Have you ever gotten a really great idea – one that you knew would solve a problem, but when you went to apply it, you couldn’t remember the idea? Have you ever read a book and then six months later needed some information or an idea from it, but can’t recall which book or exactly what the concept was?
I’ve found that people collect just about anything from McDonald’s Happy Meal toys to rare coins to cars. Ebay was founded because the creator wanted to make it easier to buy and sell collectable Pez dispensers.
While I collect tractors, both life size antique tractors and toys, I also collect something much more applicable to my personal and professional growth. I collect ideas.
Ideas are the lifeblood of improvement in any area of our life. But we can’t always implement the ideas we get the minute we get them – and sometimes these strokes of genius get misplaced or lost in our minds
Idea Collection Strategies
Here are seven strategies to collect your ideas for use when you need them most.
Write them down! I carry note cards so I can jot down an idea anytime. I write ideas on a flip chart or a whiteboard. I know that ideas are fleeting, so I get them down.
Make lists. Do specific brainstorming on a topic, project or program to boost your collection. Capture all of the ideas. When doing this personally, I don’t cross any off when I find them impractical. By leaving them on my list I have the chance to spur other ideas when I reread or review the list.
Hold a meeting. Every Friday in our office we have a learning and idea meeting where we review the key concepts we have read and the ideas we have generated for the week. By having a scheduled meeting we generate more ideas that may have application to our work, but it also keeps us focused on generating or finding great ideas.
Keep notes from reading. When reading any book (especially non-fiction) capture ideas you get when reading. Jot notes in the margins, use your highlighter. Then go back and transfer the gems to your journal. That extra effort will exponentially increase the value you receive from reading the book.
Keep notes in meetings. When I am in meetings or a participant in a training session, I am always searching for ideas. This keeps my mind sharp. I continually ask, “How could I use this?” and put those ideas in my notes. I always draw a little light bulb on the page to help me separate out the ideas from the notes. I also find this process keeps me more focused on the meeting or training as I know I haven’t lost the idea and I can stay more focused on the topic at hand.
Refer back to them. Review your idea lists. You never know when one of those ideas you wrote down will have application. This is one of the reasons for collecting them in the first place!
Take action. The collection becomes valuable to the degree that you try some of your ideas out. Set a timeline, make a plan, and try something out! It is with this final step that your ideas truly become valuable to you.
opyright 2007 All Rights Reserved, Kevin Eikenberry and The Kevin Eikenberry Group. Kevin is Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group (http://KevinEikenberry.com), a learning consulting company that helps Clients reach their potential through a variety of training, consulting and speaking services.
Related Web site: http://KevinEikenberry.com
Published on 5/16/2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
Good video
Here an interesting video about Innovation Best practices, in one of the most innovative companies in the world. IBM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCRBk4d8KtI
What do you think about it.....???
we´ll read us soon...... Innovation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCRBk4d8KtI
What do you think about it.....???
we´ll read us soon...... Innovation
The Simple Steps of Classic Brainstorming
By Michael S. Slocum
Brainstorming is an ideation technique that is suitable for divergent idea generation. It has been used extensively by organizations to create solutions to those problems that required specifics in a non-critical environment. It is typically necessary that the information required be known although the specific idea may not yet be formulated. The technique is rather basic and involves a few simple steps. The brainstorming process engages all members of the team equally and presents a non-hostile environment for the generation and collection of ideas. It also allows for the verbal interaction between the team members and their ideas thus creating the opportunity for the generation of hybrid concepts. The main steps for the brainstorming process are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Classic Brainstorming Process
Step
Action
1
Form team consisting of subject matter experts as well as non subject matter experts
2
Define the problem the team will brainstorm solutions for (create a concise problem statement)
3
Ensure the team understands the problem (baseline problem understanding)
4
Explain the classic brainstorming rules (see Table 2)
5
Initiate brainstorming
6
Record each idea
7
Brainstorming duration is determined according to the number of ideation pauses (see Table 3)
8
Affinitize the ideas
9
Create an idea matrix and utilize Pugh concept selection technique or voting to prioritize ideas for further analysis
The brainstorming rules help direct the process to develop the desired output. The desired output is a divergent set of ideas concerning the relevant problem statement. This is supported by the process guidelines shown in Table 2.
