INNOVATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING FOR SOCIAL APPLICATIONS: A STRUCTURED APPROACH

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1 INNOVATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING FOR SOCIAL APPLICATIONS: A STRUCTURED APPROACH Valeri Souchkov ICG Training & Consulting, 7511KH Enschede, The Netherlands Keynote Talk, International Conference IADIS 2013, July 25, 2013, Prague, Czech Republic ABSTRACT The paper presents an overview of a systematic approach to solving innovative problems based on the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving and explains the parallels between technical and nontechnical innovations. Major concepts of systematic innovative problem solving are explained such as contradictions and ideality. The paper is illustrated by a number of examples. KEYWORDS Problem Solving, Invention, Systematic Innovation, TRIZ 1. INTRODUCTION In general, all problems can be divided to two large groups: problems that we known how to solve since there is a well-defined problem solving method available, and problems that we do not known how to solve. We call solutions to the problems of the second group innovative, and therefore the problems can be called innovative as well. Until recently, the only approach to solve innovative problems was to use trials and errors. Efficiency of the method of trials and errors is very low. To find a feasible solution to a difficult problem, thousands of trials might be required. To improve the situation with random thinking A. Osborn proposed a method of brainstorming (Osborn, 1963) which still remains the most widely used method for innovative problem solving and creative ideas generation. To improve the effectiveness of innovative problem solving, F. Zwicky proposed a method of innovation based on Morphological Analysis (Zwicky, 1969) which can be considered the first systematic method of solving innovative problems. However his method is limited to the use of knowledge of a domain where a problem belongs to while most of innovative solutions arrive from other domains. Nevertheless the method of F. Zwicky triggered development of another method based on a systematic approach for solving innovative problems on the basis of cross-domain search. The method was called TRIZ (the Russian abbreviation which stands for the Theory of Solving Innovative Problems ). To develop the method, his author G. Altshuller together with his associates studied over technical innovations and came up with the conclusion that the majority of innovations complies with a relatively small number of domain-independent generic solution patterns (Altshuller, 1973, 1988). 1

2 Later TRIZ has evolved to a large discipline also known as Systematic Innovation which studies how innovations are made and introduces a scientific basis for understanding the nature of innovation. In addition to scientific discoveries behind innovation, today TRIZ and Systematic Innovation offer a practical framework for innovative problem solving which is recognized by such world-leading companies as Intel Corporation and Samsung as best practice of innovation (Shaughnessy, 2013). However the question is: can TRIZ be used in non-technical domains? The latest studies indicate that the answer is positive: TRIZ, or some of its concepts can be used for innovative problem solving within different domains including a social domain. Modern TRIZ and Systematic Innovation represent a large body of knowledge which consists of a number of theories and techniques, and which includes a number of tools to organize and support the process of innovative problem solving. This paper is limited to explaining several basic concepts of TRIZ and Systematic Innovation which are essential to understand the paradigm shift proposed by TRIZ. 2. SYSTEMATIC INNOVATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING 2.1 Expansion of TRIZ to Non-Technical Areas So far most of TRIZ applications have been addressing technological areas and engineering disciplines. However at the beginning of the 21th century it became obvious that TRIZ had a much broader potential than a theory for technical creativity only. First, it was noticed that people who studied TRIZ in depth were improving their creative thinking and problem-solving skills in other, non-technical areas as well. Second, a number of studies demonstrated that the fundamental principles uncovered by TRIZ could be observed in areas very different from technology, such as arts (Murashkovsky, 2007) and advertisement (Vikentiev, 2007). Research by B. Zlotin and A. Zussman on the evolution of organizations also revealed trends and patterns similar to those which were found in technical TRIZ (Zlotin and Zussman, 1991), while G. Altshuller and I. Vertkin demonstrated how key TRIZ principles were used by outstanding creative people to solve various social problems and contradictions as well as for developing creative personality (Altshuller and Vertkin, 1994). In the beginning of the 1990th, foundations of OTSM-TRIZ were defined by N. Khomenko and his associates to convert TRIZ to a general, domain-independent thinking approach. In particular, OTSM-TRIZ is used today as a basis to enhance pre-school and school education (Khomenko and Ashtiani, 2007). At the same time, a new direction of study, TRIZ for Business