Regardless of how extensively you deploy TRIZ, or some other systematic innovation engine, one of the first steps you take is to define your ideal state. In TRIZ, this is your Ideal Final Result (IFR), a philosophical construct that provides a measurable framework within which you can gauge progress on an innovation project, as well as an overall innovation roadmap. The IFR can also be used to create the perfect solution to strive for in problem solving.

Leonardo da Vinci has suggested that it’s good practice to think of the end before the beginning, suggesting the definition of a target before taking aim. The TRIZ methodology proposes that you develop this target, so that you don’t find yourself randomly shooting, and then feel surprised when you don’t hit anything. From this perspective, it’s not important whether the IFR is practicably attainable; what does matter is that you release the creative process from the hold of psychological inertia, and that you accept the possibility for a perfect innovation event to occur.

The IFR is a tremendous improvement over current approaches that promote the search for mediocrity, which, of course, people refer to as “compromise.” If you don’t envision the IFR, you never really know how weak your resolutions are, and you never know how to gauge innovation progress. Therefore, four IFR criteria apply to the configuration of any IFR for any innovation project:

One, the IFR does not introduce new harm into the system at hand.

Two, the new solution preserves all advantages of the existing system.

Three, the new solution eliminates the disadvantages of the existing system.

Four, there is minimal or no increase in complexity.

Pragmatically, the IFR of any innovation problem is conceptualized into a metric called Ideality, which is the sum of the useful functions in a system divided by the harmful functions in a system. Although the IFR is philosophical in nature, Ideality is mathematical in nature. Ideality is a useful metric, because IFR attainment is usually not possible, but multi-generational progress toward the IFR is possible and expected.

In other words, concepts develop during TRIZ problem solving are not equal, and the litmus test for all innovation ideas is the metric of Ideality, which, simply stated, is the inverse of the distance between the current state of a system and the ideal state of the system. Therefore, the closer the current state is to the ideal state, the higher Ideality is.

In all, the notions of the IFR and the Ideality equation are critical in the battle against mediocrity and are, therefore, absolutely necessary ingredients of systematic innovation. If you can increase the useful functions in my system and decrease the harmful functions, with no additional cost per unit of benefit, you’ve achieved the objective of innovative adaptation.

It is the intention of the TRIZ practitioner to maximize Ideality by maximizing the numerator and minimizing the denominator. However, the actual calculation of Ideality may never be strictly necessary, or possible, as it’s difficult to capture every element in a system, then perfectly distribute each element’s impact on the numerator and the denominator — let alone normalize all the units of measure involved.

A simple summary of the three steps is as follows:

1. Break down the task that the customer wants done into a series of steps. (Not what they are doing now, but what they want to do. You’ll have to get out of your office and go see real customers!)

2. This will show you all the places where your customer might need help

3. Then, consider innovations to make each step simpler, easier, faster, if the customer is satisfied with the current basic performance, and to make it better if the customer is unsatisfied.

This is a very powerful tool for getting companies to step back from focusing on their current offerings, and looking for new opportunities. To inject a bit of TRIZ vocabulary, it uses an available resource in the environment—the customer for your current products—as the source of information and stimulus for new ideas.

Real Innovation and TRIZ Journal readers will see the clear link in step 3 to whatever methods they use now—once you know what the customer needs to do her job more effectively, you’ll know where to innovate. The saddest problem that I see in TRIZ workshops is people who say that their problem is that they don’t know what to work on—here’s the cure for that problem.

Try it (well, read the article first…) and use the “comments” button to let us know your experience.

Driving up the mountain to Big Bear from the desert below I was struck by the stark contrast between the dry sandy desert - plants not quite in spring bloom, and the snow sledding hills filled with families having a ball. The drive was made even more enjoyable because my favorite Roy Orbison CD was blaring - taking my mind to the place it goes when it needs to relax. Answers pop. I got answers during that drive!

My delight of the day came when I walked in to photographer, Timothy Wolcott’s gallery. His walls were jammed with the most stunning photos I have ever seen. There was something different about the colors. They were intense. They popped. I just knew I was looking at the work of someone with a rare passion for creating visual experiences for people. I had to go get my husband who was browsing down the street. I wanted to share the experience with him.

One photograph in particular kept calling me back to look at it - Dogwood in the Moonlight; a beautiful dogwood tree in shimmering full bloom, laden with pure white blossoms standing against the dark green forest in the background. I’m not a photographer and couldn’t imagine how such a glorious moment in time could be captured. I learned it took 8 minutes for the shutter speed to capture the photo in the moonlight. What patience. What planning. What vision.

