Our friends at TRIZIndia have started a podcast series that will be both a tutorial on TRIZ methods and a discussion of how to teach an apply those methods in real situations in real companies. It is free and easy (no passwords, no registration process.) Try the first one on Ideal Final Result at http://trizindia.podbean.com/

The announcement said, "Everyone, We have started a podcast series on basics of TRIZ tools. Please give your feedback on the series. We will reach out to some of you to participate in the podcasts. You can also reach out to Murali Loganathan, Shankar Venugopal, Prakasan K or me, Bala Ramadurai to include you to participate in the podcasts." So I sent my positive feedback on the first recording, and asked Bala for the story behind the production. It is a very good example of the use of existing resources, and use of the supersystem resources in particular.

"Podcast was one of those ideas which came to me when I was stuck in Bangalore traffic and I thought this is the best resource to listen to podcasts. So, I listened to Getting Things Done podcasts streaming from my cellphone to the car stereo. One fine day, it hit me that TRIZ should have a podcast of our own. Instead of dismissing the idea, I wrote it down at the next light :-) next action - talk to Murali to find out if he was interested and then Shankar signed up. Murali couldnt make it, since he had to be in the other MindTree Office and Shankar said his daughters weren't doing well. I was hell-bent on recording the podcasts that very day or it would become one more of ideas which never lifted off. (Time = 0 in Size-time-cost, I guess).

"Murali quickly booked an audio bridge and we had Shankar dial in as well. We did a trial run on my cellphone (which doubled up as a digital recorder). It seemed to play my voice well, but drowned Shankar's and Murali's voices. Now, optimization time and I had the parameters perfect. One hitch though, since this was universality at play, my cellphone went off and disrupted the recording. Learning for next time, change the mode of the phone to Offline before starting to record.

"Again, my condition was simple for post-production - only one step to upload, no intermediate steps. Due to the cut in the recording, Murali had to struggle with formats and freeware, finally he managed to merge the 2 files. What format do we use to upload? wordpress wanted mp3, but some size limitation. Facebook wanted mp4, only 20 minutes, tumblr, youtube, we tried them all, none worked. Prakash to the rescue, podbean was the instant suggestion and turned out just fine. Prakash also managed to embed the player on trizindia.org."

Now that you know the story, please join TRIZ Journal commentators and authors by listening to the podcasts, send your comments, and volunteer to be recorded.

IRI Meeting-I was priveleged to present a workshop on TRIZ problem solving at the annual IRI meeting in Philadelphia this year and was able to attend a number of very interesting presentations from senior executives from materials and service industires. I'd like to report on several of these presentations.

Joe Miller, Exectuive VP and Chief Technology Officer of Corning, discussed how Corning had dealt with two major business "earthquakes"--the bursting of the "dotcom" bubble and the recession of 2009. He shared ways of adjusting to the "new normal" and the discipline that Corning used to stick to its knitting and what it knew how to do better than anyone else. From the depth of the bubble burst in 2002 to 2010 their sales grew from $3 to 6.8 Billion, net profit after taxes from (-)400M to 3.3B and free cash flow from (-)700M to 2.8B.A key decision made was to centralize core capabilities and reduce the number of laboratories. Many other companies "globlized" R&D around the globe. While refocusing and preserving their core capabilities, they focused on tough problems where their product was a "system enabler" with demanding requirements and also requiring specialized capital with strong intellectual property and selling into critical markets with high selling prices.

Two of the products he mentioned as having been born from this focus included ClearCurve(TM) fiber and Gorilla Glass(TM) for consumer devices. The holy grain for Corning is thin, strong, damage resistant glass. He made mention of the fact that doing work at 2300C (melting point of glass) is expensive. This means that R&D is expensive, but it also means not everyone can do it.