Table 2: The Rules of the Classic Brainstorming Process
1
All ideas are recorded
2
No criticism – all ideas are valid
3
Quantity is important, not quality
4
Be imaginative
5
Build off each other’s ideas
6
Get to the point
7
Determine how many pauses to incorporate in the process
The process steps and the rules, when followed, will help the team create a divergent set of ideas relevant to the problem under discussion. This technique may be used in conjunction with many other techniques as well (e.g., Brainwriting 6-3-5, TILMAG, TRIZ and HRP).
Table 3: The Flow of Idea Generation (Pauses in the Brainstorming Process)
Initial phase: many easy ideas
» First pause «
Second phase: ideas are built upon and combined (hybrids)
» Second pause «
Third phase: fewer but deeper ideas
» Third pause «
Fourth phase: ideas are exhausted
Brainstorming is a simple and effective technique for organizing a team and producing a divergent idea set for a specific problem statement. The steps and rules for brainstorming are simple and easy to use. Brainstorming, when used correctly and at the right time, may be a powerful method in the innovation arena.
About the Author:
Michael S. Slocum, Ph.D., is the chief innovation officer for Air Academy Associates, LLC. Contact Michael S. Slocum at mslocum (at) airacad.com or visit http://www.airacad.com.
Brainstorming is an ideation technique that is suitable for divergent idea generation. It has been used extensively by organizations to create solutions to those problems that required specifics in a non-critical environment. It is typically necessary that the information required be known although the specific idea may not yet be formulated. The technique is rather basic and involves a few simple steps. The brainstorming process engages all members of the team equally and presents a non-hostile environment for the generation and collection of ideas. It also allows for the verbal interaction between the team members and their ideas thus creating the opportunity for the generation of hybrid concepts. The main steps for the brainstorming process are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Classic Brainstorming Process
Step
Action
1
Form team consisting of subject matter experts as well as non subject matter experts
2
Define the problem the team will brainstorm solutions for (create a concise problem statement)
3
Ensure the team understands the problem (baseline problem understanding)
4
Explain the classic brainstorming rules (see Table 2)
5
Initiate brainstorming
6
Record each idea
7
Brainstorming duration is determined according to the number of ideation pauses (see Table 3)
8
Affinitize the ideas
9
Create an idea matrix and utilize Pugh concept selection technique or voting to prioritize ideas for further analysis
The brainstorming rules help direct the process to develop the desired output. The desired output is a divergent set of ideas concerning the relevant problem statement. This is supported by the process guidelines shown in Table 2.
Table 2: The Rules of the Classic Brainstorming Process
1
All ideas are recorded
2
No criticism – all ideas are valid
3
Quantity is important, not quality
4
Be imaginative
5
Build off each other’s ideas
6
Get to the point
7
Determine how many pauses to incorporate in the process
The process steps and the rules, when followed, will help the team create a divergent set of ideas relevant to the problem under discussion. This technique may be used in conjunction with many other techniques as well (e.g., Brainwriting 6-3-5, TILMAG, TRIZ and HRP).
Table 3: The Flow of Idea Generation (Pauses in the Brainstorming Process)
Initial phase: many easy ideas
» First pause «
Second phase: ideas are built upon and combined (hybrids)
» Second pause «
Third phase: fewer but deeper ideas
» Third pause «
Fourth phase: ideas are exhausted
Brainstorming is a simple and effective technique for organizing a team and producing a divergent idea set for a specific problem statement. The steps and rules for brainstorming are simple and easy to use. Brainstorming, when used correctly and at the right time, may be a powerful method in the innovation arena.
About the Author:
Michael S. Slocum, Ph.D., is the chief innovation officer for Air Academy Associates, LLC. Contact Michael S. Slocum at mslocum (at) airacad.com or visit http://www.airacad.com.
Sparking growth systematically: How to turn innovation into a discipline
How will you drive growth in your company now that all the bubbles have burst?