I also learned that Timothy Wolcott has been involved in innovating new ways to use technology for printing processes. This explains why his work is so stunning. He pushes the boundaries of old conventions.

I share this experience with you because it speaks directly to the power of well executed creativity and innovation. These are the lessons I have taken away from this experience:

1. Sometimes it helps the creative process when we make time for our minds to relax in order for answers to surface; to pop.
2. When you look at your innovation does it exude a quality about it that draws customers to it; a specialness? Would customers immediately want to share their discovery of it with others? Perhaps this can become a question in the final analysis of the innovations you are working on.
3. Patience pays.

I look up at Dogwood in the Moonlight hanging in my office several times a day now to help me remember these important lessons and to work towards becoming better with my own creativity and innovation efforts. How do you remind yourself?

Until next time ...

Many times a system is improved by increasing the performance of a particular function in a system. For example, if the function of fuel efficiency in an automobile is important, a system improvement might involve a system change that increases fuel efficiency by 5%. This is an improvement to the system-although an incremental one. The performance of fuel efficiency had been improved to another point on the curve that is asymptotically approaching the theoretical maximum for that system. Incremental functional improvement is necessary; however, it is not the only way to improve a system.

Sometimes it is necessary, for strategic reasons, to create a system improvement that introduces a new functional performance level that is unobtainable by the current system. In our example, this might be replacing a combustion engine in our automobile with some other non-combustion system. This replacement might give us an initial fuel efficiency vastly superior to the theoretical maximum achievable with the existing combustion engine system. A new functional performance curve has now been created and it is discontinuous versus the previous.

Functional Discontinuity is an important evolutionary tactic. We need to take advantage of this technique as much as possible. It allows us to evolve on the curve as well as off the curve. This gives us current generation improvement as well as the opportunity to create the next generation of functional performance.

What’s dynamism? It’s the changing of a product, system, or service in response to "something" or a pro-active management of a product, service, or organization in response to both anticipated or unanticipated conditions. In my opinion, it is one of the most powerful and least utilized innovation thinking tools. First of all, if we look at the history of products, technology, or services, we see a constant movement toward a more dynamic state. Examples:

1. Table saws. There’s a series of patents from 1991 to 1995 (to three different companies!) showing the transition from a 180 degree linear table saw to one that tilts at a 45 degree angle to one that rotates in a 360 degree fashion, allowing the cutting at any angle.
2. Airlines. The price of a seat, on most airlines, is now a function of not only when you book, but where you want to sit and what competitors are doing at any instant in time. A few airlines change their meal selection on longer flights based on average airfare on the plane (I.e. Dallas to Orlando vs. Dallas to JFK--what’s the difference?).
3. Shavers. Norelco has come out with a electric shaver that, for the first time, rotates all blades in a 360 degree fashion.
4. Outsourcing. Numerous companies now outsource what they believe to be variable needs and positions to protect their paid staff from layoffs and downsizings.
5. Soda/pop machines. In a short lived, but famous, example, Coca Cola was planning to change the electronic pricing on their soft drink machines at the Atlanta Olympics to change in response to outside temperature--the hotter it is, the more you pay. The Wall Street Journal got wind of this, published an article, and that was the end of that idea, but an interesting concept, don’t you think? Not exactly supply and demand pricing, but a version of it.
6. Laptop power cords. It used to be one charger for any laptop and if you lost one, very expensive. Now Targus and others have one charger with 10 different adopters to fit virtually any laptop.
7. Pants and luggage. It was not too long ago that expandable waists in pants and slacks became widely available and also the built in expandability of luggage size through the use of a temporary zipper.
8. Automobile systems. Wipers change speed based on car speed. Radio volume changes with speed. Braking light intensity changes with brake pedal pressure. Seats automatically adjust to user based on key entry.
9. Software. Most word processing software that we use has the capability to recognize the style in which you typing a document and begin to indent, etc. automatically.
10. Call centers. The speed with which your call is answered is a function of your status as a card holder.

I could go on and on, but you get the point. Dynamism or the ability of a product or service to change---automatically, if possible, is a well known successful ideation stimulant. When I look at the many of these example, I ask myself the question, why so long? Sometimes we wait for a customer to complain and that’s long after the need is really there. Don’t wait! Take every product or service you are involved with and ask yourself--how could we make it more dynamic? More responsive? To what? When? And think about dynamism from many different perspectives--engineering design, product functionality, different users, different time and conditions. If you don’t make your product or service more dynamic, someone else will! Don’t wait for a customer to tell you--they may not as they don’t know how to do it. You probably do.

