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TRIZ, CREATIVITY, INNOVATION—-Newsletter from ICG T&C, October 2010
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1)Training courses, Fall 2010
2) TRIZ events
3) News from ICG T&C
4) Articles from ICG T&C
5) More on TRIZ
6) More on Innovation
7) Recommended new books
Dear Innovators,
It has been a while since a release of our previous newsletter in PDF format. Despite the
economic crisis, these two...
Trizcon 2010 DAYTON 6-7 October 2010
Innovation & Creativity Programs.
Exploring the Future of New Product Development
Strategic drivers changing industry and the world- charting the best course of action for enduring success
Integrating Different Innovation Tools to Bridge the Gaps and Drive Learning
A Flight To Creativity
The P&G Initiatives GYM
Empowering New Innovations
Implementing New Innovation in the Air Force Research...
Creative Problem Solving: Four Types of Thinking
Being involved for a long time as a TRIZ trainer and facilitator, I’ve had a great chance to meet many different creative personalities. This certainly enriched my life, and I also noticed that there are two major dimensions along which a creative thought is developed, regardless if people use TRIZ or not: a) from specific to abstract and b) from chaotic to structured. Of course, there are no...
TRIZ and Systematic Innovation Training for Fall 2010
The following public courses will be conducted in the Netherlands in Fall of 2010:
TRIZ for Technology and Engineering:
3-day Basic TRIZ and Systematic Innovation for Technology and Engineering. September 15-17, 2010, Utrecht, Netherlands
5-day Advanced TRIZ and Systematic Innovation for Technology and Engineering. November 15-19, 2010, Utrecht, Netherlands
TRIZ for Business and Management:
One-day...
Detailed Report on TRIZ Future 2008
Prof. Toru Nakagawa has recently published his personal report on the conference TRIZ Future 2008 which took place in November 2008 in the Netherlands. The report is available at his website, TRIZ Home in Japan by following
eETRIATFC2008TNRep.pdf
As usual, the report is very detailed and comprehensive and I’d like to thank Toru once again for another great effort he did!
Provided and Copyright...
TRIZ Future 2009 in Romania
As was decided during the latest edition of TRIZ Future conference, the next edition of the conference will be conducted in Timisoara, Romania, on November 4-6, 2009. Recently the conference organizers announced the official conference website:
http://www.eng.upt.ro/trizfuture2009/
The website provides further information and the first call for papers. Authors who are willing to submit papers...
Innovation Sources and Triggers
During my lectures and courses on TRIZ and Innovation, I am often asked, “What are main triggers which push people to innovate?”. Thus I have tried to categorize main categories of such triggers for technical innovations:
Accidents – Many new inventions were created on the basis of unexpected discoveries, made both in science and technology. For instance, x-rays, penicillin,...
Additional TRIZ courses in Spring 2009
By request, I will run several additional public courses in May-June 2009:
May 2-4, 2009, TRIZ-based Systematic Innovation for Business and Management in Amman, Jordan (organized by Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship)
May 18-22, 2009, Advanced TRIZ for Technology and Engineering in Utrecht, Netherlands
June 2-5, 2009: Extended TRIZ-based Systematic Innovation for Business and Management, Utrecht,...
TRIZ Café
Would you like to learn about the latest TRIZ and xTRIZ tools and updates? To meet other TRIZ and Systematic Innovation professionals, practitioners and enthusiasts? To discuss and share your ideas and experiences about TRIZ and Systematic Innovation in informal environment? Or to learn what TRIZ is and how it can be used? If you live or stay in the Netherlands or nearby, then you might like...
Introducing xTRIZ in Jordan and the Middle East
Last couple of months were pretty busy with travel and all kinds of activities leaving too little time to write about my thoughts, news and events.
My first visit to Amman, Jordan was in April 2008, where I run a 3-day public training for 25 representatives of Jordanian enterprises. I was quite surprised by the level of TRIZ awareness in the country and by a real drive of people to innovate....