Take, for example, acquisition, that popular strategic ploy of the late '90s. It turns out that the staggering prices paid to capture other firms often lower growth rates rather than increase them. Just 23% of acquisitions earn back their cost of capital, concludes a McKinsey study, which looked at deals made by 116 companies over an 11-year period.
Tried-and-true methods such as suggestion systems that promote cost-saving ideas and continuous-improvement task forces that look to make processes more efficient can certainly improve your bottom line. But they won't help you achieve top-line growth. Smoke-and-mirrors tactics will only fool the market for so long. The solution? Innovation.
With all the hype about innovation during the bubble years, you'd think that companies were doing a lot of it. But don't be deceived by the billions they poured into new technology. Most firms have been focused almost exclusively on incremental improvements and line extensions. Valuable as these efforts are, their benefits rarely go beyond the intermediate term. The long-term benefits that come from game-changing breakthroughs, however, require more work: unconventional methods of seeking out the unmet and unarticulated needs of customers, faster prototyping of ideas, new ways of funding ventures, and compensation systems that provide incentives to increase the revenue from new products and services.
With top-line growth opportunities ever harder to find and sustain, companies can no longer get by with a partial or episodic commitment to innovation. In a three-year study, my associates and I were allowed behind the scenes in companies like EDS, Citibank, Borg-Warner, Royal Dutch/Shell, BMW, and others for a look at what amounts to a fundamental redesign of the innovation process.
Although each company's innovation overhaul has its distinctive features, they all encourage ideas from everywhere in the organization, not just the new-product development or strategic-planning departments. Moreover, to ensure that high-potential notions don't get lost, these initiatives take a systemic approach to idea management. Let's look at three of them.
The top-line, all-enterprise approach
Appleton Papers, based in Appleton, Wisc., found itself in the unenviable position of being the world's leading producer of a product fewer and fewer customers want: carbonless paper, the kind used in forms that need to be filled out in triplicate. The company already had a suggestion program for cost-savings ideas, but it desperately needed ideas that would replace revenue. So it created the GO Process (short for "growth opportunities"), which regularly solicits ideas from everybody in the company.
"In one year we've gotten over 700 new product ideas from our 2,500 employees," says Dennis Hultgren, Appleton's vice president. One of these is a new digital paper product that has been launched in Germany. "What we've learned is that it's important to bring everybody in on [the search]."
Ideas suggested by employees are fed into nine cross-functional teams, each led by a senior manager "spoke owner," who is in charge of championing the best ideas to make sure they become out-the-door new products. The teams meet several times a month to brainstorm, and share insights gleaned from investigative visits to other companies. Once a month, each team's best ideas are presented to Appleton's executive committee, which evaluates each submission using a scorecard that gives detailed feedback to the teams about why the product idea does or doesn't fit the company's objectives or available resources.
The innovation team model
The downside of the all-enterprise system is that, if implemented without sufficient training, it can lead to a bottleneck in sifting, sorting, and reaching consensus on which of the myriad ideas suggested to pursue. The innovation team model attempts to solve this problem by creating a companywide network of people with demonstrated skills in innovation and assigning them the responsibility not only of finding new ideas but of choosing the best ones and bringing them to market as well.
At Whirlpool Corporation, of Benton Harbor, MI, growth in the late 1990s had come to a standstill. Profits were falling, the stock price was at an all-time low, and another cyclical downturn was on the horizon. Management had already tried the usual cost-cutting measures, including the decision to trim 10%of the company's 60,000 workers. But it was a breakthrough washing machine from arch-competitor Maytag that caused executives at Whirlpool to act.
The company formed a 75-person, cross-functional team and charged it with scouring every region and functional area of the firm for ideas that could jumpstart new revenue growth. Out of an initial 1,100 ideas, the team identified 11 to investigate further and finally decided on six to actively pursue. One of the six was a new-to-the-world appliance that makes clothes ready to wear by smoothing away wrinkles and cleaning away odors.