Learnings that he passed on to his listeners:

1. Constant balancing of the R&D portfolio if required. 5-10 years (new businesses) with "adjancencies" (2-4 years out) and support of on going businesses (1-3 years out). There will be tension. Recongize and deal with it.
2. Very early stage R&D is expensive and risky and must be supported by corporate, not on going business, funds. Giant leaps are risky. R&D must have independence
3. Explore multiple avenues, not just the obvious one
4. Mistakes happen. Learn from them.
5. Know who you are and what your recipe is.
6. R&D is a social activity
7. Need multipe input of ideas
8. Involve all the functions in the process
9. Need different talents at different stages of a project and product development
10. R&D peole are different. Deal with it.
11. Success requires will, patience, and guts
12. Business silos must be minimized

Martin Apple, President of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents presented some interesting global data comparing the US in a global context.

1. China's generation of science degree holders is exploding while the rest of the world is nearly flat.
2. There is no more separate "learing". Learning is the job.
3. We are at risk of species degradation without control of CO2 emissions
4. WIth 6% of the world's population, we use 25% of its energy. We have to move away from the strategy of take, make, and waste.

Dr. Jacomo Corba, Chief Scientist, Quantum Black, made some interesting observations about using communication to design organizations. He suggested using comuncation tracking within a company to see how it really functions (as opposed to what the org charts say). Visuallizing this can create an eye opening experience.

In the same week in the Wall Street Journal, we see two interesting and diverse examples of how information can transform a major industry and a household hobby.

In hospitals, blood tests are routinely ordered by phsyicians who rarely ask about the cost. They are simply "passed on" to "somebody" (insurance companies, patients, government). In an interesting experiment at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, researchers, after developing an accurate baseline of daily per patient costs for two common blood tests, complete blood countand total chemistry panel. They then started a program with daily announcements to surgical staff, about the costs of the tests. Over an 11 week period, costs dropped from around $150/patient to about $110/patient. The experiment included no orders to change any tests. Total savings amounted to $55,000!

In their May 12 issue, the WSJ also reported on the impressive number of new sewing machines (yes, sewing machines!--sales up 22% in 2010 over 2009) that are using smart phone features such as smart screens, USB ports to transfer images, and sewing speeds up to 1100 stitches per minute. Part of the driving force here is cost savings to the consumer for high end dresses and embroidery.

So, information is the key to high quality in both healthcare and sewing machines. Here are the questions for you:

1. What information do you wish you had? Is it available for breakthrough innovation? How can you access it? Make it accessible? How much could you save if you had it? A 30% reduction in blood test costs and sewing speeds going from under 100 to over 1000 stitches per minute are not incremental improvements!
2. What information is your "system" (that includes your customers) generating that you are totally unaware of? What is involved in capturing and using it? What would be the impact?

You may have seen the new commercials from Progresive Insurance offering to discount your rates if you put a small camera in your car to observe your driving habits. Now there are privacy implications here, but the point in all these examples is that information, as it becomes cheaper to collect and disseminate, offers some breakthrough innovation possibilities

Leaders in European Union, India, China, USA and many other countries have been asking for more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) graduates in order to drive more innovation. We also know that there are unemployed STEM professionals. Simply training more STEM professionals may add to the pool of unemployed STEM professionals. Is STEM education necessary and sufficient condition for innovation?

I do notice that many new concepts and technologies are developed by many STEM professionals with Ph.D. level education. Most of these discoveries are for long term benefits. I also notice many STEM graduates with BS and MS level education doing rote jobs, and are unable to contribute their intellectual best. There are many Ph.D. graduates, who have not discovered a whole lot, and there are many BS and MS educated professionals who have innovated very successfully. There are even college dropouts who turned out to be some of the most successful innovators and entrepreneurs. The question arises, "Is STEM education enough for driving innovation?"

Around 2003, I came across the opportunity to learn moe about innovation. During my interview with Bob Galvin for my book Business Innovation in the 21st Century, he mentioned that when he was asked by one of his professors to think of creative ideas, he had no idea how to think creatively. As an educator and consultant, teaching innovation was my main purpose of my first book on innovation because I observed that most creative solutions or products introduced by STEM or non-STEM professionals failed in the field as evidenced by success rate of new products.