TRIZ Café on June 17, 2009: Summary
In our highly dynamic and connected world, it seems to be a matter of top priority to stay connected. Especially it applies to those who are involved to innovation. During my 15 years of stay in the Netherlands, I have had numerous contacts with people who have interest in innovation and TRIZ, and many of them became users of TRIZ and some of them are even my “virtual” colleagues who...
TRIZ Summer Course at Twente University
Today I’ve started a new offical course on TRIZ Fundamentals and Practical Applications at the University of Twente. The course is for B.Sc and M.Sc students of engineering and technical disciplines and has a new format: it is a two-week summer course (80) hours with later extension in autumn (additional 40) hours. Thus the course provides 5 credits for students in total (if they are successful,...
“TRIZ Fundamentals” course finalized
Last week the first part of the course “TRIZ Fundamentals” at the University of Twente was finalized. It included 80 hours of studying the TRIZ theory and practicing with modern and classical TRIZ tools. But in fact, it took more than 80 hours: since students spent their afternoons each day working on the assignments, it took them more time than was planned for some assignments –...
Video: TRIZ Today
A one-hour video recording of my presentation “TRIZ Today” is available. This presentation was given during TRIZ Cafe meeting on June 17, 2009, in Amersfoort. This presentation focuses on explaining what modern TRIZ is. To see the video, please follow the link:
http://www.xtriz.com/trizcafe/trizcafevideo.htm
The video file should start playing automatically. If there are problems with...
New Articles on Thinking Skills
It has been a while since I posted to this blog. Anyway, just to keep you updated, there are two my articles published this month which belong to the category of what I call “Power Innovative Thinking”.
The first article published by the Altshuller Institute:
Power Thinking Skills for Innovative Leadership
And the second article by the Real Innovation:
Fantogramma: a Technique...
TRIZ Café on November 11, 2009: Full of Energy
On Wednesday, November 11, 2009 we had another meeting of TRIZ Café at the hotel “Eindhoven”, at the outskirts of the city of Eindhoven. Since a primary goal of our TRIZ Cafe meetings is to bring together people who are interested in TRIZ to get to know each other and share knowledge and ideas, we did not have a fixed pre-set agenda except starting and finishing times and some presentation...
TRIZ Future 2007 Conference Overview
For those who are interested in TRIZ developments, Toru Nakagawa, Professor of Osaka Gakun University in Japan, prepared a detailed overview of papers and presentations from the latest TRIZ conference “TRIZ Future 2007″ which took place in Frankfurt last year. The overview is richly illustrated by images from paper presentations.
The report is freely available at TRIZ Home Page in Japan....
Great Example of Using Resources
A nice illustration of the TRIZ way of thinking! Although I am not sure TRIZ was known to authors of the idea of “PlayPump”, but the idea is a very good illustration of several basic TRIZ concepts. First, ideality: how to achieve the desired results with as little as possible expenses? Second, use of resources. There is always a plenty resources around. A smart use of resources helps...
March 2008 TRIZ Newsletter
Dear Friends,
Please find a new issue of our newsletter.
TRIZ is evolving. This fall, I am really looking forward to the Global TRIZ Future 2008 Conference on November 5-7 and which will be hosted by the University of Twente in Enschede (a city where I live), The Netherlands. This year the conference will be also supported by CIRP: The International Academy of Production Engineering (http://www.cirp.net/)....
OTSM-TRIZ for Kids: Learning Power Thinking
Last Thursday and Friday, we run a workshop “TRIZ for Kids” led by Nikolai Khomenko in The Hague. The workshop was targeted at parents and teachers interested in incorporating OTSM-TRIZ components to improve kids education. It was certainly an inspirational event. Nikolai has been involved to developing educational programs on the basis of OTSM-TRIZ for kids during last 20 years, and...
OTSM-TRIZ for Kids: Summary
Below is a summary and evaluation of the workshop “Using “Yes-No” Game and Riddles for Teaching OTSM-TRIZ and Various Regular School Subjects“, conducted by Nikolai Khomenko in The Hague, 20-21 March 2008. This text was written by one of the workshop participants, Arjanne Boerendans. She kindly permitted to post her text to this blog. Many thanks, Arjanne!