Open innovation is practiced when the search space is intentionally increased and redirected based on certain specific techniques (not exhaustive):

(1) Leverage non-subject matter expertise

a. Add non-SMEs to the problems solving team and utilize techniques designed to solicit their input in an effective manner

b. Add multiple functional areas to the problem solving team

c. Add customers to the problem solving team

(2) Search for intellectual property in areas similar to the problem composition but that are also outside the industry/technology in question

a. The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) has many techniques that may be used to achieve this

b. Use patent search techniques as well as Patterns of Evolution

(3) Adapt solutions from analogous problems to suit your current purpose

These three items will constitute an effective open innovation approach to problem solving and allow the introduction of discontinuous solutions into the solution space. This increases the effectiveness of problem solving and allows for adaptation.

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?

Mansour Ashtiani won the election for President of the Altshuller Institute, and Don Masingale will become Secretary. Tim Schweizer and Richard Langevin continue as VP and Treasurer, respectively.

The conference began with a fascinating talk by Dr. Cemil Inan, Director of Research at the Arcelik Company in Turkey, which is in the process of growing from third to first largest producer of appliances in Europe, with factories in Turkey, Russia, and several other countries. They have a unique patent and intellectual property development system—they became #101 on the list of 500 top IP companies this year (Google was #100) New products with a TRIZ “flavor” were impressive: the trend of using the kitchen as a family gathering area makes it desirable to get noise out of the kitchen. Their “Divide and Cool” puts the refrigerator compressor outside the area, and puts the cooling function in several easy-to-reach drawers. Multi-media presentations of case studies from their TRIZ projects made them easy to understand (we heard the noise of the washing machine pumps). Picture: New AI President Mansour Ashtiani thanks speaker Dr.Cemil Inan.

Dr. Andrew Brown Jr., Chief Technologist from Delphi Corporation challenged the audience to understand global mega-trends, to apply TRIZ and all our skills to the needs of our future customers that are specific to the regional needs of the global society. Their extensive research in Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, India, etc., revealed common trends and regional differences that were surprising, and that created vast new business opportunities, all of which require innovation. He inspired the audience with the scope of vision of the future of the integration of interfaces between all the now-disparate technologies that people manage in the course of their lives. Audience questions ranged widely from the future of clean water to the history of the electric vehicle to the interfaces of technology/society/regulatory activities.

Track 1 papers dealt with TRIZ and Chemical Engineering and Project Management—see the Altshuller Institute website for the abstracts. I participated in Track 2 which started with Larry Smith’s case study on his use of TRIZ in his work at the ASQ where he has been leading the massive initiative to revise their world-wide education and training systems. He presented an overview of the ASQ’s needs, and the specific ways that he introduced ASQ staff and other volunteers to TRIZ methods, developed some of those people as facilitators, then used those facilitators with those methods to stimulate creativity at the subsequent meetings.

Boris Zlotin and Alla Zusman presented their research on applying their methods of “directed evolution” to bridging the gap between long-term and short-term forecasting. (See their article in the current TRIZ Journal for an introduction to their work, and references to other articles.) Boris’ charming story-telling enhanced the serious science that he showed in the analysis of the evolution of the prediction system itself. Picture: Alla Zusman and Boris Zlotin.

Manabu Sawaguchi is a frequent and popular contributor to the TRIZ Journal. He reports on his unique experience, designing a workshop on innovation through cooperation between industries, and using TRIZ for the case examples used in the workshops. Typical workshops had 3 participants from each of 5 companies. He created a model of 4 classes of innovation (radical—incremental vs. disruptive—sustaining) and then challenged the participants to identify successful and unsuccessful cases in each area, and to generalize the results. The case study of the development of the paper coffee cup, and the way such a simple case could stimulate the workshop participants, created quite a bit of audience interest.

Jim Belfiore from Invention Machine Corp. challenged the audience to think about the business side of innovation, and the growing trend of innovation by corporate acquisition as a shortcut to development of new business. He adapted the technology maturity model to give people an easy (relatively) to use tool for assessing the readiness of specific technologies, and used the patterns of evolution of to look for candidates for acquisition; “validation” of a candidate in his model comes from finding technologies that are in harmony with the patterns of evolution, or that have resolved fundamental contradictions.