and Management was launched (Mann, 2007 and Souchkov, 2010) as well as application of TRIZ in social domain (Zlotin and Zussman, 2000). A phenomenon of successful application of TRIZ and its tools in non-technical domains can be explained by the fact that TRIZ focuses on studying high-level patterns and regularities of nonlinear evolution of technical systems. However these systems are a subset of a broader class of artificial, man-made systems. Since TRIZ principles were confirmed in many engineering domains from mechanics to microelectronics, a key assumption was made that general mechanisms of artificial systems formation and evolution are similar and domain-independent. In turn, thinking patterns which we use during innovative problem solving process deal with changing systems, would it be a car, or a building, or a company. Therefore another assumption is that when we solve an innovative problem in the area of business systems, or arts, or social systems we apply the same or very similar general patterns which we use when working with technical systems. 2

3 Of course, it would not be wise to directly transfer the original a version of TRIZ developed for technical systems to a non-technical domain. Each domain has its own distinct features, specific operational principles and details. However at a higher level of abstraction the underlying principles of man-made systems organization and evolution appear to be quite similar due to very similar reasoning mechanisms which are deployed during our creative thinking process Contradiction as a Problem Model One of the key concepts of TRIZ is a contradiction which is used to formulate and solve innovative problems. A contradiction is a conflict of demands which blocks us from applying a known domain-specific method of problem solving, for instance optimization. Contradiction arises when two mutually exclusive requirements are put on the same system or a situation. For instance, to continuously improve his or her job skills, an employee should spend as much as possible time for learning but at the same time he or she should not be distracted from work at all. According to TRIZ, to obtain an innovative solution this contradiction must be eliminated. The best solution will be when a person still learns every day and at the same time is never distracted from work activities. Usually we tend to solve such problems by trying to find a trade-off between the conflicting requirements but at a certain moment a point might be reached when further optimization does not help since all the resources for optimization have been exhausted. Many individuals and organizations face contradictions every day. Solving contradictions is a driving force of evolution of any system, either technological or social, and the ability to resolve contradictions becomes an indicator of an advanced innovative thinking. 2.3 Eliminating Contradictions Breakthrough thinking is difficult for many reasons, and the most important one is our psychological inertia. To move our thinking out of the box, we need to avoid associations with a specific problem, forget about existing solutions, and to see a problem under a new angle, or under different angles. Brainstorm and its modifications were introduced to help with this process. However, brainstorm does not offer a right direction of solution search. For relatively simple problems, brainstorm might provide good results. For more complex and difficult problems brainstorm requires making thousands of trials, and there is no guarantee that a solution required will be found. In most cases, we expect that a breakthrough idea will be found through insight by performing numerous trials and errors. However one can not guarantee when a right solution will be found and it is why today many difficult social problems still remain unsolved. To cope with the situation, TRIZ and Systematic Innovation offer a logical method to attack those problems that are stated as contradictions in combination with statistically proven generic patterns of strong solutions which were discovered by studying how various types of contradictions were solved in the past. Instead of trying to directly jump to a solution, TRIZ proposes to abstract a problem, formulate a contradiction, and then apply a specific solution pattern from the TRIZ database of generic solution patterns. Such approach helps to guide the search of solutions in a specific direction and drastically reduce search time as show in Fig. 1. 3

4 Figure 1. Innovative problem solving with TRIZ: to narrow solution search space the solution patterns and inventive principles are used instead of trials and errors. 2.4 Inventive Principles Comprehensive studies of a large number of innovative solutions undertaken by TRIZ researchers resulted in creating a collection of so-called inventive principles which can be applied to eliminate contradictions. An inventive principle describes a strategy how to eliminate similar types of contradictions. The collection of TRIZ inventive principles is the most known and widely used TRIZ problem solving technique. An inventive principle is a guideline, which recommends a number of directions for solving a particular type of a contradiction. For example the following recommendations are proposed by inventive principle called Taking Away : 1. If a part of your system or your process interferes with other parts or creates a negative effect, take away the interfering part of your system or your process by separating it from the system or the process, or by removing or isolating it from the system or the process. 