After an introduction...
TRIZ & Systematic Innovation Training: Fall 2008
New dates for training courses in TRIZ and Systematic Innovation, Fall 2008 are available:
One-day Introduction to TRIZ for Business and Management, September 3, 2008, Utrecht, The Netherlands
5-day Extended TRIZ and Systematic Innovation for Business and Management, September 22-26, 2008, Utrecht, The Netherlands
3-day Basic Training in TRIZ and Systematic Innovation for Technology and Engineering,...
A Brief History of TRIZ
As follows from my experience, anyone who starts seriously studying TRIZ and Systematic Innovation, sooner or later starts wondering about a history of TRIZ. Why there are so many tools, what followed what? I constantly get these questions from my “students”. Since there was no TRIZ timeline yet presented in English, I wrote an article “A Brief History of TRIZ” which summarizes...
Matrix 2003: German Edition
A friend and a TRIZ colleague of mine from Germany, Horst Nahler, recently updated me that they published a German translation of the book “Matrix 2003″ by D. Mann, S. Dewulf, B. Zlotin, A. Zusman (originally the book was published in English in 2003). The book introduces an extension to the original Contradiction Matrix developed by G. Altshuller which still remains today one of the...
May 2008 TRIZ and Systematic Innovation Newsletter
It was great to hear this spring about the success of TRIZCON 2008: one of the major annual TRIZ events conducted by the
Altshuller Institute (www.aitriz.org ) which was held on April 13-15, 2008 at Kent State University, USA. The event gathered 250
people, thus making the conference the largest international event up to date. This fact indicates that the worldwide TRIZ
community is growing, and the...
TRIZ Future 2008: List of Abstracts
The list of 58 abstracts provisionally accepted for the conference TRIZ Future 2008 (Nov. 5-7, 2008, Enschede, The Netherlands) is available at:
http://etria.net/portal/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=38
as well as at the official conference website http://www.trizfuture.net/ .
This year we decided to split the conference papers and posters to four tracks: scientific,...
Creativity World Forum in Antwerpen
The summer break is over, and it’s time to get back to autumn innovation. My agenda looks quite full for the coming months with a number of countries to visit, which means that the interest in creativity and innovation is still there!
Just wanted to note that on November 19-20, 2008, the next edition of the Creativity World Forum will take place in Antwerpen, Belgium. The Forum is organized by...
Social Innovation: How to Manage Work/Life Balance?
Last Friday, I took part in a very inspiring informal event: “UnConference”, organized by friends of mine Ton Zijlstra and Elmine Wijnia at the Twente University terrain as a part of Elmine’s birthday celebration. It was visited by a group of enthusiastic people from different countries interested in how networked world changes our life.
One of the questions posted was how to manage work/life...
TRIZ Future 2008 next week!
Are there TRIZ enthusiasts or those who would be interested in learning more about TRIZ? There is a great chance to meet international TRIZ community next week.
On November 5-7 we conduct the international conference TRIZ Future 2008 in Enschede, The Netherlands hosted by the University of Twente. Although the conference will last 3 days, there is also a possibility to register for the first day...
A Personal Record and Crisis (Not Personal)
This fall I seem to set up a personal record on a number of people I trained in TRIZ. Since September 8 till October 31 (during 7 weeks) I trained about 230 people in TRIZ at different levels: from very basic (8 hours) to advanced (40-60 hours). This figure includes both university students and professionals from a dozen of countries. Feel a bit tired, but must confess: very happy.
So will it...
TRIZ Future 2008
Finally, after a quite intensive November filled with travel and training courses, I have some time to write few lines about the TRIZ Future 2008 Conference.
This year’s edition of the conference in Enschede gathered around 90 participants from 20 countries including China, Japan, Korea, US. The number of people was slightly less in the previous year in Frankfurt, however in my opinion,...
