The Altshuller Institute is a 501(c) (3) Non-Profit organization that exists for the benefit of those who:

We are the only organization officially authorized by Genrikh Altshuller, the founder of TRIZ, to use his name. TRIZ (pronounced treez) is the Russian acronym for the "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving."  TRIZ is a powerful methodolog, based on empirical data, that can provide solution concepts for a wide range of technical and non-technical problems.

Karthikeyan Iyer

 

Today’s enterprises are increasingly dependent on innovation, not just to fuel growth but also to differentiate and survive in highly competitive environments. Enterprises feel the need for a structured process to manage the inherent complexity of innovation. Traditional approaches such as idea management funnels and stage-gate approaches are proving difficult to sustain and scale.

Studies have estimated that only one out of 3000 raw ideas (unwritten) or 300 submitted ideas makes it to eventual success. At each stage gate, decision makers select the ideas to be taken forward and identify the ones to be kept on hold or discarded. By applying TRIZ, we can take inspiration from living systems – cells, organisms, ecosystems, organizations, societies etc. to manage our complex systems better.

 

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Inside TRIZ

December 2011

 

Tony McCaffrey

 

An important aspect of TRIZ problem solving is noticing the resources needed to resolve contradictions. “Resources are things, information, energy, or properties of the materials that are already in or near the environment of the problem” (Rantanen & Domb, 2008). Because of the way we humans process information, however, we tend to overlook many possible resources. The normal processing of our perceptual and semantic systems leads us to notice the typical resources for the problem at hand. The typical is the enemy of innovation; whereas, the atypical, or the obscure, is innovation’s friend. But what techniques can help counteract our propensity for the typical and help us uncover the obscure? After devising an extensive taxonomy of possible types of resources, we have created and tested a set of techniques, the Aha! Toolkit, that helps uncover the obscure resources. Even though our set of techniques is only a year old, it has already been used to solve several difficult engineering problems. Further, it can assist TRIZ with problems that involve contradictions but will also work with problems involving no contradictions. We present our new cognitive theory of innovation as well as the techniques that help humans see the often-invisible obscure resources.

 

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