2. If some feature or property of your system or your process interferes with other properties of functions of the system or the process, find out what part of the system is a carrier of the interfering property and separate it from the system or the process by creating another system or the process, or transfer the interfering property to some other part of the system or the process. 3. Create a new system or a process which has the necessary property only. To understand how the inventive principles are used, let us have a look at two problems. The first problem is technical: to launch and bring a spaceship to the orbit, the spaceship needs to overcome the Earth gravity force. To achieve it the spaceship has to carry many tons of fuel to reach the speed needed to break the gravity barrier. But after the largest part of fuel has burned, the overall mass of the spaceship still remains too high because of very large and massive empty fuel tanks. It drastically decreases the amount of useful cargo of the spaceship which can be delivered to the orbit. The second problem is non-technical. A board of a start-up company decided to expand the company s marketing team. But due to certain reasons the marketing budget planned was reduced and the company s marketing director was confronted with a problem: the costs of employing people to form a new marketing team would not allow participating in all product exhibitions. And vice versa, if the size of the marketing team remained small, the company would participate in all 4

5 planned exhibitions, but then the overall performance of the marketing team would be low. To increase the budget was not possible. As mentioned above, there are two ways to approach both problems. The first way is to apply optimization methods. We can find an optimal ratio between the capacity of fuel tanks and the weight of useful cargo. In the second case, we can optimize a number of hired specialists and the number of exhibitions. Most likely, both solutions will not be satisfying since they offer trade-offs. We sacrifice either the amount of useful cargo in the first case or the performance of the marketing team in the second case. When an optimal solution can not meet growing demands any longer, we should search for a breakthrough solution. Both problems can be formulated as contradictions. In the first case capacity of the fuel tanks conflicts with the amount of useful cargo. In the second problem the size of the marketing team conflicts with a number of planned exhibitions. Second step is to define which inventive principles are relevant to formulated contradictions. We omit description of this process in the paper. In both cases the Contradiction Matrix proposed to use the Inventive Principle of Taking Away mentioned above. Now our task is to apply these recommendations and come up with new ideas within the context of our problems. In the first problem, if the fuel tanks have large capacity and thus become too heavy, their weight becomes an interfering property and according to the inventive principle they have to be taken away from the spaceship. A solution proposed by Robert Goddard, one of the pioneers of space flight, was to make the launch boosters detachable, so that they are separated and thrown away right after all fuel in them burned out. Thus the useful load could be increased not just by few per cent, but by orders of magnitude. In the second case exhibitions are needed to expose products of the company. Therefore the costs of participating in the exhibitions should be taken away from the marketing budget. A solution to the marketing problem was to maintain the size of the marketing team as planned, but participate only in most important exhibitions with the company s own booth. As soon as new marketing professionals joined the company, they started searching for other companies that would be willing to co-promote products at their own booths, thus significantly cutting costs of exposing the products. The contradiction was resolved since the company increased their marketing force just as planned, and at the same time still presented their products at all the exhibitions exactly as planned. To some, the solution with co-promotion might seem to be too far away from the recommendation take away. It is not so if you know TRIZ. First of all, the inventive principles serve as triggers to activate our creative imagination. This knowledge helps to come up with best ideas much quicker. Currently there are 40 inventive principles in the collection, which are accessible in a systematic way according to predefined types of conflicting requirements. Access to the inventive principles is provided through so-called Contradiction Matrix, which consists of a set of generalized requirements formulated for a specific discipline which might conflict with each other. Each couple of the generalized requirements provides a reference to a list of specific inventive principles which should be used to solve a problem containing a contradiction between these two parameters. Currently there are contradiction matrices available which include generalized requirements for technology (Altshuller 1973, Mann 2009), for business and management (Mann 2007), and for software development (Mann 2008). If a contradiction can not be resolved with inventive principles, there are more sophisticated TRIZ techniques to deal with contradictions, such as Algorithm for Solving Inventive Problems (Altshuller 1988). 5