TRIZ and Systematic Innovation Training in Spring 2009
I have just (once again!) adjusted the agenda of my public training and certification courses in Spring 2009. Please keep the following dates in mind in case you wish to join some of the courses:
TRIZ for Business and Management:
February 5-7: 3-day course, Bangalore, India
March 20: one-day introductory course, Utrecht, Netherlands
May 4-7: 4-day extended course, Utrecht, Netherlands
TRIZ for...
TRIZ Intro Short Course, January 14, 2009 in Utrecht
When you are every day involved to TRIZ and Innovation, it is not easy to imagine that there are still too many people who never heard of TRIZ, or those who heard but vaguely know what a contemporary TRIZ is. Therefore I scheduled an evening introduction course to modern TRIZ on January 14, in Utrecht, Netherlands. This short course will take place from 16:00 till 20:00, and provide not only an...
Course on Creative Imagination Development
I have just announced a new course on Creative Imagination Development which will take place on April 27, 2007 in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
This course is a bit different from other courses I offer. It does not specifically target on technology or business areas, instead it deals with general development of creative skills. Imagination is an esential part of creative work, and to create interesting...
Root Conflict Analysis and TRIZ
The article shows how RCA+ (Root Conflict Analysis) is used to identify and map contradictions in a specific situation, and then resolve the contradictions to generate new ideas with the help of inventive principles. Although the article deals with a business case (in fact, a very similar situation occurred within several projects; therefore the case presented is rather generic), the same methodology...
What Innovations Bring Most Value to Customers?
It seems like an answer to this question is pretty straightforward: those innovative solutions (products, services, platforms) which better satisfy customer needs create more value. But what needs and what value? And how to create these solutions?
In 1943, Abraham Maslow proposed Hierarchy of Human Needs, which separates between five different levels of human needs. But by looking at all solutions...
Advanced TRIZ and Systematic Innovation for Technology and Engineering
R&D and International Production Director, The Netherlands
ADVANCED TRIZ & SYSTEMATIC INNOVATION
This advanced training course is based on many years of experience with performing TRIZ training and consulting projects within diverse industries. It provides learning and mastering practical skills with advanced TRIZ techniques which are usually...
Extended TRIZ and Systematic Innovation for Business and Management
This unique four-day intensive hands-on course targets at acquiring and mastering skills with modern TRIZ and Systematic Innovation for Business and Management to increase creative and innovative performance of organizations and individuals. The course provides understanding of the basic TRIZ principles of innovative and creative thinking, introduces key techniques...
Advanced TRIZ and Systematic Innovation Training
For those who might be interested, this spring I will conduct two advanced courses in TRIZ and Systematic Innovation:
May 7-11, 2007: 5-Day Advanced TRIZ for Technology and Engineering
June 4-8, 2007: 5-Day Extended TRIZ for Business and Management
Click on the courses to get more information. Both courses will be conducted in the area of Utrecht, The Netherlands, close to Amsterdam.
In addition:...
TRIZ Case Studies Book: new abstracts are welcome
During last several month, our “multi-continental” editorial board received a number of abstracts presenting various cases of using TRIZ to solve problems or to develop new products. However, about 40% of received abstracts presented not-implemented ideas of solutions, while in the original call for papers we requested to submit only those cases which were implemented and proven to...
TRIZ Future Conference in Frankfurt, November 2007
The next forthcoming ETRIA Conference “TRIZ Future 2007″ will be different from previous: it will be conducted in partnership with the European TRIZ Centrum, which used to hold “European TRIZ Congress” in the past. A scientific host of the conference will be Technical University of Munich. As usual, the conference will have two tracks: academic and industrial. I’ll...
Overview: TRIZ for Business and Management
As I mentioned several times in my previous posts, the borders of TRIZ applications are not limited to technology only. The way TRIZ delas with problems and supports creativity are universal since its principles are based on the understanding the dialectics of evolution of man-made systems. I have just uploaded a white paper “Breakthrough Thinking with TRIZ for Business and Management”...
