Dear Ellen.
I am very sorry for so long delay with my reaction. As you knows I prefer customers with complex interdisciplinary problematic situations and long term relationships with them. This helps me to carry out my research ad Develop OTSM further. And it is useful for my customers to improve their product services and strategy. Bad news here is that those projects involve me completely and I have not so much time to maintain my blog. I like a lot this way of communication But…. See above…
A few words on your wonderful comment:
I have partially reacted it in my comment to Anonymous (April 29, 2009) – ego of professionals that usually cover their genetic fear.
Here I would like to say that my perception of Classical TRIZ, that I obtain from learning Classical TRIZ directly from Genrich Altshuller during 15 years of our cooperation, is very different from most of world wide TRIZ community (most of Russian TRIZ experts included).
According Altshuller TRIZ is not a method to solve typical inventive problems but it is tool to create appropriate method for solving nontypical problems that do not have any typical solution yet. Unfortunately many people consider TRIZ as a tool for solving typical problems because of lot of solutions already was discovered and organized in certain system by Altshuller. Some of TRIZ tools work in this way perfectly in the hands of professionals. But this is just a part of toolbox creqated by Altshuller and based on Classical TRIZ.
In my mind TRIZ is not method to handle problematic situation that could not be solved by typical solutions known for professional or TRIZ-experts. Yes ARIZ do work wonderful if people dedicate enough time to study it carefully.
Altshuller considered TRIZ as theoretical approach, tool to create tools for problem solving whenever we need them. And as my experience show if people do learn Classical TRIZ in this way they do develop a very good additional tools for certain particular needs or general tools for dealing with complex problems. Altshuller’s ARIZ 85-C is perfectly done for situations that contain dozen contradictions. If the problematic situation consists of hundred sub problems then in addition to ARIZ and other tools of the Classical TRIZ better apply OTSM Problem Flow Networks approach. Some of my students use TRIZ in this way.
Taking into account all above I can see that the method you describe in your comment is one of the tools that appear by using Inversion principle to some of known tools. This is too much unusual for many people and that is why they refuse it. However it is a rule of ARIZ related to Intensification and exaggeration technique. When we exaggerate situation so much that it seems we put up side down and many people afraid even think of this. But those who able to overcome their fear could benefit a lot.
In ARIZ 77 Altshuller introduced step that propose to solve inverse problem. This step was in the part till ARIZ -85-B. However Altshuller remove that part because of he consider that this part should appear as a special Algorithm that must be developed and used to pose the right problem in the right form and then start to use ARIZ 85-C. For many reasons he did not develop that algorithm and this step about inversion of the problematic situation disappear for TRIZ newcomers as well as many other useful instruments that was never translated yet into English. So the most advanced people have to discover them by themselves.
It was one of Altshuller’s projects he propose me in the end of 80s. To write comments on the TRIZ evolution and instruments that were created based on TRIZ. But the key point of the idea was to observe past of TRIZ evolution (stage 1 - as a method; stage 2 - as an algorithm; stage 3 - as a theory) as an evolution of General theory of Powerful thinking (OTSM is a Russian acronym for this). He leaded the TRIZ evolution to this target – and it was interesting to see which tool and ideas appear and survive and what ideas disappear and why. We have discussed with him a lot of those things. I am still working on this subject. But it is too much difficult to write all of those all along. I am looking for support to this project and for enthusiastic people who are interested to take part in this project. One of difficulties I have faced on this way is that those who learn TRIZ recently by using old books have a problem with using TRIZ terminology. Because of the terminology was changed sufficiently since the book Algorithm Of Innovation was published first in 1968. In additional appear lot of misinterpretations in translation of original papers on TRIZ. As a result it seems to me that I speak with my partners about absolutely different things. Even so they name this TRIZ and use TRIZ terminology…
But this is another story for my blog.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Friday, May 9, 2008
Limits of a Professionalism.
Several years ago I was coaching group of professionals who were working on a very important and complicated technical problem. We were working for several months to reveal and eliminate system of contradictions. Step by step we eliminated professional stereotypes of participants and finally developed a set of interesting innovative ideas. Members of the temporary group were happy with the results and wanted to apply computer simulation to make first step from a conceptual solution to an implemented solution. According their corporate rules they had to ask for permission from their boss to spend several days and to use a powerful computer. Reaction of the boss confused them a lot. He refused the proposed solution and prohibited to make simulation. It seems totally non-logical. To spend so much time to obtain a solution and refuse to spend a few days with computer simulation?