Track 1 concluded with two papers from the Intel Team. Tay-Jin Yeoh from the Penang, Malaysia group presented “Exploring TRIZ Usage in New Applications for Industries,” which included a number of excellent case studies of processes. For example, his first case was improving (reducing the time) for the preventive maintenance process of the burn-in system (part of semiconductor processing.) Case study 2 was a test handler, which picks items up and inserts them into a test interface. Detailed analysis showed several instances of waste and re-work that could be eliminated using simple process improvement methods—in this case, the benefit of TRIZ was in getting the detailed analysis of the root cause of the problem done. He then changed pace and showed an IT problem from China, which had the classical contradiction that the easier it is for multiple people to access information, the harder it is to protect the information. The 40 principles, starting with the matrix and then proceeding to use all the principles, were the key to new thinking and new solutions to this problem. Equally “classical” is the shop floor inventory management problem—the problem itself is not complex, but the systematic approach of TRIZ helped people get through the analysis and create solutions that are “elegant.” He concluded with a quotation from Altshuller: “You can wait a hundred years for enlightenment, or you can solve the problem in 15 minutes with these principles,” which appeals to the action dynamic of the industrial engineers.

Alex Talalaevski from Intel’s Israeli contingent concluded the main conference session with “TRIZ FMEA reduces Risk of New Technology Transfer from R&D to Production.” The complexity of the silicon transfer process, and the complexity of the 7 major sub-processes of this process is truly awe-inspiring, and the need for FMEA is obvious. When combined with the “tick-tock” Intel pulse of 2 years for each generation of technology, the need for TRIZ to accelerate the preventive analysis and implementation of failure circumvention also becomes obvious. The case study showed the benefits of TRIZ to FMEA in these cases, and the specific benefits of using semantic search-enabled software to resolve complex problems

Picture: TJ Yeoh

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….

The experimental workshop on the US$10million Automotive X-Prize at the Altshuller Institute TRIZCON2008 started Sunday morning with delegates from Germany, Israel, Ireland, UK, Korea, Taiwan, and multiple parts of the US; from the electronics, automotive, aerospace, control systems and textile industries; from universities, private industry, and consulting. The X-Prize will go to the vehicle that can demonstrate 100 miles at 100 miles/hour, in a production-ready vehicle.

Ben Berry is the CEO of the AirShip Technologies Group, one of 84 teams competing for the prize. ATG is using a combination of well-known and experimental technologies, and an aggressive Open Technology organizational method for design and production. Prof. Tim Schweitzer from Luther College recruited Ben to be a keynote speaker for the conference, then Tim and Ellen Domb took advantage of Ben’s expertise and attendance at the meeting to organize the workshop—TRIZ practioners had 2 hours to learn about the problems that the AirShip team has worked on, and 5 hours to develop ideas for alternative approaches. Ben will take those ideas back to the team to accelerate the development of the airship (and he might recruit some of the workshop participants to join the team, too.) See the Steering Team (standing) and the Track Sphere Team (seated) below.

For details, see http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/ to learn about the prize and http://www.airshiptg.org to learn about the AirShip Technologies Group. See Ben (standing) explaining the problem to the group.

Ralph Czerepinski and Joe Miller presented the TRIZ workshop for newcomers (it used to be called “Everything you need to know about TRIZ to get through the conference”) to 24 people from industry and academia. Some of the teachers (both high school and college-level) were graduates of the Saturday workshop on TRIZ for Teachers taught by Don Coates of our host organization, Kent State University, and Sergey Malkin.

Darrell Mann did triple duty, teaching “Navigating the Competitive Jungle: Systematic Innovation for Business and Management” on Saturday, a short course on “TRIZ Trends, The Voice of the Product and Innovation Timing” on Sunday, and participating in the Automotive X-Prize workshop. Thanks, Darrell!

Isak Buhkman did 2 short workshops on Sunday—one on psychological inertia and one on Su-Field modeling and standard solutions. The 4th short workshop was Sergei Ikovenko’s “Pragmatic S-Curve Analysis.” Since I was in the X-Prize workshop all day, I’ll try to get the information from the short workshops to summarize for our readers later in the week.

Consultants write articles for a lot of reasons. Two leading reasons are (1) A genuine desire to share their research with the world (2) To show how smart they are, to get people interested in hiring them.