Another idea involved the development of a new channel to sell it newfangled kitchen appliances to time-starved Baby Boomers. Taking a cue from Tupperware's "party" distribution system, Whirlpool contracts with chefs and culinary-school grads to host cooking-class dinner parties in customers' homes. The chef brings all the food and uses Whirlpool's latest cooking appliances to prepare the meal, and takes product orders at the end of the event.
The innovation team approach gives Whirlpool a continuous, sustainable vehicle for innovation that invigorates its existing methods of discovery and idea development. "We had this internal market of people we weren't tapping into," explains Nancy Snyder, corporate vice president. "We wanted to get rid of the 'great man' theory that only one person--the CEO or people close to him -- is responsible for innovation."
The innovation catalyst model
In this model, ideas don't leave the division or business unit to be developed elsewhere-at headquarters, say, or in a skunkworks or incubator. Citigroup's Citibank division uses the innovation catalyst model to drive organic growth and capitalize on synergies created by a string of acquisitions. The effort is led by the chief country officer, working with a full-time "innovation catalyst," who expedites the process.
Many of the ideas come from structured ideation sessions with clients. Members of a Citibank senior team spend a day with their counterparts from a particular client. A facilitator focuses the brainstorming on present and emerging needs, marketplace changes, and customer service issues. To ensure the flow of new-product ideas, the innovation catalysts work closely with "magnet teams," locally empowered, cross-functional groups of senior executives that regularly meet to review ideas. The catalysts don't propose new ideas; instead they help the local managers prepare a case for their ideas.
In one Asian country, the innovation catalyst model has worked so well that the magnet team meets every week to review and prioritize ideas that have been proposed. And in Citibank's Trinidad bank, the model was responsible for 30% of the total revenues during a recent year.
Conclusion
Idea management systems don't replace traditional departments and processes involved in new services, products, or strategies -- they serve as an adjunct to them. In addition, they create broader participation by making the hunt for new growth opportunities every department's business, rather than the province of a select few. And most important of all, they provide a framework that can help your firm turn innovation into an enterprise-wide discipline-and a sustainable process that drives growth in good times and bad.
Used with permission from The Innovation Resource Web site. For more articles by Robert Tucker, please visit his Web site at http://www.innovationresource.com/.
Robert Tucker is president of The Innovation Resource, an innovation consulting firm based in Santa Barbara, Calif. A frequent keynote speaker at conferences, he is the author of "Driving Growth Through Innovation: How Leading Firms Are Transforming Their Futures.
Take, for example, acquisition, that popular strategic ploy of the late '90s. It turns out that the staggering prices paid to capture other firms often lower growth rates rather than increase them. Just 23% of acquisitions earn back their cost of capital, concludes a McKinsey study, which looked at deals made by 116 companies over an 11-year period.
Tried-and-true methods such as suggestion systems that promote cost-saving ideas and continuous-improvement task forces that look to make processes more efficient can certainly improve your bottom line. But they won't help you achieve top-line growth. Smoke-and-mirrors tactics will only fool the market for so long. The solution? Innovation.
With all the hype about innovation during the bubble years, you'd think that companies were doing a lot of it. But don't be deceived by the billions they poured into new technology. Most firms have been focused almost exclusively on incremental improvements and line extensions. Valuable as these efforts are, their benefits rarely go beyond the intermediate term. The long-term benefits that come from game-changing breakthroughs, however, require more work: unconventional methods of seeking out the unmet and unarticulated needs of customers, faster prototyping of ideas, new ways of funding ventures, and compensation systems that provide incentives to increase the revenue from new products and services.
With top-line growth opportunities ever harder to find and sustain, companies can no longer get by with a partial or episodic commitment to innovation. In a three-year study, my associates and I were allowed behind the scenes in companies like EDS, Citibank, Borg-Warner, Royal Dutch/Shell, BMW, and others for a look at what amounts to a fundamental redesign of the innovation process.
Although each company's innovation overhaul has its distinctive features, they all encourage ideas from everywhere in the organization, not just the new-product development or strategic-planning departments. Moreover, to ensure that high-potential notions don't get lost, these initiatives take a systemic approach to idea management. Let's look at three of them.
