ETRIA president)

Part of the audience for the kick-off of the TRIZ Futures 2007 conference. More than 120 people from 40 countries will participate in the 3 days.

August-November have been very busy and interesting conference months. The TRIZ Journal will reprint some of the best papers from each conference (with thanks to the authors and the conference organizers) but I am a great believer in the benefits of personal interactions—make plans now to attend a conference next year! If you need to catch up on what the rest of the world has been doing, see:

• http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/ for Toru Nakagawa's report on the Japan TRIZ meeting
• http://www.innovatingtowin.com/innovating_to_win/2007/10/computer-aided-.html for Jim Todhunter's report on the Computer-Aided Innovation meeting (global participation, meeting in Michigan, USA) that featured a wide range of topics, from the taxonomy of knowledge to genetic algorithms for shape generators to automation of patent searches.
• Some of my commentary archives for reports on conferences I've attended and the archives of other commentators, too.

Day 2 ended with a dinner of local specialties and an excellent band—they played regional music from every region of Mexico and from Cuba and Chile to honor the home countries of some of the participants, on beautiful hand-crafted instruments.

Day 3 started directly with the technical papers, in 2 tracks. Professor Edgardo Córdova Lopez from Puebla presented a fascinating view of the use of TRIZ to overcome psychological inertia in the leadership of organizations. He showed how both the inspirational and the aspirational aspects of leadership both benefit from a TRIZ perspective. Many of his former students, now faculty at other institutions, also participated in the conference, showing the practical application of his leadership methods.

For example, Marysol Montes de Oca Basurta has done extensive work in cognitive psychology, and applied this research to an experimental study of how people solve problems. She had both technical scientific reports and personal observations of the people in the university (One chemistry professor was astonished that she wanted to study creativity of his students—"They are chemists!") A measurement process for creativity was established, using judges from each specialty field to evaluate the work in that field, based on the definitions popularized by Amabile. Students were given a design challenge (building a moving structure from toy parts) as well as tests of psychological motivation, and of their understanding of TRIZ, after five 3-hour classes. Measurement of motivation raised very serious questions—there was no grade and no requirement for the class, and it appears that the university environment destroys motivation. But the results of the practical class were very gratifying—without TRIZ many students did not even know how to start but with TRIZ, many different structures were built using the resources in many different ways. Future research will examine multiple issues of motivation, acquisition of knowledge, and the use of knowledge.

"STRATEGIES OF ENTAILMENT OF A PUBLIC CENTER OF INVESTIGATION WITHIN THE NATIONAL SYSTEM OF INNOVATION IN MEXICO" by Candelario Moyeda Mendoza and Dr. Arturo Serrano Santoyo (presented by Dr. Serrano) detailed the systematic way that is being used to promote innovation throughout the country. The scientific/technical work is done in CICESE agency research laboratories, and in collaboration with universities and industry. The agency acts as a catalyst in the formation of innovation centers and alliances between industry and education, and provides leadership in the development of intellectual property policies. Their goal is a systematic process for stimulating breakthrough innovation throughout the economy. Benchmark data for Mexico relative to Korea, Spain, and Chile showed the areas of work with high potential, but also emphasized the need for local cultural sensitivity and local economic knowledge. Local clusters of business and universities have been formed in the Ensenada-San Diego area, and the Puerto Peñasco-Phoenix-Tucson cross-border areas, with many innovation-development activities in each area.

In many conferences, such a paper by a government official would be greeted by polite applause, then the next speaker would stand up. NOT so here—there was considerable discussion, with some participants pointing out that they had been active in the study and promotion of innovation for years and had never before heard of the government efforts, which led to extended discussion during the break about how to make the programs more effective.

PYMES is Small and medium size businesses. "COMPUTER SCIENCE TOOLS FOR The SUPPORT OF INNOVATION IN The PYMES" by Rodriguez Gutiérrez emphasized the need for project management, with measurement and feedback, to keep projects moving. The unique needs of the small and medium businesses are the need for simplicity of the system, so that it can be useful without extensive training, and simplicity so that there is no expense of system administrators or maintenance. Without the simplicity, the system will fall into disuse, and the innovation projects will be delayed or cancelled.

"APPLICATION of the ISQ TO BREAK PSYCHOLOGICAL INERTIA IN a Non-TECHNICAL ATMOSPHERE: THE CASE OF THE I.T.S.T.N." by Maria Gabriela Perez Ramos and Maria Allondra de la Llave Hernandez presented an interesting perspective on a non-technical service environment (a university, including the faculty, administration, students, and staff, in the supersystem of the state of Puebla) with dysfunctional traditional hierarchical management, poor communication, and dissatisfied customers. They presented a comprehensive application of the Innovative Situation Questionnaire (developed by Ideation International) with considerable detail, to some amusement of the people from other universities who share their problems. They did an extensive analysis of the available resources in the system, with particular emphasis of the skills and attitudes of the people, information resources, and energy, as well as the physical resources. They emphasized that the main issue was NOT finding innovative solutions to the problem; the primary issue was disrupting psychological inertia so that the leader of the organization would be willing to accept change. Maria got the biggest audience reaction of the entire conference when she got to the question: Has any similar problem been solved? And the answer: yes, at another university, by changing the leader. The experiment was a success and the audience hopes for a second episode of the story next year, when they have implemented the changes, now that the initial resistance has been overcome.

