Brainstorming and TRIZ

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By Brian Campbell

Brainstorming is rarely mentioned in TRIZ circles. There are startling similarities, however, between brainstorming and many TRIZ tools.

Composition of Brainstorming Team

The team will, of course, contain the problem owners and relevant experts. There should also be a person present who knows nothing about the problem and, ideally, who works in a completely different field. If it is technical problem get an accountant on the team. If it is an accounting problem, invite an engineer. The reason for this is twofold. First, the problem owner will need to explain the problem to the outsider in simple terms, forcing the owner to think carefully about the nature of the problem. The owner will need to set the scene properly and provide background information. (Without an outsider, there would be a tendency to launch straight into the problem and perhaps miss some vital background information.) Second, the outsider will look at the problem in a totally different way, without pre-conceived ideas or pet theories, and also will not be in competition with the experts. An outsider’s "simple" questions can lead to some embarrassing moments for the experts as they attempt to explain why they do the things they do – likely without much thought.

All Ideas Must Be Considered

Brainstorming must be carried out in an atmosphere free of criticism and judgment in the initial phase. People are encouraged to keep the ideas coming, get quantity not quality, and achieve as wide a range of ideas as possible. (The evaluation of ideas is carried out later.) This is required in brainstorming to increase the quantity of the ideas – because the solution might lie anywhere.

Excursion techniques

There will come a point when the ideas dry up. At this point the facilitator can ask "How would X solve this problem?" Person X must be known to all – try a famous film star, historical figure or someone in the news. The key is to try to get the members of the team to approach the problem from a different angle. It can also help to lighten the mood and so help the ideas to start flowing again.

Provocation

In this stage, turn the problem on its head. If the problem is reducing the waste on a production line, focus on how to make it worse. Quickly many aspects of the process will have been examined: each of the ideas is then evaluated and considered in turn with a mind toward improving the situation. For example, if we suggested removing temperature control we may decide to put it back. Without temperature control, though, what would we do differently? Do we really need it? The same problem is then approached from different angles.

An excellent example of provocation is a brainstorming session held on crime prevention. By turning the problem on its head – to make crime worse, someone suggested removing all the police. In the evaluation phase the question was asked: "If we have no police how can we reduce crime?" The answer? We would have to do our own policing. Thus was born the idea of neighborhood watch.

Where does TRIZ fit into all of this?

Composition of TRIZ Team

TRIZ is composed of tools and techniques from across all disciplines and industries. The many problem definition tools also ensure that the problem is properly defined and considered from many different aspects – 9 windows (the System Approach) particularly helps to define the problem well. Having non-experts on the problem-solving team is still worthwhile, but not essential.

All Ideas Must be Considered

If a trade-off is detected when defining the problem, the solution is within the 40 inventive principles. The brainstorming is then directed at a much more focused area – perhaps to choose which of the 39 parameters might apply. Once a sub-set of principles has been selected, each of them in turn can be brainstormed to determine how the principle can be used in practice.

If it is a Su-Field problem, then brainstorming can be applied to the specific principle required. If it is a knowledge-based problem, then brainstorming may help determine who has solved this problem before.

Excursion

Within TRIZ there are many thinking tools to aid the excursion process. For example: size-time-cost. What if we made the plant much larger, much smaller? What would change? What if we had more time? Less time? What if we had an unlimited budget? What if we had no budget at all?

Provocation

The use of Anticipatory Failure Determination (Sub-version Analysis) is a classic technique used to look at intermittent problems within a process, and based on how to make the intermittent problem a permanent one. If the right parameter is found to generate the problem all the time, then switching this parameter off should eliminate the problem.

Other Aspects

The Ideal Final Result is a useful topic for brainstorming. Different people would undoubtedly have different views and brainstorming would help all team members to share their ideas. The ideality equation would also be a useful subject for brainstorming – how can we improve benefits, increase the number of benefits, reduce costs and reduce harm.

Conclusions

Brainstorming techniques are useful, simple and powerful tools. They can be used to increase the effectiveness of TRIZ by helping to bridge the gap between the general solution and the specific. The combination of the rigor of TRIZ with the inspiration of brainstorming is a powerful combination.

About the Author:

Brian Cambell is a physics graduate who spent 23 years in research and development within the glass industry. He came across TRIZ in late 1999 and has since attended several courses read widely on the subject. Campbell has used TRIZ to solve many real problems and is keen to see TRIZ more widely adopted in the United Kingdom. He is the moderator of TRIZ U.K., an email-based discussion group. Contact Brian Campbell at campbellbri (at) yahoo.co.uk.