6 2.5 System Levels In general, any technological, business or social system can be seen at three levels: 1. System level: a system itself limited by its borders including all parts of the system. 2. Supersystem level: everything that does not belong to a system but interacts or might interact with the system, or produces influence on the system. 3. Subsystems level: everything that is a part of the system, each system s component. Once we face a contradiction in a certain system, we can solve it at each of these three levels. First, we explore if the problem can be solved at the subsystem level: by modifying, removing or adding components to the system. If solutions cannot be found at the subsystems level, next we explore supersystem: can we use any resource of supersystem to achieve the result required? And finally, if no solution can be found at these two levels, it means that the main working principle of the system has no potential to evolve further to deliver its function as required and should be replaced with a new working principle. For example, many road accidents happen when two or more cars collide at a crossroad. The contradiction emerges because cars have to move fast across the crossroad to maintain their speed, and at the same time the cars should move slowly to control a situation and avoid possible collision. How this problem can be solved? In this case, our system is formed by the two colliding cars and the crossroad. At the subsystem level we can change or add new subsystems: install bumpers (actually, a compromising solution: to soften symptoms rather then solving the core problem); air cushions, ultrasonic distance sensors; and so forth. At the level of a supersystem (changing the surrounding system in such a way that it eliminates the problem): install road signs; traffic lights; sleeping policeman ; placing the crossing roads at different levels; fully automated road traffic control with feedback to the cars. At the level of a system: redesign cars in such a way that they do not experience collision because they may not collide. Examples of such solution ideas are known but they seem to be neither physically feasible nor economically viable. For example, there are prototypes of flying cars that jump over other cars before collision. Sounds more like science fiction, but we should not forget that many great ideas were born in science fiction (a submarine, space station, videophone, and so forth). This contradiction is not totally solved in some of the proposed solutions. For instance, a traffic light does not eliminate the contradiction in full: it causes a car to stop or slow down but does not prevent a possibility of collision, and accidents still happen. It has been hundred years since we have cars, but the contradiction is still there. There are other ways to solve this problem (e.g. placing the crossing roads at different levels and connecting them as on highways), but how do we do it, say, in large, packed cities where it is simply impossible to redesign the existing road infrastructure? We must formulate new contradictions and solve them. 2.6 Resources Similarly to technical systems, contradictions which emerge as a result of growing demands often produce barriers preventing further evolution of systems and impose limits on their effectiveness. For instance, a company designs and manufactures sport shoes. Modern consumer market demands diversity, which means that consumers like to have shoes of different designs and colors. As a result, in order to satisfy the customer demands the company must produce batches of shoes of different designs and colors and distribute them across numerous retailers. The question is how many shoes of the same color and design to produce? The behavior of a consumer market is not easily predictable, and the probability that a large volume of shoes will remain unsold is high. Thus 6

7 on the one hand, to increase sales and satisfy the customer demand the company should produce a large volume of diverse shoes which will be distributed to many regions, but on the other hand the company should not produce large volume to avoid the risk of oversupply. This is a typical example of a contradiction. Ideally, the company should know exactly in advance how many shoes of specific design and color in a particular region will be sold. Is it possible? Nike has resolved this contradiction by introducing online service called Nike ID (nikeid.nike.com). When visiting the website, consumers can customize designs and colors of their shoes and place an order. The shoes will be manufactured exactly as configured by a customer and shipped to his home address. Such a business model makes it possible to exactly balance supply and demand to avoid overproduction. Today there are many examples of how social systems become more open and use supersystem resources. Social platforms like Facebook operate communication among large groups of people who are not parts of Facebook. The