EXPANDING THE MIND

TRIZ was invented by a Soviet mechanical engineer named Genrich Altshuller, who worked in the country's patent office from the 1940s to 1960s. Rather than categorizing the patents by type-which ones were involved with electricity or farm machinery, for example-Altshuller categorized them by process. Most inventions, about 77 percent, were minor or routine improvements to existing systems. The rare scientific discovery, the invention of a new system, accounted for only 1 percent of all the patent applications.

Altshuller concentrated on the 22 percent of inventions that were fundamental improvements of existing systems, or inventions that found new principles to perform the primary function of an existing system. He found that inventors of routine improvements had to consider about 10 solutions. Rare scientific discoveries require one million possible solutions to consider. Those in the 22 percent of fundamental improvements had to consider between 10,000 and 100,000 solutions to their problems. Many of those solutions had been considered before in other problem-solving ventures. What Altshuller showed was that nearly 4 in 5 of all problems engineers faced have been solved somewhere before.

TRIZ can be complicated, and the results of the problem-solving exercises are full of flow charts and segmenting the innovation process into smaller parts. Used for many years in Europe and Japan, TRIZ is now starting to show up in some university engineering courses. Eugene I. Rivin, a mechanical engineering professor at Wayne State University, has used TRIZ in his courses, and claims it allows students to focus on problem solving without fear of failure. "While the announced corporate policies are always 'don't be afraid of failures, learn by them,' in real life the attitudes are very different," Rivin wrote recently. "As a result, many students and engineers attending short courses are very close-minded. Students are afraid to offer solutions or even questions about the problem, since it might be a wrong suggestion or a stupid question, and they would "lose face." The TRIZ training gives the participants an assurance that they are able and capable of tackling (and, frequently, solving) any tough, unusual, and complex problems. Their minds are opening, they are not afraid. Even weak students are changing noticeably.

Zion Bar-el, CEO of Ideation International Inc., a Michigan-based TRIZ consulting company that produces books, lecture materials, and software based upon TRIZ, says his company is now working with Carnegie-Mellon University, Vanderbilt University, North Carolina State University, and the University of Michigan. Companies such as Ford Motor Co., Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson, and Hewlett-Packard are also incorporating TRIZbased ideology into their design systems.

Bar-el says that TRIZ will become the "next big thing" in teaching creativity, a system that balances analysis with innovation. "[Altshuller] captured the essence of inventions from the past so there is a knowledge-based education people can readily tap into," Bar-el says. "TRIZ helps you to analyze the system. We teach you how to look around. Everything is a system and can be analyzed, and anyone can come up with ideas for how to improve them. I have seen engineers become addicted to it."