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T&C TOWER - Looking into the development of TRIZ, the new inventing method
Innovative thinking: TRIZ |
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Can anybody be an inventor? According to Genrich Altshuller,
the creator of TRIZ, it is possible. TRIZ is an abbreviation of the
Russian sentence ¡°Teoriya Reshniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch¡± which
means ¡°Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.¡± Genrich says that with
just elementary school level of chemistry, physics knowledge and the
help of TRIZ, anybody can be an inventor.
Genrich Altshuller was born in 1962 in Tashkent of the former USSR.
He gained his first patent when he was 14 with a device that enabled
people to breath underwater. In 1946, he served in the navy and got
a chance to work as a patent administrator. It was then he formed
the basis of TRIZ. He wanted not just to invent but also help other
people who wanted to be an inventor by coming up with a methodology
in inventing.
He asserted that there must be a common feature in all inventions
and with his associates, he went through over 2.8 million patents
in order to find it. When TRIZ was formed, Genrich wrote a letter
to Stalin, who was ruling the USSR in 1948. He criticized Stalin¡¯s
policy on improving the initiative spirit, proposing TRIZ as a solution.
However, Genrich was arrested and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In prison, he managed to gather numerous scholars, architects and
scientists who were also imprisoned. With their help, Genrich was
able to complete the details of TRIZ.
After Stalin¡¯s death, he was freed in 1954. Two years after, he and
his colleague Shapiro published a paper titled ¡°Psychology of inventive
Creativity¡± in the journal ¡°Problems of Psychology.¡± It was a shock
to all scholars studying about the inventive methods since most of
them thought inventions only occured due to luck and by gifted people.
However TRIZ could not walk on the bright side of the road with constant
government surveillance.
In 1961, Genrich wrote his first official book on TRIZ titled ¡°How
to learn to invent.¡± This small book harshly criticized the existing
method in inventing and included the early 20 principles of TRIZ.
With the book, TRIZ was known to the public. Genrich also wrote letters
to VOIR - All Union Society of Inventors and Innovators, for a chance
to prove his theory and get TRIZ authorized in 1959. Finally after
9 years of constant writing he got an opportunity to open a seminar
in Georgia, Dsintary.
There, Genrich met various people who admired his work, such as Petrosavodsk,
Alexandre Selioutsk and so forth. These people later return to their
hometown and build TRIZ schools. Through these schools, hundreds of
people learned about TRIZ. During this time, Genrich published another
book, ¡°Algorithm of Inventing.¡±
Still TRIZ was known only inside the USSR. Yet With the perestroika
rising and the Stalin government falling, many savants advanced abroad.
They informed the world about the existence of TRIZ and established
Russian TRIZ association in 1989.
In TRIZ, they see the subject as a system. There are always one or
two contradictions in this system people have to overcome. In this
case, this subject is called an inventive problem. When the contradiction
is overcomed, the system evolves, and this evolution consists of many
small individual inventions. In TRIZ, the term ¡°invent¡± means overcoming
the contradiction by solving the inventive problem.
After Genrich analyzed the patents, he classified them into groups
due to the level of inventiveness. During this process he found out
that only 4 percent of the patents were results of brand new invention
and 96 percent was made by just improving or fixing the existing ideas.
This means that if 96 percent of the patents, or inventions are made
by using previously known methods, people don¡¯t need to spend huge
amount of time and money to come up with the solution to the contradiction,
unlike the present method of trial and error.
TRIZ recognizes the contradiction found into two categories: technical
contradictions and physical contradictions. Every contradiction has
a trade-off, and we can clearly notice it in technical contradictions.
When something wants to be developed, something else in the system
prevents it. In other words, when something gets better, something
gets worse. As an example, when service is customized to each customer,
it is a good thing. On the other hand, the service delivery system
gets complicated which is bad. Physical contradictions are situations
where a subject has opposing requirements such as when a software
should be easy to use but hold many complex features at the same time.
By observing these contradictions Genrich found out that between the
patents, the contradictions they had were all based on similar problems
regardless of related fields. Based on this fact, he discovered 40
principles to solve them and made the contradiction matrix.
The matrix is made of rows and columns, each of them representing
the trade-offs. Find the row that most closely matches to the feature
that improves and the column that matches the feature which degrades.
The numbers inside the intersecting cell represent the principles
that are most likely to solve the contradiction and evolve the subject.
After TRIZ became widely known, numerous schools and companies all
over the world began to educate and apply TRIZ. Since TRIZ looks at
a subject as an evolving system, corporations like Ford, Samsung and
Motorola applied TRIZ in reducing project management risks by giving
problem-solving tools and helping them to predict how the project
will develop. In Korea, TRIZ is not yet such a well-known methodology.
However, companies like Samsung had recently adapted TRIZ in the making
process of semiconductors and terminals, obtaining satisfying results.
Innovative thinking is considered as an important quality in society
nowadays. By learning about TRIZ, you will also be able to be an inventor
yourself. |
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By Lee Hyae-myung
Reporter of Theory & Critique Section
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