number of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding projects gradually increases. Organizations tend to outsource their non-core activities. A paradigm of Open Innovation (Chesbrough, 2003) motivates organizations to look for new ideas outside their own borders. It is well known in TRIZ that the most effective way to resolve contradictions is to use the available system and supersystem resources. In many cases resources are available, but we have to switch from the inside thinking mode to the outside thinking mode. 3. IDEALITY AND INNOVATION STRATEGIES 3.1 Contradiction Trees In certain cases when we deal with difficult innovative problems, to solve a single contradiction might not be enough. If a solution arrives from another domain, it can require solving a number of contradictions in order to successfully implement this new solution. For example, the first digital cameras produced images of very poor quality. Introduction of a digital matrix replaced main working principle behind image capturing but created many other contradictions which were subsequently solved to develop modern low-cost digital cameras that offer professional quality of imaging. The same situation happens in almost every area of human activities: first, an idea emerges how to eliminate a major contradiction, but to implement it many so-called secondary contradictions have to be formulated and solved. It is very important that sometimes, secondary problems might be easier to solve than the major contradiction. However often a potentially breakthrough idea can be rejected without even exploring secondary problems due to seemingly high complexity of implementation and unpredictability of dealing with all the secondary problems that are generated by this new idea. The bigger a change is proposed the more complex contradiction trees might arise. For instance, transition to distant education over the Internet solves a major contradiction between availability of a teacher and remoteness of a student. However, to implement this solution worldwide, especially in the developing countries, many challenges still have to be addressed: an upgraded communication infrastructure is needed; students should have access to online devices; teaching material has to be adjusted to local cultures, and so forth. Fast and efficient solving of these problems requires innovative thinking and resolving many secondary contradictions. 7

8 3.2 Ideality and Innovation Strategies As follows from TRIZ studies, vast majority of artificial systems tend to evolve according to the TRIZ trend of Increasing the Degree of Ideality. The Ideality/Value formula introduced by Salamatov (1999) applies to technical systems and can be presented in a broader sense as: Degree of Ideality = (Value Creators - Value Reducers)/Costs, where: 1. Value Creators are all parameters, useful features and functions provided by a system which are perceived positively. 2. Value Reducers are those features, functions, harms and any other factors that reduce the perceived value (except costs). 3. Costs are all direct and indirect expenses required to generate and maintain Value Creators. The degree of ideality is not an absolute but a relative parameter and it is used to compare two competing (alternative) systems which have the same goal. The higher the degree of ideality of a specific system within a specific niche is, the more ideal and therefore more competitive the system will be. As a consequence, to increase the degree of ideality of any system we can consider the following innovation strategies: 1. Invent new Value Creators. We can increase the perceived value of our system by introducing new Value Creators without increasing Value Reducers, for example by offering radically new functions. 2. Increase existing value creators. We can increase the perceived value of our system by radically increasing parameters of Value Creators without increasing Value Reducers. 3. Eliminate or decrease Value Reducers. We can eliminate or to considerably decrease Value Reducers without decreasing Value Creators. 4. Eliminate or reduce costs. We can considerable reduce or eliminate costs without decreasing Value Creators and increasing Value Reducers. 5. Any combinations of the abovementioned strategies. 3.3 TRIZ-Based Criteria of Solutions By applying TRIZ and Systematic Innovation techniques to solve contradictions, we usually generate a number of alternative solution ideas. How to select the most promising idea? Apart from problem-specific criteria, there is a set of general TRIZ-based generic criteria which can be applied to any solution idea and which is based on the Ideality/Value Formula presented above: 1. A solution provides an expected result in full; a contradiction is fully resolved: no compromise or trade-off. 2. A solution provides win-win situation: both conflicting requirements are met. 3. A solution does not generate any other harmful or negative effects. 4. A solution either costs nothing to implement or requires minimal investments. 5. A solution provides extra benefits. Meeting all these criteria is not possible in most solutions. But still, applying this list of criteria helps to quickly recognize most promising ideas. 4. CONCLUSION Before TRIZ there was no systematic method to support innovative problem solving process except of a number of psychological methods of boosting our creativity. However they do not deal directly 8