"STRATEGY OF INTRODUCTION And APPLICATIONS OF TRIZ IN The CHILEAN MINING INDUSTRY" was presented by Pedro Sariego of the Universidad Tecnica de Federico Santa Maria. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the flowchart for the introduction of TRIZ that I developed with Jim Kowalick in the mid-90s (TRIZ Journal, October 1997) and then refined for the publication of Simplified TRIZ in 2002 was the foundation of the method that they have used. They selected the strategically important Division of the Andes, 200 km inland from Valparaiso, at a complex mineral concentration facility, for the pilot project. The case study required extensive modeling of the flow of materials, energy and information through the facility, which helped reveal the need for the application of ideality, of the use of scientific effects, and of specific technical and physical contradictions to the development of solutions. Changes in the stresses in parts of the processing machine (called the "digestor" if my translation is OK) resulted in more efficient processing and savings in material and energy. A second set of pilot projects applied TRIZ to giant earth-moving machines, again producing impressive gains. (OK, giant mining equipment is always impressive.) The success of the pilot project system has made it possible to get TRIZ accepted in the organization, and the students involved in the project will be taking those results to other organizations.

THE INTEGRATION OF QFD AND TRIZ IN ORDER TO ENHANCE SUGGESTION SYSTEM EFFECTIVENESS by Sedigheh Khorshid was the most surprising paper of the conference, since she traveled from Iran to Monterrey to participate. But, since we have a global tradition in TRIZ (I always felt that both Korea and California are important to the European meeting) there should be no surprise that Iran is now in "Iberoamerica." The emphasis on TRIZ in Professor Khorshid's program at the Shahid Bahonar University is in the solution of management problems. Her case study demonstrated significant improvement in both the submission of suggestions and the implementation of suggestions when the employees were taught QFD, to better understand the needs of their customers, and TRIZ, to formulate ideas that would satisfy those needs.Many organizations are recognizing the need for innovation by all employees. Enhancing existing suggestion systems by giving employees better skills for making suggestions can be a very fast way to get more benefits from the current system.

I2T2 is the program for innovation and technology transfer. Starting from a 10 minute discussion with Noel Leon 3 years ago, there is now a large university/ government/business joint venture to enhance innovation and technology in Monterrey. The power of an idea was visible in the photographs of the industrial park that is being developed to provide an environment that will be conducive to the development of a community of innovation.

The conference concluded with many good wishes for a successful year of innovation, and plans to meet next year in Guadalajara. I'll be meeting our readers much sooner than that, since I'll be reporting from the European TRIZ Association TRIZ Futures meeting in Frankfurt next week.

Readers are invited (begged!) to use the comment feature on this column, or the discussion forum, to let us know if these commentaries and conference reports are useful to you. Please!!!

Pictures of Monterrey and the surrounding mountains looking East and South from the conference center:

Buenas Dias a Todos (Good morning everybody) from the 2nd Iberoamerican Technological Innovation Congress in Monterrey Mexico. The main conference opened today with greetings and wishes for success from the university officials, the regional government of Nueva Leon, the federal government agency for promotion of innovation and the board of AMETRIZ (The Mexican TRIZ Association.) There is strong emphasis on the need for business to master innovation to compete in the world economy, and for the universities to learn how to teach innovation to serve their business customers.

The primary language of the conference is Spanish, with about 15% of the papers in English. Since I am participating in a panel discussion, as well as presenting a keynote speech and a technical paper, this will be a linguistic adventure—I read Spanish much better than I speak it!

I was honored to be asked to deliver the keynote address—getting me to talk about innovation in general, not just TRIZ, was a challenge. The audience appreciated the discussion of the need to innovate because of the changes in the world environment, and that there is equal need for innovation in business processes and in products and services. There was no problem meeting my self-imposed challenge of current research—all examples came from publications in October 2007, ranging from R&D Magazine to Fortune Magazine to the Harvard Business Review.

I picked Track 1 because of the variety of papers and presenters. The first, on "APPLICATION OF TRIZ, TO SOLVE A PROBLEM OF EXCESS OF SUPERFICIAL FOAM IN WATERY SOLUTIONS" was presented by Rafael Oropeza Monterrubio of Instituto Polytecnico de Mexico in collaboration Areli Gonzalez and with Claudio Matta at the Universidad Tecnico Federico Santa Maria in Chile. The foam problem affects a wide variety of chemical, pharmaceutical and food processing industries. The analysis showed clear interactions between 4 classical TRIZ contradictory parameters (productivity and loss of time get better, velocity and loss of substance get worse). Su-field analysis was used to understand the details of the functional interactions in the system. Application of pulsed acoustic energy and application of temperature control both eliminate the problem. The audience enjoyed the discussion of the problems of a $US 5000 investment required to implement the solution, which would save more than $200 per day, and how the company debated the investment.