The top-line, all-enterprise approach
Appleton Papers, based in Appleton, Wisc., found itself in the unenviable position of being the world's leading producer of a product fewer and fewer customers want: carbonless paper, the kind used in forms that need to be filled out in triplicate. The company already had a suggestion program for cost-savings ideas, but it desperately needed ideas that would replace revenue. So it created the GO Process (short for "growth opportunities"), which regularly solicits ideas from everybody in the company.
"In one year we've gotten over 700 new product ideas from our 2,500 employees," says Dennis Hultgren, Appleton's vice president. One of these is a new digital paper product that has been launched in Germany. "What we've learned is that it's important to bring everybody in on [the search]."
Ideas suggested by employees are fed into nine cross-functional teams, each led by a senior manager "spoke owner," who is in charge of championing the best ideas to make sure they become out-the-door new products. The teams meet several times a month to brainstorm, and share insights gleaned from investigative visits to other companies. Once a month, each team's best ideas are presented to Appleton's executive committee, which evaluates each submission using a scorecard that gives detailed feedback to the teams about why the product idea does or doesn't fit the company's objectives or available resources.
The innovation team model
The downside of the all-enterprise system is that, if implemented without sufficient training, it can lead to a bottleneck in sifting, sorting, and reaching consensus on which of the myriad ideas suggested to pursue. The innovation team model attempts to solve this problem by creating a companywide network of people with demonstrated skills in innovation and assigning them the responsibility not only of finding new ideas but of choosing the best ones and bringing them to market as well.
At Whirlpool Corporation, of Benton Harbor, MI, growth in the late 1990s had come to a standstill. Profits were falling, the stock price was at an all-time low, and another cyclical downturn was on the horizon. Management had already tried the usual cost-cutting measures, including the decision to trim 10%of the company's 60,000 workers. But it was a breakthrough washing machine from arch-competitor Maytag that caused executives at Whirlpool to act.
The company formed a 75-person, cross-functional team and charged it with scouring every region and functional area of the firm for ideas that could jumpstart new revenue growth. Out of an initial 1,100 ideas, the team identified 11 to investigate further and finally decided on six to actively pursue. One of the six was a new-to-the-world appliance that makes clothes ready to wear by smoothing away wrinkles and cleaning away odors.
Another idea involved the development of a new channel to sell it newfangled kitchen appliances to time-starved Baby Boomers. Taking a cue from Tupperware's "party" distribution system, Whirlpool contracts with chefs and culinary-school grads to host cooking-class dinner parties in customers' homes. The chef brings all the food and uses Whirlpool's latest cooking appliances to prepare the meal, and takes product orders at the end of the event.
The innovation team approach gives Whirlpool a continuous, sustainable vehicle for innovation that invigorates its existing methods of discovery and idea development. "We had this internal market of people we weren't tapping into," explains Nancy Snyder, corporate vice president. "We wanted to get rid of the 'great man' theory that only one person--the CEO or people close to him -- is responsible for innovation."
The innovation catalyst model
In this model, ideas don't leave the division or business unit to be developed elsewhere-at headquarters, say, or in a skunkworks or incubator. Citigroup's Citibank division uses the innovation catalyst model to drive organic growth and capitalize on synergies created by a string of acquisitions. The effort is led by the chief country officer, working with a full-time "innovation catalyst," who expedites the process.
Many of the ideas come from structured ideation sessions with clients. Members of a Citibank senior team spend a day with their counterparts from a particular client. A facilitator focuses the brainstorming on present and emerging needs, marketplace changes, and customer service issues. To ensure the flow of new-product ideas, the innovation catalysts work closely with "magnet teams," locally empowered, cross-functional groups of senior executives that regularly meet to review ideas. The catalysts don't propose new ideas; instead they help the local managers prepare a case for their ideas.
In one Asian country, the innovation catalyst model has worked so well that the magnet team meets every week to review and prioritize ideas that have been proposed. And in Citibank's Trinidad bank, the model was responsible for 30% of the total revenues during a recent year.