What is behind this strange behavior of Professionals and their Managers?
To answer this question we should consider what does it mean professionals?
How do they appear in our world?
A commonly shared answer to this question is simple and looks obvious. Professionals are knowledgeable and skillful people we usually invite to help us achieve certain goals or perform a certain project.
How do those people obtain their professional Knowledge and Skills?
The answer is clear as well: during their professional education and life experience.
Now is most crucial point of our investigation.
The key question: How does this professional knowledge appear in a professional educational system?
The answer is also clear: previous generations of professionals invent new ideas and implement them for practical needs. Then these ideas were transformed to professional typical solutions. New generations of professionals learn those typical solutions as a ready to use instruments for solving their professional problems.
The core words are – professional Typical solutions.
The second crucial issue – these typical solutions were invented somewhere in the past. Then these innovative ideas were transformed for professional needs in the following way: IF we have a certain problem: THEN we have to use the typical solution: .
Often professionals do not even realize why these typical solutions work and what is underlying knowledge for the specific typical solution is.
This entire works perfectly until professionals encounter a non typical problem. It means that the problem could not be solved by applying a well known typical solution. Innovative ideas are necessary.
“…The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them... “
These words are attributed to Albert Einstein…
A research which was done by Altshuller and Igor Vertkin absolutely conform this conclusion. They analyzed about 1000 biographies of great innovators who changed the world.
A contemporary level of thinking is a level of thinking of the contemporary professionals in the specific fields. Their instruments and criteria of evaluation serve to generate typical solutions and compare different options of these solutions. Such instruments and criteria are not dedicated to evaluate innovative unusual ideas. It is well known among Classical TRIZ Professionals that if professionals say “Yes this is possible” then it is possible. However if professional say “No” we should be triple careful, especially if we were using support of professionals in Classical TRIZ and OTSM.
Why?
It is due to the fact that we could miss new innovative ideas and solutions that eventually will became typical professional solutions. But until this idea will be accepted and will become a typical solution we could have a temporary business monopoly.
In other world we could miss profitable innovation. And this is not a hypothesis. More than 60 years of TRIZ evolution prove this point many times in different country for various domains of human activities.
Professionalism has its own limits. These limits are defined by a typical solutions and theories that underlie these professional typical solutions. All of them produce professional stereotypes which block innovative thinking and acceptance of new ideas. A highly innovative solution often appears beyond the professional stereotypes. A telephone was refused by professionals of the telegraph company. The same reaction followed the radio broadcasting at its beginning. Before the Second World War IBM produced mechanical calculators and their professionals refused ideas of an electronic computer. Professionals who were producing mainframes refused the ideas of a personal computer. You can find lot of facts like these in the history of Mankind.
That is why when Professionals say – “No” we should be triple careful, especially if new ideas were obtained with the help of Professionals in Classical TRIZ and OTSM. OTSM-TRIZ professionals have a meta-knowledge and skills to develop innovative solutions across professionals’ stereotypes.
This meta-knowledge could be used much more efficiently if it would be a part of a corporate culture and managers would find a way how to arrange cooperation between their own professionals and professionals in Classical TRIZ and OTSM. This will lead eventually to a Company of Sustainable Innovation. Neither Classical TRIZ nor OTSM can replace specific professional knowledge, but both of them are capable of drastically increasing the use of the professional knowledge as well as of management and strategic planning.
What is behind this strange behavior of Professionals and their Managers?
To answer this question we should consider what does it mean professionals?
How do they appear in our world?
A commonly shared answer to this question is simple and looks obvious. Professionals are knowledgeable and skillful people we usually invite to help us achieve certain goals or perform a certain project.
How do those people obtain their professional Knowledge and Skills?
The answer is clear as well: during their professional education and life experience.
Now is most crucial point of our investigation.
The key question: How does this professional knowledge appear in a professional educational system?
The answer is also clear: previous generations of professionals invent new ideas and implement them for practical needs. Then these ideas were transformed to professional typical solutions. New generations of professionals learn those typical solutions as a ready to use instruments for solving their professional problems.
The core words are – professional Typical solutions.
The second crucial issue – these typical solutions were invented somewhere in the past. Then these innovative ideas were transformed for professional needs in the following way: IF we have a certain problem:
Often professionals do not even realize why these typical solutions work and what is underlying knowledge for the specific typical solution is.
This entire works perfectly until professionals encounter a non typical problem. It means that the problem could not be solved by applying a well known typical solution. Innovative ideas are necessary.