Since I am a consultant writing an article, it would be ungracious to attribute selfish motives to the most recent article on trends of evolution in the IT world to the McKinsey researchers. As a very large, successful consulting company, McKinsey has access to a lot of research just from studying their own clients, and those of us in more limited environments can take advantage of their work. (ref.1) Let’s compare the McKinsey trends to those in TRIZ—even though different TRIZ authors use different labels, this should be pretty easy—and see if there are new trends emerging. (ref. 2 & 3)

They have identified 8 technology-enabled trends in 3 areas of business activity:

A. Managing Relationships

1. Distributing co-creation—both distributing it throughout the supplier/customer value chain and to outsiders. Sounds a lot like recognizing that “somebody, someplace, has solved your problem—creativity is modifying that solution to apply in your circumstances.” And it sounds a lot like using elements of the supersystem (as in the System Operator) to solve the problem.

2. Using consumers as innovator—special case of (1)

3. Tapping into the world of talent (using networks of freelancers)—special case of (1)

4. Extracting more value from interactions—business innovations such as “outsourcing” of clerical tasks can provide much more value by providing statistical analysis of the work done by the clerks and by providing management of the work. Likewise, outsourced engineering drafting work is rapidly being upgraded to improving the configuration management of the drawings and improving the designs in the drawings.

B. Managing Capital and Assets

5. Expanding the frontiers of automation (specifically for information)—this gets very close to the ideal final result of information handling. First, the customer gets her own information, reducing the cost of customer service, improving speed, and improving satisfaction. At a more advanced level, the information itself controls the entire system (such as RFID information controlling inventory management systems.) Both required large investments to start, with an unknown payoff.

6. Unbundling production from delivery—direct application of the TRIZ “Segmentation” trend. Examples include everything from Amazon’s providing software and logistics services to the sale of fractional ownership of real estate or jet aircraft.

C. Leveraging Information New Ways

7. Putting more science into management—use the available information in ways that were not anticipated when the information was generated. Sounds quite a bit like the “Uneven development of parts” pattern from the classical patterns of evolution? As well as taking advantage of all the resources in the system, once the resources are recognized.

8. Making businesses from information—more use of resources. Google and other search systems (best fare from India to Alaska, best price for a new coat…) are early examples. I saw a great example recently: instead of paying several hundred thousand dollars to install traffic sensing devices (to post the time delays on a highway, so people could plan alternate routes and reduce air pollution), an entrepreneur realized that the busy-ness of cell phone towers, and the rate of change of access to the towers, is an excellent measure of how fast the cars are moving on the nearby highways, and he could access that date very inexpensively. The cell phone company now has a new business—selling data about the state of the tower—and the city has what it needs at lower cost. “Meta-data” is the buzzword to watch for.

My conclusion: No new trends, but good new examples for those of us who need to practice identifying trends. Readers comments are WELCOME!

1. J. Manyika, R. Roberts, K. Sprague, “Eight business technology trends to watch” McKinsey Quarterly, December 2007
2. B. Zlotin, A. Zusman, Directed Evolution. 2001. www.ideationtriz.com and http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/2006/09/04.pdf
3. D. Mann, Hands On Systematic Innovation. 2007, Hands On Systematic Innovation for Management, 2007. www.systematic-innovation.com

I don’t get a lot of forwarded emails from friends and family; I’ve trained them to only send me the "best of the best." Today, one video appeared in my inbox that not only intrigued me, but seemed worthy of sharing with the Real Innovation/TRIZ Journal audience.

The video lasts about a minute and is safe for work. Click here to watch the "Awareness Test."

(Spoiler alert ahead – watch the video before reading!)

How many of you caught on? I admit that I didn’t! I was carefully (and accurately, it turns out) counting passes as instructed. And I was so focused on the issue at hand, that the bear didn’t grab my attention for a second.

This video ties in nicely with this week’s featured Real Innovation article, Local Problems Lead to Ideal System Solutions. As important as problem solving is, and as many innovations local-level problem solving can provide, it can cause even more problems if the full system-scale is ignored. Every so often, remember to check out the big picture so that no moonwalking bears can interrupt the scene!

If you live near Seattle and would like to hobnob with the area's finest business process improvement practitioners in a casual after-work setting, attend the iSixSigma Live! Social and Networking Party at the Rock Bottom Brewery in Bellevue. (iSixSigma.com is a sister website to RealInnovation.com.)

Thursday, May 1, from 6 to 8 PM. Rock Bottom can only hold so many process improvement gurus so hurry and register today. The full details for the event can be found at: http://live.isixsigma.com/seattle.