Conclusion
Idea management systems don't replace traditional departments and processes involved in new services, products, or strategies -- they serve as an adjunct to them. In addition, they create broader participation by making the hunt for new growth opportunities every department's business, rather than the province of a select few. And most important of all, they provide a framework that can help your firm turn innovation into an enterprise-wide discipline-and a sustainable process that drives growth in good times and bad.
Used with permission from The Innovation Resource Web site. For more articles by Robert Tucker, please visit his Web site at http://www.innovationresource.com/.
Robert Tucker is president of The Innovation Resource, an innovation consulting firm based in Santa Barbara, Calif. A frequent keynote speaker at conferences, he is the author of "Driving Growth Through Innovation: How Leading Firms Are Transforming Their Futures.
What is TRIZ and how can it be used in problem solving or brainstorming?
In the past ten years, a radical new innovation toolkit has entered the West from the former Soviet Union. Invented and originally structured by a patent examiner for the Russian Navy, Genrich Altshuller, TRIZ (Russian acronym, for “Theory of Solving Problem Solving”) is now competing with tools such as brainstorming, Six Hats and Lateral Thinking, and many other psychologically based inventive techniques.
Why is this? First of all, group problem solving and psychologically based techniques are inherently limited by the experiences and knowledge of the problem solvers. No amount of stimulation of any sort can create knowledge that is not there in the first place.
The development of TRIZ
The genius of Altshuller and his successors was to recognize that the place to look for the basics of invention and new ideas was not in the brains of inventors, but where the inventions were collected and recognized -- the patent office. As a patent examiner, he saw thousands of disclosures and granted patents come through his office from a broad range of technical fields and his genius was to recognize that, when the inventions were generalized, there were only a limited number of inventive principles being used. This was not recognized by the individual inventors or their industries due to the use of particular jargon and terminology of that particular area of science or technology.
Altshuller categorized these inventive principles in several retrievable forms, including a contradiction table, 40 Inventive Principles, and 76 Standard Solutions. The advent of modern computers has allowed these tools to be stored and used in use friendly formats. What he invented was a “left brained” creativity and innovation tool that used inventive principles from all fields of science and technology -- as if one had invited all of the world’s inventors into the brainstorming session with a group.
TRIZ Inventive Principles
In reviewing the thousands of patents, Altshuller distinguished between incremental/“routine” inventions vs. truly breakthrough inventions. These were the inventions he reviewed to determine his 40 Inventive Principles. It turned out that these breakthrough inventions invariably resolved a significant operational or design contradiction. What we normally do with contradictions is to compromise. Design or operational characteristics that allow a contradiction to be resolved is truly a breakthrough. Graphically, this looks like the diagram above.
These 40 Inventive Principles are available in a number of public sources and publications and are constantly updated, reviewed, and extended to application to many fields (management, food, social) beyond the original applications in engineering and technology, clearly demonstrating their robustness.
TRIZ Separation Principles
In addition to the general problem of design or operational contradictions, there can also be contradictions within a parameter itself. For example, do we want a physical parameter such as hardness or softness to be present everywhere or just in certain locations, at certain times, or under certain conditions? Many breakthrough inventions are accomplished with the application of the TRIZ Separation Principles.
The next time that you are faced with a parameter contradiction in design or operation, consider separating the parameter in space, time, or between the whole of an object/system and its parts. Examples of these use of these products in everyday products would include bandages (adhesives in only certain parts), bicycle chains (rigid at the micro level, flexible at the macro level), or time release medications.
Problem-solving patterns
While looking at the global patent literature, Altshuller also recognized patterns and trends of inventions over time that also allowed inventors and problem solvers to use these principles in a generic form. There are many of these, but in this introduction we will just consider a few.
First, all systems, products, and for that matter organizations, evolve toward a more ideal state over time. Second, this occurs through the recognition and use of system resources. When we study the patterns of invention, we see many repeated examples of systems and products growing more complex over time to meet the needs of users. Then, out of nowhere, a simplified elegant solution appears and everyone says, “why didn’t we think of that sooner?”