Success of Creative Imagination Development
Last Friday (April 27) I started a new series of training workshops by running a public course on Systematic Creative Imagination Development. It was the first public course of such kind given in English (at least to my knowledge) and it seems like it was a serious success: the audience was extremely enthusiastic during the course, and I received many exciting follow-ups. Although the course was...
xTRIZ May 2007 Newsletter is Available
ICG T&C NEWSLETTER on TRIZ and Systematic Innovation, May 2007
Announcement: nearest events
News and publications from ICG T&C
Conference Reports
New books
TRIZ, Creativity and Innovation on the web
It has been a while since my latest newsletter; it seems like this year brings explosion of interest in creativity and innovation and specifically,...
Tags: TRIZ, Triz NewsLetter
The Risk of Customer-Driven Innovation
In his article, Tony Ulwick, CEO and founder of Strategyn and author of What Customers Want discusses a number of reasons why capturing and using the voice of a customer to create breakthrough innovations can be ineffective. Instead of capturing the customer demands, he proposes to study, dissect, and understand “customer’s jobs” in detail. The approach of Strategyn is based on...
Innovation and TRIZ: 5 Levels of Solutions
The July issue of the TRIZ Journal has published my article “Differentiating Among the Five Levels of Solutions“. I wrote this article to introduce a new classification which is based on using “function/principle/market” differentiation to categorize all kinds of solutions rather than on creativity only as originally proposed by the originator of TRIZ G. Altshuller. A full...
Thinking Skills For Innovation
In the past, we could invent something once and enjoy benefits till the rest of our lives. Time has changed. Today we need to continously stay innovative – which means we need to possess “power” thinking skills to be able to constantly come up with new winning ideas. But what are the differences between “regular” and “power” thinking skills? Due to nature of my work, I have...
TRIZ Future 2007 in Frankfurt: Short Report
The 7th Global Conference TRIZ Future 2007, organized jointly by ETRIA, European TRIZ Zentrum, Chamber of Commerce of Kassel and Technical University of Munich, was holding on November 6-8 in Frankfurt am Main. 140 participants arrived to the conference. The conference opened with two tutorials: on Technology Forecast by Dmitry Koucheriavy and Advanced TRIZ by Nikolai Khomenko (both Graduate School...
TRIZ Future 2008 in Enschede, The Netherlands
The next ETRIA Conference TRIZ Future 2008 will be conducted on November 5-7, 2008 in Enschede, The Netherlands at the terrain of the University of Twente. More details are available at http://www.etria.net/ and http://www.trizfuture.net/
i.e.
Welcome to the ETRIA Portal
Welcome to the ETRIA Portal: the official website of the European TRIZ Association, where we inform public about our...
TRIZ and Systematic Innovation Training: Spring 2008
New dates for training in TRIZ and Systematic Innovation are announced for Spring 2008:
One-day Introduction to TRIZ for Business and Management: January 19, 2008: Utrecht, The Netherlands
One-day Introduction to TRIZ for Technology and Engineering: February 22, 2008: Utrecht, The Netherlands
One-day Creative Imagination Development (for all areas): April 11, 2008: Utrecht, The Netherlands
5-day Extended...
xTRIZ: Welcome to Creative Innovation
About 7 years ago, I wrote a short article “Four Views on TRIZ” to answer the question which I was asked too often: “and yet, what exactly TRIZ is?” I guess, this question is still asked today and will be asked many times in future.
Despite the fact that TRIZ originated more than 50 years ago, it is still very young: at both theoretical and practical sides. Still, there...
TRIZ Future 2006 Conference
A program of ETRIA TRIZ Future 2006 Conference has just been published:
program.pdf
The conference will be held in Kortrijk, Belgium, October 9-11, 2006. With 49 presentations and 4 keynotes it promises to be a very interesting event. I will be presenting TRIZ for business problem solving case and methodology on the first conference day right after the conference opening.
Provided and Copyright...
TRIZ: a meta-theory of creative innovation?