I have come across the compelling work of creativity expert, Sir Ken Robinson, which I want to share with you via his very funny and dramatic presentation - Do Schools Kill Creativity? He delivered this presentation at a TED conference and you can watch it here: (Allow yourself 20 minutes - you won't be disappointed.)

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

What does this presentation have to do with Real Innovation? Quite a bit in my view. For me, he hits home the importance of cultivating creativity in kids all the way through our education system in order to prepare them for jobs that haven't even been invented yet. After-all, innovation is impossible without creativity, and creativity is impossible without people.

He also made me wonder about the impact our education system is having on our ability to be innovative in the workplace when most of our workers come from our school system, which he describes this way:

"Our education system has mined our minds the way we have strip mined the earth for a particular commodity."

Three ideas for you:

1. Share this presentation with your work group and lead a discussion on how it might help you with your innovation work.
2. Host a discussion dinner party with your family and friends. Show the presentation and then get the discussion going.
3. Watch it once a week for 5 weeks and note different points that strike you each time you watch it and why they do. How can you use these insights back on the job?

I believe innovation relies on people. Tools and techniques help, but, they are not enough. I am hoping to inspire some of you to investigate this work of Sir Ken Robinson. Remember to share with us your innovation insights.

Until next time ...

However. However.

As a proud quality geek, I have long since bought into the notion that keeping an eye on things is by-and-large a smart thing to do. Stay out of the way as much as possible, yes, but never allow yourself to be convinced that an ability to measure, track, trend, and analyze is intrusive and restrictive. Count this, then, as an argument in favor of creating easily accessed markets (very low hurdles for new companies to enter the market) and rigorous review and regulation of new product offerings (no products should be widely dispersed that aren’t understood in detail by a regulating body).

It’s true that companies and even economies as large as the United States’ can be turbocharged by unregulated or lightly regulated products or markets. But inevitably, this growth is short-lived and comes at a very high cost. Consequences of unstructured, unregulated markets are easy to find these days. The Enron debacle occurred in large part because regulators took their collective eyes off the ball. The credit crisis that is now hobbling the world economy is in part the result of unfettered innovation in the financial services market, as the industry combined computing power and leverage to create a burst of innovation and new products that were so complex as to defy the easy understanding of even economists at the Fed. My general opinion is that unfettered growth is unsustainable and, in the end, makes a handful of people rich at the expense of the broader society.

As part of the innovation conversation, we would do well to remember that creating and driving innovation isn’t the goal. Creating and driving sustainable growth is the goal, and innovation is a potentially powerful tool we can use to accomplish that goal. By making that distinction, we can better resist the urge to advocate the tearing down of reasonable market oversight structures in order to drive bigger, faster, and better innovation.

How can a small business benefit from innovation? Can small business afford innovation? How can innovation help small business grow revenue, and how quickly? These are some of the most frequently asked questions about innovation.

I believe most of the innovation talk is about large businesses benefitting innovation, ignoring the fact that small businesses are a very significant part of the business community in terms of revenue, employment, and opportunities for innovation. Looking from outside, and having worked inside businesses of all sizes, I can tell it is very difficult to move a mountain or roll it over, vs. a rock, or a pebble. One can see that it is relatively easier to be innovative with small businesses, but challenge is its justification. Small businesses tend to be more innovative as they work with fewer resources, are more agile due to fewer layers and reduced organizational complexity, and are more adaptive than larger organizations. However the challenge remains that a smaller company cannot grow like Wal-Mart in billions of dollars, and does not have billions of dollars like Google to invest in innovation.

That leads us to sizing innovation. Smaller businesses tend to focus on Variation type of innovations rather than fundamental innovations as the small businesses supply to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), or when small businesses are OEMs then they are not dealing with the volume of the larger businesses. The fact remains that purpose of innovation is the same for any business irrespective of its size that is to realize profitable growth.

To achieve the profitable growth, the company must identify opportunities to develop new solutions, be products or services. To identify opportunities for revenue growth, leadership must recognize its position in the market place, listen to its customers, understand suppliers’ capability, and utilize its employee’s intellectual potential. Benchmarking for knowing position in the industry, Kano’s model for listening to customer requirements, value-based partnership for suppliers’ capability, and the management process for employee ideas are some of the tools to deploy. Evaluation of various ideas for revenue growth, feasibility of the solution, resources, and capability to commercialize are critical factors for creativity to become innovation. There must be a formula that is suitable for the industry, and customized for the company to evaluate revenue potential of the solution in the available market segment. One must be realistic in assessing the market potential.