By forcing us to look at the most ideal state of a system or product, TRIZ forces us to imagine this “ideal” state early on (this is one of the hardest challenges in TRIZ problem solving sessions as we immediately start thinking about all the reasons this is not achievable), and then to ask two questions:
What are the contradictions that must be resolved to reach that ideal end state?
What resources does our system or product have that could be used (that we haven’t seen or recognized) to achieve a more ideal final result.
This methodical thinking process that is the key characteristic of TRIZ and TRIZ problem solving sessions can be a barrier to its use and application. We frequently want to immediately jump into the solution space without spending sufficient time in problem definition. We frequently need to ask “why?” several times to get down to the key contradiction that needs to be addressed and is standing in the way of achieving the ideal result we are looking for. A methodical look at a system and its surroundings for resources that can be used for problem solving also requires patience and thoroughness. When TRIZ is imbedded in your blood stream, you will find yourself running toward contradictions rather than compromising or avoiding them altogether.
Conclusion
TRIZ is a science and not psychology and its successful use requires practice and discipline, but spending the time will pay rich dividends in novel breakthrough solutions as well as a reinvigorated problem solving effort when you and your people see that inventiveness is not random and not dependent upon one’s inherited DNA. Inventiveness can be learned and taught, and used to create breakthrough solutions to your toughest problems.
Why is this? First of all, group problem solving and psychologically based techniques are inherently limited by the experiences and knowledge of the problem solvers. No amount of stimulation of any sort can create knowledge that is not there in the first place.
The development of TRIZ
The genius of Altshuller and his successors was to recognize that the place to look for the basics of invention and new ideas was not in the brains of inventors, but where the inventions were collected and recognized -- the patent office. As a patent examiner, he saw thousands of disclosures and granted patents come through his office from a broad range of technical fields and his genius was to recognize that, when the inventions were generalized, there were only a limited number of inventive principles being used. This was not recognized by the individual inventors or their industries due to the use of particular jargon and terminology of that particular area of science or technology.
Altshuller categorized these inventive principles in several retrievable forms, including a contradiction table, 40 Inventive Principles, and 76 Standard Solutions. The advent of modern computers has allowed these tools to be stored and used in use friendly formats. What he invented was a “left brained” creativity and innovation tool that used inventive principles from all fields of science and technology -- as if one had invited all of the world’s inventors into the brainstorming session with a group.
TRIZ Inventive Principles
In reviewing the thousands of patents, Altshuller distinguished between incremental/“routine” inventions vs. truly breakthrough inventions. These were the inventions he reviewed to determine his 40 Inventive Principles. It turned out that these breakthrough inventions invariably resolved a significant operational or design contradiction. What we normally do with contradictions is to compromise. Design or operational characteristics that allow a contradiction to be resolved is truly a breakthrough. Graphically, this looks like the diagram above.
These 40 Inventive Principles are available in a number of public sources and publications and are constantly updated, reviewed, and extended to application to many fields (management, food, social) beyond the original applications in engineering and technology, clearly demonstrating their robustness.
TRIZ Separation Principles
In addition to the general problem of design or operational contradictions, there can also be contradictions within a parameter itself. For example, do we want a physical parameter such as hardness or softness to be present everywhere or just in certain locations, at certain times, or under certain conditions? Many breakthrough inventions are accomplished with the application of the TRIZ Separation Principles.
The next time that you are faced with a parameter contradiction in design or operation, consider separating the parameter in space, time, or between the whole of an object/system and its parts. Examples of these use of these products in everyday products would include bandages (adhesives in only certain parts), bicycle chains (rigid at the micro level, flexible at the macro level), or time release medications.
Problem-solving patterns
While looking at the global patent literature, Altshuller also recognized patterns and trends of inventions over time that also allowed inventors and problem solvers to use these principles in a generic form. There are many of these, but in this introduction we will just consider a few.
First, all systems, products, and for that matter organizations, evolve toward a more ideal state over time. Second, this occurs through the recognition and use of system resources. When we study the patterns of invention, we see many repeated examples of systems and products growing more complex over time to meet the needs of users. Then, out of nowhere, a simplified elegant solution appears and everyone says, “why didn’t we think of that sooner?”