“…The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them... “
These words are attributed to Albert Einstein…
A research which was done by Altshuller and Igor Vertkin absolutely conform this conclusion. They analyzed about 1000 biographies of great innovators who changed the world.
A contemporary level of thinking is a level of thinking of the contemporary professionals in the specific fields. Their instruments and criteria of evaluation serve to generate typical solutions and compare different options of these solutions. Such instruments and criteria are not dedicated to evaluate innovative unusual ideas. It is well known among Classical TRIZ Professionals that if professionals say “Yes this is possible” then it is possible. However if professional say “No” we should be triple careful, especially if we were using support of professionals in Classical TRIZ and OTSM.
Why?
It is due to the fact that we could miss new innovative ideas and solutions that eventually will became typical professional solutions. But until this idea will be accepted and will become a typical solution we could have a temporary business monopoly.
In other world we could miss profitable innovation. And this is not a hypothesis. More than 60 years of TRIZ evolution prove this point many times in different country for various domains of human activities.
Professionalism has its own limits. These limits are defined by a typical solutions and theories that underlie these professional typical solutions. All of them produce professional stereotypes which block innovative thinking and acceptance of new ideas. A highly innovative solution often appears beyond the professional stereotypes. A telephone was refused by professionals of the telegraph company. The same reaction followed the radio broadcasting at its beginning. Before the Second World War IBM produced mechanical calculators and their professionals refused ideas of an electronic computer. Professionals who were producing mainframes refused the ideas of a personal computer. You can find lot of facts like these in the history of Mankind.
That is why when Professionals say – “No” we should be triple careful, especially if new ideas were obtained with the help of Professionals in Classical TRIZ and OTSM. OTSM-TRIZ professionals have a meta-knowledge and skills to develop innovative solutions across professionals’ stereotypes.
This meta-knowledge could be used much more efficiently if it would be a part of a corporate culture and managers would find a way how to arrange cooperation between their own professionals and professionals in Classical TRIZ and OTSM. This will lead eventually to a Company of Sustainable Innovation. Neither Classical TRIZ nor OTSM can replace specific professional knowledge, but both of them are capable of drastically increasing the use of the professional knowledge as well as of management and strategic planning.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Classical TRIZ education and Classical ARIZ
What is TRIZ education and why it is so different form traditional education?
What role play ARIZ in the TRIZ education Process?
What is behid text of ARIZ? And some other aspect of growing competence in Classical TRIZ in mailing list: TRIZ topica:
http://lists.topica.com/lists/triz
Here you can subscribe for mailing list of worldwide TRIZ community. Feree of spam. Posts appear not so often but last two years more and more interesting. Useful discussion on various TRIZ and Innovation related topics…
Could be interesting for TRIZ beginners but not only…
What role play ARIZ in the TRIZ education Process?
What is behid text of ARIZ? And some other aspect of growing competence in Classical TRIZ in mailing list: TRIZ topica:
http://lists.topica.com/lists/triz
Here you can subscribe for mailing list of worldwide TRIZ community. Feree of spam. Posts appear not so often but last two years more and more interesting. Useful discussion on various TRIZ and Innovation related topics…
Could be interesting for TRIZ beginners but not only…
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Totaly stupid or totaly innovative?
We live in the world of rapid changes. Each changes force us to innovate our life our organization and, finally, our own mind. More and more people start to talk about innovation: innovate product, innovate organizational structure, innovate business model, innovate educational system etc…
However, Innovation is not so easy way to survive in the world of rapid changes. There are lots of myths on innovation and stereotypes. In the middle of 1980s the author of TRIZ Genrich Altshuller and his pupil Igor Vertkin carried out very interesting research on the history of innovation. They study biographies of approximately 1000 people who have changed the world. As a result they discover interesting trend about level of innovation. The higher level of innovation and changes the higher resistance of our society to those changes of the world.
Experience of my TRIZ and OTSM colleagues show that even perfect solution often faced with strong resistance inside the organization even this innovative solution could dramatically improve business position of the company Just one short example. This story happened several years ago. Company invites one of my TRIZ colleagues and to a certain project as a coach. Team of professionals was very cooperative and this is very important component of our work with companies and organizations. The better cooperation between OTSM-TRIZ and professionals the better result the team will obtain. During working session professional often say that the TRIZ proposals will not work. Often the same argument arise: “… nobody did this before…”. This is normal and typical professional’s reaction and we have also typical solution and technique to overcome this reaction and continuer work normally. According OTSM-TRIZ approaches we do not look for solution but develop it step by step instead. This is also one of mechanism to suppress mental inertia and achieve perfectly innovative conceptual solutions. Eventually mutual understanding appear between TRIZ professionals and experts of the company involved in the project. The story was quite typical at that time as well. And very interesting and unusual solutions were developed and accepted the company’s professionals. Is it happy end story?
