TRIZ is a powerful means of stimulating and focusing creativity, in all fields, based on a complete analysis of all human innovation.
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TRIZ is a truly amazing resource for stimulating all forms of innovation. It is the result of research into the global patents database to identify the core inventive principles which underpin innovation. But its insights apply also to much softer disciples such as leadership.
How TRIZ works
Genrich Altshuler, a Russian Patent Agent, initiated the research (and the idea of TRIZ) shortly after the Second World War. And from the extensive analysis conducted to date it has transpired that there are only forty core inventive principles. Forty, across all disciplines.
Initially this seems shocking, incredible, even unbelievable. But as you look at the principles, you can see how they echo across different fields. Each one cropping up in so many different ways. And then it all begins to make sense. The fact is, all innovation, across all disciplines and registered patents, are essentially derivations and interpretations of those forty.
This has tremendously positive implications for those seeking to identify novel ways forward. New innovations – in any field – far beyond technical and scientific applications. Patents are essentially technical. But the innovative concepts they reflect are broader in nature. These concepts are also metaphors for similar innovative leaps in social and business settings. In other words, TRIZ also represents a powerful tool for transforming leadership and organisations.
Furthermore, TRIZ is an open source (and thereby ‘free to use’) methodology. A public resource to identify which inventive principle is most likely to address any particular problem
The core process of TRIZ
The core process of TRIZ consists of three steps, the second of which is supported by a helpful, free to access, database:
- Understand the contradiction or compromise which you wish to overcome
- Find the most productive innovative principle(s) at addressing that conflict
- Use the principle(s) as a springboard to develop new creative ideas. This is probably by means of other creative tools applied to that principle – such as brainstorming.
These steps are each based on a basic precept, and are explained in more detail below:
Understand the contradiction or compromise
The first precept is that all innovation/creativity is actually, at its root, a new way to solve a compromise between two desires that are in contention with each other; that an innovative idea is a previously unrecognised solution that gets round the compromise by the addition of another concept.
Let us explore this precept in a bit more detail. We will take a pane of glass as an example. What determines the thickness of a pane of glass? Actually it is a compromise. We would like to make a pane of glass thin so that it is light. And also so that it lets through as much light as possible. But also we would like to make a pane of glass thick. This will enable it to take the impact of a football kicked at it by an over-exuberant child.
Our problem is that if we make it thin enough to be really light, it might not even resist an over-exuberant fly. And if we make it thick enough to withstand the baseball, our window frames shear off their hinges with the weight. And so we compromise, 4mm, still a bit heavy, but able to withstand a wayward bird in flight.
creativity arises when we seek to avoid compromise
But say we did not like that compromise. Say we wanted to be both light and strong. What new concept could break through this compromise so that we could have both? How about lamination?
Actually, the more we think about it, the more we realise a fundamental truth: All need for creativity is actually an unwillingness to accept a current compromise. And we can see what that compromise is when we think about existing solutions. And we analyse what they are trying to provide, and how they fall short.
Take air-travel and seat pitch for example. Basically this is a compromise between the number of passengers and the degree of comfort they experience. We increase one at the expense of the other. Unless we can find a concept which enables us to come up with a new innovative solution.
Find which innovative principle(s) address that
The second precept is that the answers which have enabled progress over previous compromises are actually based on a limited number of concepts; concepts which can be seen repeated in all different fields, sciences, technologies, but in different ways.
For instance: telescopic aerials; Trojan horse viruses; Russian dolls; stacking chairs; certain types of gene therapy; subliminal messages; parables. These are all based on the same idea of delivering or storing one thing inside another.
Once you identify the concept, you can generate all sorts of ideas to make it work. And the fascinating thing is that there are only 40 basic concepts. And these form the basis of literally millions of patents across hundreds of different disciplines.
Use the principle(s) as a springboard
The third precept is that some concepts are better at resolving certain conflicts/compromises than they are at solving others. And that, for each compromise, there are five or less productive concepts (and sometimes only one or two). Inventive principles which have proven effective in breaking through the compromise in the past.
Now that is not to say that at some point somebody might not find a solution using a different concept. But it does mean that the vast majority of new innovations addressing this conflict will be novel and creative adaptations of the innovative principles that have been successful in the past. (Please note, the innovative concept is not an idea or solution. It is simply the springboard that helps you identify likely ideas or solutions; it is the principle which is common to past successful ideas.)
This can be a bit difficult to accept. We have the temptation to believe that we don’t want to be bound by history. But what we are talking about here is the difference between looking for potatoes in a potato field, or looking for potatoes in a wheat field. As Damon Runyon put it: “The race is not always to the swift, not the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet”.
The benefits of TRIZ
TRIZ does not deliver solutions to you. But let us imagine all of the possible ideas that we could conceivably brainstorm (most of which are not going to be effective) as a great big park. Then what TRIZ does is take us to a few small areas of the park which are likely to be the best places to play in. Some of which we might not even have realised are in the park in the first place. The resources listed below provide the structure by which this happens. But many of the principles therein have been rolled up into a useful little tool by Oxford Creativity.
Supporting tools
It is over 70 years, since the core concepts of TRIZ first formed. Since then the general approach to TRIZ has been augmented by other useful tools. Most of these tools have arisen in other aspects of problem solving, and are therefore useful in their own right. These include brainstorming; thinking in time and scale; reversal, and ideality, among others. These tools have been incorporated into the TRIZ toolkit, but it is important to understand that they are not actually TRIZ
Can TRIZ really work on organisational issues?
TRIZ was originally based on Patents, most of which are scientific or technological. However, we propose that it helps in looking for solutions which are business, organisation and culturally premised. Can we really make such a big leap?
That question takes us to a fourth precept. The precept that a lot of the issues that we face in business have technological or scientific analogies. If we can find these analogies, then we can use TRIZ to highlight start points for solving our organisational issues. TRIZ has proven to be a productive tool in stimulating productive thought around organisational issues. And that, after all, is nothing more or less than what we ask of all our other creative tools. TRIZ is simply a tool, not a recipe for assured success. But as a tool, it is remarkably effective.
All that remains is that people learn to use it with skill and confidence.
Further TRIZ resources
Further TRIZ information can be found via Oxford Creativity’s TRIZ site: https://www.triz.co.uk or simply by searching TRIZ on the web.
You can download a number of PowerPoint templates, which help to support application of the tool, below. However, we would alert you to the fact that you may be best getting a good understanding of the tool before you attempt to use it.
The templates can be printed off (at any size) for use in Physical meetings, or uploaded to suitable meeting or collaboration software so that it can be used in virtual or asynchronous meetings.
Source: FotoSceptyk under Creative Commons from Wikimedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:40_principles_of_TRIZ_method_225dpi.jpg
Author: Mike Clargo | Culturistics
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