I have also experimented with teaching creativity to people ranging from 10 years to about 70 years of age, and have found similar potential for innovation. It is great to see beautiful minds in action because they all manifest unique attributes. In an interview with Sir Harold Evans, the author of They Made America, I learned that he agrees with the concept of education in innovation because innovators possess special innovation skills irrespective of their education, STEM or no-STEM.

I believe STEM education needs be supplemented with education in innovation in knowledge economy. We must consider STEM plus. What do you think?

Vladimir Petrov is asking for help from our readers for a new project. His TRIZ Journal articles have been very helpful to many people learning TRIZ, so it is a great privilege to use this column to help him get feedback from readers to advance his research.

He said, " I continue to adapt tools and concepts of TRIZ for IT. Now I am trying to adapt the inventive principles and matrix."

Petrov sent the following questions to ask for opinions from the TRIZJournal readers:

1. Please would you think what parameters out of Altshuller's 39 parameters cannot be used in IT engineering systems?

2. With what parameters they can be substituted and what parameters should be added or removed?

Please post your answers in the Comments section at the end of this commentary, or send them directly to Vladimir vladpetr (at) netvision.net.il (I'll post my comments later this week, so that they don't bias other people's answers.) Thanks in advance for your help.

Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI), a consortium dedicated to the development and implementation of a more sustainable system for designing, producing, remanufacturing, and recycling electronic devices at Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign is hosting the second annual symposium. John Pflueger, Principal Environmental Strategist at Dell, was the keynote speaker on the first day. Additional speakers included William Hoffman, UL Environment, Andrew Steckl, University of Cincinnati, Charles Newman, ReCellular, Courtney Rushforth, City of Urbana, Bill Olson, Motorola, Manish Mehta, National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, and Alex Lobos and Callie Babbitt, Rochester Institute of Technology. I also presented at the symposium bringing a different perspective to the sustainability initiative, emphasizing modular architecture, and consumer designs in an open source software and hardware environments.

There was a significant discussion about recycling and certifications for energy savings at the symposium. Willie Cade, CEO of PC Rebuilders and Recyclers even started an interesting discussion about the definition of 'waste' that can be a relative term as ones waste could be other's profit through repurposing or reusing. Thinking in more general terms, I personally realized that electronics waste is a state of material that should be considered for its transformation into next state through better planning, designs and consumer behaviors.

Topics included environmental toxicology, life cycle analysis, product design, existing and proposed policy, and more. Designers, electrical engineers, chemists, materials scientists, electronics manufacturers, recyclers, refurbishers, and remanufacturers, government representatives and policy makers, pollution prevention technical assistance providers, relevant non-profit organizations and others are present at this symposium.

It is interesting to note that many recycling and refurbishing operations are innovatively repurposing electronics waste. However, we need more pro-active approaches deployed by OEMs to reduce eWaste through well thought-through product portfolios. I would love to hear readers' views on reducing eWaste.

What's the first thing you think of when you think of the state of Wyoming? Yellowstone Park? Ranches and cattle? Coal mining? Natural gas? Open space? Mountains? Did you thnk COLD? It may not be the coldest place in the US, but parts of it are close to the coldest in the winter. Unless you're a skier, this may not seem like an attractive feature, but to whom might it be with a serious commercial aspect? When is cheap cold a good deal?

Well, many traditional industries such as oil refining and chemicals generate large quantities of heat during thier processing and this heat must be removed to enable safe operation and production of usable products. The most heavy concentrations of these industries are in places like Texas, Oklahoma, and Lousisiana where the raw materials are located. But what industry generates huge quantities of heat that doesn't necessarily require a specific location for raw materials? Data processing centers!