Half the solution to revenue growth is realized once the opportunities to grow revenue are identified. Rest of the innovation process must include steps for developing innovative solutions quickly, be able to produce and reproduce, and optimize in operations to minimize waste. In order to convert solutions into cash, one can learn from Microsoft’s model of partnerships with potential customers, distributors, or resellers. In other words, strong marketing and utilizing multiple channels to commercialize its solutions have been Microsoft’s secret to rise from its early beginnings, similar to any small business.

Finally one must remember a small business can not afford to take the same amount of time to develop its innovation. Small businesses must innovate faster than the larger businesses, and must innovate for now rather than for future.

If you would like to share your ideas about innovation in small businesses, please comment.

I was asked recently to contribute to the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Management Division newsletter and thought I would share a modified version of it with all of you.

A Recession is Coming, A Recession is Coming….

Is the sky falling or is it just a false alarm? Who knows right now, but it’s amazing how a crisis focuses our minds. We all of a sudden do things we should have been doing all along and just put off. A few examples:

1. Planning. The Wall Street Journal has published a recent article on how good (and bad) various companies do this. But when you offer early retirement buyouts to a huge number of people, with the expectation and plan that a large number will accept, how is their function (note I did not say job!) going to be done? Is it really that the function was not necessary? Why have you been doing it this long? Shouldn’t planning be done ahead of time and not in a crisis? Succession planning is a particular area of concern.

2. Customers. Do we treat them differently in an economic downturn? Why? Aren’t they valuable all the time? Do we treat them special only when they tell us they are exploring "other alternatives"? Should we all of a sudden stop worrying about their long term needs and instead focus on the short term price reductions that the market forces upon us?

3. Innovation. Boy, have we turned the spigot on in the last 5 years after having drained the swamp totally in the previous ten, and having had the spigot on the previous 10 years. It's like a long term sinusoidal wave. Everyone’s all excited. Now, things are getting tough. We can't afford innovation in a downturn, can we? Just cost cutting, downsizing (or is it "right sizing" nowadays), and focusing. Shut down those programs, stop asking customers what they want 5, 10 years from now. Stop asking what and who is going to replace your products and services. Get surprised at the answers you see elsewhere in a few years in exactly the same time frame.

3. Technology. Should we stop investing in new areas? New applications? It sure would save money, and in a few years we can see what others are doing and decide what we shlould have been doing. Then we play catch up...if it's possible.

4. People. They’ve been so hard to get lately. Hiring bonuses, retention bonuses. Things slow down and we think we don’t need so many. Stop being nice. Stop those extra attention efforts. They won’t notice because they’re now insecure and you hold the upper hand (finally!). You’re right, they won’t notice until the next time… Aren’t they the same people?

Let's think about our on and off switches and whether they should be variable dials instead. And let's also think about the response of those dial settings and maybe what their hooked to. This current situation reminds me of the reverse of the panel discussion I heard about 5 years ago at an IIR conference where someone said, "we're done with all the downsizing and restructuring, and it's now time for innovation". It was as if there was an assumption that the memory banks were suddenly wiped out by Cylon Borgs and people would have no memory of the massive layoffs and the "focusing" of activities, and we'd all be happy again and playfully march off into the new exciting world of innovation. If that's where you started a while back, think long and hard about your assumptions of peoples' perceptions and reactions.

Brownian motion is the random movement of particles suspended in a liquid or gas. This phenomenon was first observed by botanist Robert Brown in 1827 ("A brief account of microscopical observations made in the months of June, July and August, 1827, on the particles contained in the pollen of plants; and on the general existence of active molecules in organic and inorganic bodies.") and later introduced to the realm of physics by Albert Einstein in 1905 ("Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen.").

To illustrate the concept, consider a beach ball 30 feet in diameter. Imagine this beach ball in a sold out soccer stadium for a match between Manchester United and Arsenal. The ball is large enough to lie on top of many members of the crowd. The fans hit the ball at different times and in different directions with the motions being completely random. The ball is pushed in random directions, so it should not move on average. At other times, we might have 20 fans pushing right, and 21 other fans pushing left, where each fan is exerting equivalent amounts of force. In this case, the forces exerted from the left side and the right side are imbalanced in favor of the left side; the ball will move slightly to the left. This type of imbalance exists at all times, and it causes random motion. If we look at this situation from a helicopter above the stadium, so that we cannot see the fans, we see the large ball as a small object animated by erratic movement. Consider this animation to help illustrate the concept:

Click here to view animation.