If a role of TRIZ has to be defined in a single sentence, TRIZ helps provide creative phases of innovation with knowledge-based systematic support. While most of the basic TRIZ principles were drawn from the studies of technological inventions, the ways we solve problems and generate ideas are rather similar in virtually every area. For instance, TRIZ postulates that one of the major driving forces...
“Dutch” TRIZ: Our article in The TRIZ Journal
The article written by me together with Jacques Stevens of Stevens Ide Partners about our “Dutch” experience with TRIZ (with several case stidues) appeared in the September issue of the TRIZ Journal:
Abstract
In this article, we would like to present our “Dutch” experience with introducing TRIZ to the Dutch market by creating collaboration between academia, engineering design and TRIZ...
“Why Smart Companies….” and innovation
Interesting article in Guy Kawasaki’s blog is as under….
Why Smart Companies Do Dumb Things
Not a day goes by when I don’t ask myself, “Why do smart companies do such dumb things?” We all know companies that cook the books and throw outrageous parties at one end of the spectrum to sell lousy products at the other. A sweeping answer is that companies are run by smart people,...
Problems and Solutions: The Wise Owl story
A nice story about problems, solutions… and consulting:
“Once upon a time, there was a forest. Suddenly, for whatever reasons, a population of wolves started to grow, and this was really bad for rabbits who were eaten by the wolves more and more. So the rabbits decided to ask the wisest creature in the forest, the Owl, what to do. They came to the Owl, and the Owl said: “Now, it...
TRIZ and Business Week
A new TRIZ reference in Businesss Week in the section “Innovation Tools and Trends to Watch” : http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/09/in_short/source/4.htm. As correctly pointed by Ellen Domb, “Bad news — it (TRIZ) is only wildly complex if it is badly taught and it works very well for solving management problems, too“.
Eearler, Business Week published another article...
TRIZ Case Studies Book: Call for Papers
During recent discussions with numerous people, it became obviuos that we need a book presenting a collection of real TRIZ case studies. An independent editors team was formed (thanks Ellen Domb, Marco Aurelio de Carvalho, Hongyul Yoon for joining). The book will be available as a e-book for free. Therefore we invite all interested authors to submit their papers or express their intention to write...
Google trends: search for TRIZ
When trying to explore at www.google.com/trends who most actively searches for the word “TRIZ” at Google, the following results appeared:
No signs of Europe or US except Austria. Seems like Austrian TRIZ Zentrum does a good job to promote TRIZ. And one more chart – results for “innovation”:
Singapore and Malaysia – most innovative places in the world?
Provided...
Can TRIZ solve any problem?
Can TRIZ solve any problem? This is the question that I hear very often. Sometimes it is asked by people who were not experienced in TRIZ but ordered TRIZ services and were unhappy with the results; and complained that a TRIZ service supplier who worked with them had mentioned that TRIZ could solve any problem. And I believe these unhappy customers are right with their complaints. In fact, my...
TRIZ Future 2006 is over
The 5th ETRIA Conference TRIZ Future 2006 in Kortrijk, Belgium is over. In total, 120 participants from 27 countries (including Australia, Brasil, Japan, Korea, USA, Taiwan) visited the conference. If to express my impressions about the conference in one sentence: both many of the papers presented and Belgian culinary delights were definitely matching each other! I also enjoyed numerous discussions...
TRIZ: Top 12 questions (part 1)
1. Should I learn TRIZ?
If you wish to increase both efficiency and effectiveness of your problem solving and idea generation capabilities, you will find learning TRIZ useful. TRIZ is a heuristic science which studies trends of system evolution, reveals patterns of inventive solutions, and attempts to extract principles and understand a process of inventive thinking. Knowledge of TRIZ helps ...
TRIZ: Top 12 questions (part 2)
7. Is TRIZ a Contradiction Matrix and 40 Inventive Principles?
Only partly. Both Contradiction Matrix and 40 Inventive Principles were developed by the middle of the 1960s. After that time, a number of more sophisticated techniques were developed, like Substance-Field Analysis, Function Analysis, 76 Inventive Standards, Databases of Effects, Algorithm for Solving Inventive Problems (ARIZ), Theory...