In a fascinating Wall Street Journal article, March 8/2011, pA3, reporter Stephanie Simon describes a concerted effort by the state of Wyomng to attract data centers (and their relative high paying high tech jobs) to the state. As a basic refresher for those of you who didn't go through physics or thermodynamics, the amount of surface area in a heat exchanger and the amount of cooling fluid required is directly proportional to the temperature difference between the hot fluid and the incoming cooling fluid. If a data center computer is rejecting heat at 120F for example, the difference between the cooling medium being 70F vs. 100F can change the capital cost of the cooling equipment by a factor of 2! On the Gulf Coast, it is not possible to use air as the sole cooling medium saving the cost and environmental impact of water use. However, when the air is constantly below 80F and of low humidity, it allows air instead of water (or refrigerants) to be used.

This effort is analogous to the use of braking waste heat to recharge batteries in hybrid cars.

What does your list of "negative" things look like? In what way might it be a positive?

Wyoming is cool!

Some of the most popular articles in this "commentary" column are the reports from TRIZ conferences around the world. I frequently encourage readers to participate in conferences, because the exchange of information face-to-face is a far richer experience than reading the formal papers from conferences, and we need all kinds of experiences to continue to develop TRIZ.

Regular TRIZ Journal and Real Innovation authors can't get to all the conferences. We need volunteers to write reports so that our whole community can benefit! Likewise, the conferences need new authors and new audiences to expand the growth of TRIZ. Here's a partial list of conferences and dates, so you can start planning to write a paper, to participate, to attend, and (hopefully!) to write a report for this column. If you know of any that I have missed, please use the "comments" feature of this column to tell everybody.

This week: Korea Global TRIZCON. Same time next year, possibly joint meeting with Taiwan
May: Systematic Innovation Society (Joint meeting, Taiwan and Peoples Republic of China) Shanghai
May: Altshuller Institute TRIZCON, tentatively in Houston
July: MATRIZ, TRIZ Developers Summit, Russia
July: TRIZIndia Summit (abstracts due NOW!)
September: Japan TRIZ Association
October: US National Innovation Conference and "mini" TRIZCON, Dayton OH
October: Malaysia TRIZ Association
November: European TRIZ Association TRIZ Futures Conference, Dublin Ireland (abstracts due soon for short papers)
November-December: Iberoamerican Innovation Congress, organized by Ametriz, Mexico

Many other conferences are held at various times throughout the year: Italy, Israel, France, TRIZ Centrum (German-speaking countries), Iran, UK, and others. Please encourage the organizers to list them in the Calendar section of the TRIZ Journal and Real Innovation so that all of us can decide how to both contribte to and benefit from face-to-face learning.

Understanding and "seeing" things we can't see is a holy grail in a number of technical areas. Vibration tells us a lot about what might be going on inside a piece of mechanical equipment. X-Rays tell us about our body structure. MRI's are used to image organs, soft tissues, and flow through them.

Well, what about jet engines? From a thermodynamic standpoint, we want them to run as hot as possible, but if they run too hot, the metals can melt and catastrohpic failure can result. Blade tips are cooled to just below their failure point to maximize efficiency while protecting the blade from melting. But how do you measure accurately the fluid mixing? Sound like something that an MRI should be able to do? Well, Col. Michael Benson, a Ph.D. student in mechnical engineering at Stanford is studying the use of MRI imaging to analyze flow patterns around jet engine metal surfaces.

See http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-jet-hot-mri.html for the entire write up.

If this sounds similar to the parallel universes described in a previous column (Dec 6) regarding fluid flow in the human body and the flow of oil and gas, it's because it is! The fact that accurately measuring flow mixing in jet engines is important is not new. The fact that we have been using MRI as a flow measuring technology in medicine for decades is also not a secret. Why does it take so long for one area of industry or science to see the parallel universes that might assist it? Is it ego? To illustrate my point, I just typed in "jet engine cooling" into a web search and got 8.5 million hits. Typing MRI into the search box, I get 5.8 million hits. But when I type "MRI jet engine cooling", I get less than 150,000 hits (including the article mentioned above). Isn't that interesting? Depressing? It makes me wonder if GE, who makes both MRI equipment and jet engines, has thought about this before? If so, why would a Stanford grad student be working on it rather than a GE patent already having been issued? Has anyone seen such a patent or publication? If the grad student didn't study the patent literature, then shame on him. But if this is news to GE......can anyone enlighten us?