9 with a problem but divert us to explore randomly chosen different directions. However what directions to explore and how remains completely unclear in these methods. The originator of TRIZ, G. Altshuller applied empirical scientific approach to understand how we solve difficult problems which require creative thinking and which can not be tackled with formal methods. He also identified that a breakthrough solution emerges as a result of eliminating a contradiction which is a major obstacle that does not let us to solve a problem fast and efficiently. We used to think in terms of optimization and trade-offs, while breakthrough solutions require breakthrough thinking. A process of developing skills of formulating and solving contradictions is twofold: first, it enables us to innovate. Second, it develops our personal capabilities of system thinking. Thinking in terms of contradictions is not natural. To solve a contradiction, one has to break psychological inertia. But instead, our mind tends to come up with compromises, or trade-offs: because they seem to be safer and easier to find. To learn how to think and reason in a systematic way that would help us dealing with contradictions, we must force ourselves, which is not an easy process, but inevitable if the goal is to find a breakthrough solution. In general, the use of TRIZ and Systematic Innovation provides the following: A structured approach to formulating and solving innovative problems. Considerable increase of productivity when searching for new breakthrough ideas and concepts to solve innovative problems. Increasing the ratio Useful ideas / useless ideas during problem solving by guiding a search towards a part of solution space where the most ideal solutions can be found. Reducing risk of missing an important solution to a specific problem due to a broad range of generic patterns of inventive solutions offered by TRIZ. Leveraging intellectual capital of society via developing personal creative and innovative skills to approach and solve inventive and innovative problems in a systematic way. TRIZ is the most powerful and effective practical methodology of developing innovative ideas available today since it uses combination of logical and creative thinking to solve innovative problems. The effectiveness of TRIZ has been proven in the area of technological innovation during many years of use and it can be confirmed by a large number of patents produced with TRIZ. However the question still remains if TRIZ can bring the same value to non-technical domains, in particular for business and social innovations. The attempts to use TRIZ for business and social innovation started rather recently and so far were satisfying but more studies are needed. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am grateful to Piet Kommers (University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands) for critical comments and for discussions. REFERENCES Altshuller G., Algorithm of Invention, Moskovskiy Rabochi, Moscow, USSR (in Russian). Altshuller G., Creativity as an Exact Science, Gordon & Breach Sciense Publishers, New York, USA. Altshuller G. & Vertkin I., How to Become a Genius: Life Strategy of Creative Personality. Minsk, Belarus, 1994 (In Russian) 9

10 Altshuller G., The Innovative Algorithm: TRIZ, Systematic Innovation and Technical Creativity. Technical Innovation Center, USA. Chesbrough, H., Open Innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Boston, Harvard Business School Press, USA. Mann D., Hands-On Systematic Innovation for Business and Management. Second Edition, Lazarus Press, UK. Mann D., Systematic Software Innovation. IFR Press, UK. Mann D., Matrix IFR Press, UK. Murashkovsky Yu., Biography of Arts. Scandinavia, Petrozavodsk, Russia. (In Russian). Ishida, A., 2003, Using TRIZ to Create Innovative Business Models and Products. Proceedings of ETRIA TRIZ Future Conference 2003, November 12-14, 2003, Aachen, Germany, pp Khomenko N. & Ashtiani M., 2007, Classical TRIZ and OTSM as a scientific theoretical background for non-typical problem solving instruments. Proceedings of ETRIA TRIZ Future Conference 2007, November 6-8, Frankfurt, Germany, pp Osborn A., Applied imagination: Principles and procedures of creative problem solving (Third Revised Edition). New York, NY: Charles Scribner s Sons, USA. Salamatov Yu., TRIZ: The Right Solution at The Right Time. Insytec, The Netherlands. Shaughnessy H., 2013, What Makes Samsung Such An Innovative Company, Forbes, March 7. Souchkov V., 1998, TRIZ: A Systematic Approach To Conceptual Design. Universal Design Theory (Grabowski H. et al, eds), Shaker Verlag, Germany, pp Souchkov V., TRIZ and Systematic Business Model Innovation. Proceedings of TRIZ Future Conference 2010, Bergamo, Italy, pp Vikentiev I., Principles of Advertisement and Public Relations. TRIZ-Chance and Business Press, St. Petersburg, Russia. (In Russian). Zlotin B. & Zussman A., Evolution of Organizations, Kishinev, Moldova. (in Russian) Zlotin B. & Zussman A., TRIZ Beyond Technology: The Theory and Practice of Applying TRIZ to Non-Technical Areas. Ideation International Inc, Detroit, USA. Zwicky, F., Discovery, Invention, Research Through the Morphological Approach. Toronto: The Macmillian Company, Canada. 10