Now let’s use this concept to describe an organizational dynamic all too common. If you consider the intentions of the members of an organization being positive (excluding then any malicious misdirection) we can assume that all employees are acting in a manner they believe to be beneficial to the organization that they serve. However, with no concise set of daily operational actions that was generated to support organizational objectives, the employee moves from crisis to crisis creating as many solutions as possible given the time they have to spend on them. This is far from ideal. This is ignoring the future to focus on the present. Sometimes it seems like this is necessary, but in the long run this behavior will make sure there isn’t a long run.

Let’s consider our animation of Brownian motion. The large blue disk is the organizations location in the domain of organizational performance. With a known starting location (the organization’s current state) and no organized employee support for a specific future state (goal), the actions of the employees (the red disks) will move the current state (blue disk) slightly depending on any local bias without organized or intentional movement of the organization towards any goal let alone the ideal goal. This is Organizational Brownian Motion. Many organizations experience this dynamic on a daily basis and it is counter-productive. Trial and error derived solutions with no characterized ideal resolution as a target allows problem solving in an organization to produce the same effect in the evolutionary map of a system. There is no intentional maturation of a system in relation to the strategic adoption of functionality but rather a haphazard amalgam of problems with sub-optimal resolutions. Every time we allow this to happen we create competitive opportunity. So ultimately, lack of organizational focus, at the macro-scale and the micro-scale, is all our competitors need to take market share from us. Studies have shown how difficult it is to create loyal customers and any erosion of their confidence yields more losses in that area. We need an organized strategic planning apparatus that decomposes organizational goals into actions for every person in an organization. We also need a systematic approach to problem solving that yields solutions that not only support the aforementioned strategies but also optimizes system evolution and minimizes the creation of any competitive opportunity.

TRIZ Journal readers have been given more terms for this one element of TRIZ than any other—laws of technology evolution (many translated texts), guided evolution (Victor Fey), directed evolution (Alla Zusman and Boris Zlotin), trends of evolution and evolutionary potential (Darrell Mann), DNA (Simon Dewulf) and others.
Bad news—this is confusing to people who are learning TRIZ.
Good news—this part of TRIZ is undergoing active development, and fresh research is being tested all the time.

You can combine your TRIZ learning with participation in the research, and the only resources that you need are the things you already have (very TRIZ-ish!)

Resource—whatever you are reading about the future.
Future of technology is an obvious one, but don’t forget to include others
Future of education
Future of medicine
Future of social organizations
Future of science

For example, this week I saw the current (March 2008) issue of PC World magazine, which is the 25th anniversary issue. You can test your past, present, and future knowledge of the trends of evolution by reading articles on the 25 most important PC-related inventions of the past, the 25 “I can’t live without them” present-day things, and the 25 predictions for the future. For example, one of the present-day favorites is Open Office 2.3, which has much of the capability of other integrated office suites, and is free. It is pretty easy for most TRIZ students to see this as an advance in ideality – the system delivers the benefit at no cost.

A leading example from the futures article is the personal factory, also called desk-top manufacturing. Remember (or remember the pictures, for the younger audience) when computers filled whole rooms and required separate air conditioning and specialized operators? They followed the trend of becoming smaller and smaller and smaller….Now, factories are on that same path. Desktop manufacturing of printed circuit cards and of plastic objects is a reality in 2008. Making anything that is the right size to fit on your desktop is just a few years away.

That leaves 25 past, 24 present and 24 future items for readers to try on their own. Don’t worry about which vocabulary you use. Just pick the one that you are comfortable with, and PLEASE report your experiments in the “comments” to this article, so we can merge our readers’ reports.

For more esoteric exploration, Technology Review magazine’s March/April 2008 issue features 10 emerging technologies that the editors predict will have significant impact in the next few years. Number one (by Frances Arnold, at Caltech) is the development of cellulolytic enzymes. The current concern about the use of biofuel raising the price of food is based on the use of the edible components of plants to create fuel. If the cellulose (inedible) parts could be used, we could make the fuel AND keep the food for consumption. The invention has 2 parts—an enzyme that “eats” cellulose to produce fuel, and a computational method for creating the genes would produce the enzyme. What are the patterns of evolution?
* Increasing ideality (benefit with less harm)
* Uneven development of subsystems (the enzyme is ready but the method of producing it is not)
* Transition to the micro-system (using the simulation instead of laboratory experiments to develop the enzyme)

There are 9 more in the article for readers to try. Try one of these, or one of the 70+ from PC World. We look forward to your comments and to writing a future report using your research.

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