It still amazes me how few new problems there really are. You are never alone and the problem you have is never unique.

In recent discussions about an upcoming workshop for the Management Division of AIChE in Minneapolis, I got into a discussion about networking and the use of psychological assessment tools in assisting employees with job searches and transitions. I guess I am a bit old fashioned as I believe that enjoying and surviving your new position is more important than finding it in the first place.

The ease with which it is possible, with a few key strokes, to find out about virtually any job opening anywhere in the world is truly amazing. Even the old fashioned head hunters are using LinkedIn(R) and other web resources to identify candidates. These sites and personal resume postings tell a great deal about the technical background, work experience, and academic credentials of an individual as well as the technical needs of the position. Obviously these things have to match as a minimum. But people have preferred styles of behavior and organizations have cultures. The words we see so often, such as "team player" don't tell us much about what's needed to be a team player. These words also suggest that there is no need for differing opinions. Is this really what an organization wants?

There are well established tools for measuring a person's style and approach to relationships and problem solving. Though my two favorites are the Myers Briggs (or one of its spin-offs) and the Kirton KAI(R), there are others including Fyro B(R) and HBDI(R). The amazing thing I have observed over the years is that though many people have taken these assessments, less than 10% of the people I meet remember what their characteristics are, and even fewer have done anything serious with the information. I have to ask myself why do people bother to take these assessments if they don't intend to learn from them?

When changing jobs, when moving to a different job within the same company, or joining an innovation team, these assessments can tell us a great deal about the stresses and changes that may be required to work with someone different than ourselves and how we might assemble teams to accomplish certain tasks. The preferences summarized in these assessments are very hard wired in us and are unlikely to change over time. We can be someone "different" for a short time with some stress, but being someone different for a long period of time is a recipe for personal disaster. So if you're networking on the web for opportunities, or joining a new innovation team, ask yourself whether what you see and read tells you what the culture is within the organization. Ask yourself if the "style" you use for innovating is going to be acceptable within a new organization ore within the team. If you see and sense stress, then have an open disscussion about those differences and discuss the value of different approaches to problems. Don't bury the differences--use them pro-actively!

Yesterday I had a conversation with a TRIZ/lean/six sigma consultant, who told me with some excitement about his new project, digital book publishing. I was glad to hear his enthusiasm, but astonished when he told me that the book is ABOUT applications of TRIZ, but that he didn't use TRIZ to solve any of the problems he had during the project. My question: What about "I want to deal with Amazon, I don't want to deal with Amazon?" prompted his reply "Wow, I never thought about using the simple clarity of TRIZ to help me with my own business. Wow!"

That's the stimulus for this column: do you recognize TRIZ "situations" in your daily life? Here's a guide to recognizing TRIZ opportunities, and what to do about them. I wrote this for managers who had modest (sometimes no) TRIZ training, so they could encourage their employees to use TRIZ, but I've found lots of people who need this advice - - think of this as the new, empowered workforce, who get no help from supervisors!

So, listen for the "trigger phrases" (it doesn't matter if you say them to yourself, or if you hear other people say them), then have the "discussion" (same comment - - either talk to yourself or to the other person!)