"DEVELOPMENT OF A RECONFIGURABLE SYSTEM OF MANUFACTURE for EXTRUDED PIECES and PRODUCTS OF VARIABLE CROSS-SECTION" was presented by Rogelio de la Garza Giacomán, on behalf of his co-authors Mónica Vanessa Villa Otzuca, and Pablo Vicente Vargas Cortes, all from Tecnologic de Monterrey. The project goal was to develop a simple, light-weight system that did not waste material in the formation process. They started with direct use of the contradiction matrix and 40 principles, and found a breakthrough solution using the principle of segmentation, making the extrusion die have repositionable parts. Replacing mechanisms with fields (Principle 28) was explored, and gave useful ideas, but requires more research. The audience was impressed by the example of the complex shape that was produced by the dynamically reconfigured die.

"USE OF METHODOLOGY TRIZ, FOR THE CREATION OF A CAE PROGRAM GENERATOR FOR FUNCTIONS CAD-CAM-CAE-CAPP-CAQ" by Guillermo Flores Téllez, Tomas Flores Téllez, Elisa Arisbé Millán Rivera from the Universidad del Valle De Puebla, Consutoria e Integracion de Tecnologias, and CASDT, respectively. The specific problem that they addressed was the development of jigs and fixtures for production processes, which is a complex, repetitive process, which takes a large amount of time of skilled engineers. They used a broader spectrum of TRIZ tools than was demonstrated in the first 2 papers, including the Ideal Final Result, Function Analysis, and multiple modeling techniques as well as the identification and removal of contradictions. Guillermo surprised the group with a live demonstration measurement of human parameters of interaction with technology, and human persistence of behavior using 4 audience volunteers, emphasizing the need for data, not assumptions, as the basis for designing new systems. The Open Cascade Technology Public License system (similar in some ways to Linux, as a community development) was the enabling technology for building a library of reusable elements that can be quickly combined into the elements of the fixture design. He concluded with a beautiful display of simulations of gymnastics and various martial arts, all simulated using the software, showing the application to virtual design, as well as to the physical design of products.

The paper that I wrote with Joe Miller, "The Complete Technical System Defines the Problem to Be Solved" was very well received, and will be in the December issue of the TRIZ Journal. The audience was particularly interested in the hybridization of the 9 windows with the complete technical system, and the structured system of questions that generate specific, actionable problems.

The day concluded with a panel discussion about how to encourage the propagation of TRIZ in Mexico and Latin America. Everyone agreed that this is a desirable state, but that conventional methods used in the past for encouraging adoption of other new methods have been too slow, or ineffective, or both. The majority of the panel were academics with strong ties to local industry in each of their regions, so not surprisingly, many of the solutions featured collaborative work between academia and industry. The government agencies for the development of innovation will be featured on tomorrow's program, and it will be interesting to see if there are any differences between the two groups.

Readers can see the complete program of the meeting on the conference site http://www.ametriz.com/ so I won't list the papers that I did not see. The level of excitement is palpable—discussions during the coffee hour were about having a TRIZ for software conference in Jalisco, and next year's conference in Guadalajara (still under discussion, but a strong candidate!) and on the involvement of industry directly as well as in collaboration with universities.

(l-r) Guillermo Flores Tellez, Edgardo Cordova (chairman), Rogelio de la Garza Giacomán, Rafael Oropeza

Tuesday was the opening day of the Congress, in Monterrey Mexico, at the conference center of the University Autonoma de Nueva Leon. Amazing view of the city! More than 40 people participated in the tutorial sessions, with the distance prize going to Sedigheh Khorshid from Iran (she'll present a paper on day 3). The tutorial participants came for a wide variety of reasons—university professors of management and industrial design and engineering, university intellectual property managers, representatives of government agencies for the promotion of innovation and technology transfer, industrial experts in various improvement disciplines (six sigma, theory of constraints, quality management) and graduate students in a wide variety of disciplines.

I conducted an interactive workshop on some lessons learned about how to teach TRIZ to beginners—the photo shows a team working on the Titanic game. I emphasized the importance of the interactive learning model popularized in Ken Blanchard's work:

• Tell them
• Show them
• Let them try
• Give feedback

The class caught on very fast, and concluded the morning by making plans for how they will apply what they learned when they get back to work at the end of the conference.

Frequent TRIZ Journal authors Professor Noel Leon from Monterrey and Professor Edgardo Cordova from Puebla conducted the afternoon tutorials on applications of TRIZ for processes and an overview of TRIZ for beginners.

Last year the entire conference was in one session, so I was able to report on the whole program. This year, there are many more papers, so there will be 2 or 3 tracks at various times. I'll try to sample all the activities to let the Real Innovation and TRIZ Journal readers get a view of the exciting approaches to TRIZ in IberoAmerica.

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