Not at all! The point is that the decision maker did not participate those sessions and still was in the vicious circle of mental inertia and stereotypes. He did not accept the solution and refuse the rest of payment. His remark on the proposal: “Totally stupid… Nobody did this before.."
Bad luck?… Not at all! This is on of most typical reaction of many decision makers when they faced with very profitable but unusual ideas… The same stories has happened many hundreds year ago as well… but not as often as now, when instruments of Classical TRIZ and OTSM became more and more popular.
We live in the world of rapid changes. In half of year the same decision maker call to my colleagues and apologized. He also give a check with the rest of payment. What happen? The point is that their competitors implement almost the same solution and new product appears on the market. Similar stories start to appear more and more often. More and more my TRIZ colleagues tell me the same story.
May be next time I will tell you some of my private stories of this kind. But at this time just one conclusion: it is not enough to develop perfectly innovative idea. Doesn’t matter how this innovation appear: with or without TRIZ and OTSM. If corporate culture is not oriented to Sustainable Innovation even perfect solutions will not be implemented and perfect innovation appear in the trash box. Unfortunately mental inertia of Decision makers and their advisers is not the only enemy of perfect innovation and organization prosperity. What else we should overcome in order to make organization sustainably innovative? How instruments of Classical TRIZ and OTSM could help us? This is a subject of our blog and post-graduate program at INSA Strasbourg - Advanced Master of Innovative Design.
However, Innovation is not so easy way to survive in the world of rapid changes. There are lots of myths on innovation and stereotypes. In the middle of 1980s the author of TRIZ Genrich Altshuller and his pupil Igor Vertkin carried out very interesting research on the history of innovation. They study biographies of approximately 1000 people who have changed the world. As a result they discover interesting trend about level of innovation. The higher level of innovation and changes the higher resistance of our society to those changes of the world.
Experience of my TRIZ and OTSM colleagues show that even perfect solution often faced with strong resistance inside the organization even this innovative solution could dramatically improve business position of the company Just one short example. This story happened several years ago. Company invites one of my TRIZ colleagues and to a certain project as a coach. Team of professionals was very cooperative and this is very important component of our work with companies and organizations. The better cooperation between OTSM-TRIZ and professionals the better result the team will obtain. During working session professional often say that the TRIZ proposals will not work. Often the same argument arise: “… nobody did this before…”. This is normal and typical professional’s reaction and we have also typical solution and technique to overcome this reaction and continuer work normally. According OTSM-TRIZ approaches we do not look for solution but develop it step by step instead. This is also one of mechanism to suppress mental inertia and achieve perfectly innovative conceptual solutions. Eventually mutual understanding appear between TRIZ professionals and experts of the company involved in the project. The story was quite typical at that time as well. And very interesting and unusual solutions were developed and accepted the company’s professionals. Is it happy end story?
Not at all! The point is that the decision maker did not participate those sessions and still was in the vicious circle of mental inertia and stereotypes. He did not accept the solution and refuse the rest of payment. His remark on the proposal: “Totally stupid… Nobody did this before.."
Bad luck?… Not at all! This is on of most typical reaction of many decision makers when they faced with very profitable but unusual ideas… The same stories has happened many hundreds year ago as well… but not as often as now, when instruments of Classical TRIZ and OTSM became more and more popular.
We live in the world of rapid changes. In half of year the same decision maker call to my colleagues and apologized. He also give a check with the rest of payment. What happen? The point is that their competitors implement almost the same solution and new product appears on the market. Similar stories start to appear more and more often. More and more my TRIZ colleagues tell me the same story.
May be next time I will tell you some of my private stories of this kind. But at this time just one conclusion: it is not enough to develop perfectly innovative idea. Doesn’t matter how this innovation appear: with or without TRIZ and OTSM. If corporate culture is not oriented to Sustainable Innovation even perfect solutions will not be implemented and perfect innovation appear in the trash box. Unfortunately mental inertia of Decision makers and their advisers is not the only enemy of perfect innovation and organization prosperity. What else we should overcome in order to make organization sustainably innovative? How instruments of Classical TRIZ and OTSM could help us? This is a subject of our blog and post-graduate program at INSA Strasbourg - Advanced Master of Innovative Design.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