Trigger	Tool	Discussion
X gets better but Y gets worse	Tradeoff	1. What assumptions are being made about the linkage between X and Y? What could be done to eliminate the linkage? 2. Consider the Contradiction Matrix. Could X and Y be expressed in terms of the matrix? 3. Try using the 40 principles
We want Z but we don't want Z	Inherent contra-diction	1. What assumptions are being made about Z and not Z? 2. Try the 4 separation principles
Solutions are proposed for a problem, but the solutions are very complex	Trimming, Resources	Let's look at the functions that this solution is trying to provide. Maybe we can use the resources in the problem to provide those functions
A problem is being discussed, but the emphasis is on the complexities, not on why the problem has to be solved. OR the customers' needs are not visible in the discussion	Ideal final result, ideality, function analysis.	Let's try to simplify this discussion by looking at the problem in terms of ideality. Let's list the benefits (use QFD-customer oriented language for this), the costs, and the harmful factors, then we can decide if we want to work on one of them, or if we want to work on an Ideal Final Result (all benefit, NO cost or harm). [Note that function analysis may be necessary in order to clarify the issues]
A problem is presented for solution, but it is really a collection of symptoms	Root Cause Analysis	In TRIZ this is called "understanding the zones of conflict." Use whatever systems you have for root cause analysis��"it is a waste of time to try to solve a problem that you don't understand.
We want to do ABCD to solve this problem, but we don't know how (or "the laws of science say it can't be done")	Effects/ bench-marking	Use TRIZ function language in order to search for the somebody, somewhere who has solved this problem in different circumstances for different reasons.
A specific function needs to be improved or eliminated	Su-field analysis, 76 Std.	Start with function modeling and the desired change, pick the type of change, and go to the section of the 76 Standards that deals with that type of change (system must stay the same, additives are permitted/not permitted, etc.)
This problem is complex and we have no idea where to start	System operator (also called 9 windows)	Either go to the full method, and start working through the full analysis of the problem, or, if much of that has been done, go to the System Operator tool and consider solving the problem at different levels of system, sub-system, super-system, or in a preventive or corrective mode. See also the OTSM discussions
Great news, we have multiple solutions to the problem, but we don't have time (or other resources) to test them all	Ideality and Pugh matrix	Ideality: eliminate the solutions that are not very ideal (or improve them before doing any more work.) Pugh matrix: let's combine the best of the ideas into a small number of very good solutions before we go any further.

Three days to go to shoot my second hole-in-one during the same year! It's possible. I know. Two golfers at my golf club each shot two hole-in-ones this year.I've been surprised at the innovation lessons learned from this thrilling experience.

Let me share three with you.

1. "Lynda, you must be thrilled." "I'm thrilled for you." "How thrilling." I was congratulated over and over again by people who used these words--thrilled or thrilling. And, it was thrilling. I believe this describes exactly the spontaneous response we should get from team members, colleagues, customers, friends, and family when we finally get a new idea to work! There's a level of genuine enthusiasm for the accomplishment. It's one way to measure success.
2. While I was enjoying lunch at the club a few months later, a fine young man at another table got up, came over to our table and introduced himself. He asked me if I was the lady who shot the hole-in-one. He wanted to meet me and discuss what that experience was like. I was surprised. My lesson--we need to make sure we foster creative environments that support approaching innovators on a personal level. You never know who is going to be inspired by what you have to share and what it will lead to next.
3. I realize shooting a hole-in-one is a fluke. It didn't happen because I'm a talented and skilled golfer. However, I have been motivated to keep working on improving my game--10 shot improvement so far. It occurred to me it's no different than learning to be an effective creative and innovative thinker. Sometimes ideas seem to come out of nowhere--like a fluke. Other times ideas come from the skilled application of the creative process.

To be a better golfer or skilled with the creative process it takes lessons, practice and coaching. Learn tools--practice using the tools--apply the tools--get better and better--work with a coach to keep pushing you to do even better. My golf coach is part of my game plan. Who is your innovation coach?

Steve Kaye suggests success brings us more interesting problems to work on. The better my golf game gets, I find myself encountering more interesting golf problems. This is such a great motivator to improve. May your work with innovation continue to improve and your problems become more interesting.

Until next time.

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