By forcing us to look at the most ideal state of a system or product, TRIZ forces us to imagine this “ideal” state early on (this is one of the hardest challenges in TRIZ problem solving sessions as we immediately start thinking about all the reasons this is not achievable), and then to ask two questions:
What are the contradictions that must be resolved to reach that ideal end state?
What resources does our system or product have that could be used (that we haven’t seen or recognized) to achieve a more ideal final result.
This methodical thinking process that is the key characteristic of TRIZ and TRIZ problem solving sessions can be a barrier to its use and application. We frequently want to immediately jump into the solution space without spending sufficient time in problem definition. We frequently need to ask “why?” several times to get down to the key contradiction that needs to be addressed and is standing in the way of achieving the ideal result we are looking for. A methodical look at a system and its surroundings for resources that can be used for problem solving also requires patience and thoroughness. When TRIZ is imbedded in your blood stream, you will find yourself running toward contradictions rather than compromising or avoiding them altogether.
Conclusion
TRIZ is a science and not psychology and its successful use requires practice and discipline, but spending the time will pay rich dividends in novel breakthrough solutions as well as a reinvigorated problem solving effort when you and your people see that inventiveness is not random and not dependent upon one’s inherited DNA. Inventiveness can be learned and taught, and used to create breakthrough solutions to your toughest problems.
Jack Hipple is Principal in Innovation-TRIZ, Inc., a consulting company specializing in unique approaches to TRIZ training, the application of TRIZ to non-technical and organizational problems, and the integration of TRIZ with other innovation and creativity tools.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Book revie of the book of Paul Sloane----- The Independent
Book review: The Innovative Leader by Paul Sloane
From cubicle dweller to innovator
Reviewed by Michael Murray
Published: 05 June 2007
As its subtitle, "How to inspire your team and drive creativity", suggests, this book is a practical volume aimed at helping managers achieve the business world's current Holy Grail of innovation. Its author, Paul Sloane, writes in his introduction: "The need for innovation is well understood. It is now commonplace for leaders to stress the critical importance of creativity and innovation to the future of their organisations".
And while it is widely realised that just doing the same things that have always been done more quickly or more cheaply than before will not lead to sustainable success, it is not so obvious how you break out of this habit. Sloane, an expert on lateral puzzles, creative problem solving and the like, who has also held senior executive positions in information technology companies, looks just the sort of person to assist managers in turning their "cubicle dwellers into innovation warriors" and in replacing "a culture of comfortable incremental progress into one of hungry adventure".
To be fair, the primary audience appears to be managers working in large companies, but many of the issues discussed are of great concern in growing businesses. Indeed, the need to retain or reinvent the entrepreneurial spirit can be especially acute in a business that is trying to manage the transformation from start-up to established enterprise.
Fortunately, Sloane makes it easy for both managers in corporates and owner-managers of growing businesses to learn how to deal with such problems - because the book is simple, accessible and admirably brief. Many of the sections run to little more than a page - just the sort of length that a hassled line manager or entrepreneur can handle.
Typical of the pithy advice on offer is a section entitled "Give Everyone Two Jobs". Sloane writes: "Give all your people two key objectives. Ask them to run their current jobs in the most effective way possible and at the same time to find completely new ways to do the job." In another section - "Trust Your Intuition", he says that MBA graduates are often surprised to learn that businesses run much less on logic and much more on emotion. "It is not cold, intelligent analysis that drives most organisations forward. Emotional energy is often the real engine behind successful people and organisations." Among the famous examples of eminent people using logic and analysis to dismiss innovative ideas are Western Union turning down the telephone because it could not see why people would want to chat to each other, and Decca passing on the Beatles. "Logic and analysis can always find fault with innovative ideas. Use these tools but use them warily", writes Sloane. "If your intuition tells you that you have a great idea, then pursue it a little while longer".
At the same time, though, he encourages the reader to be ruthless when deciding which projects to back or to keep going. In a particularly brief section called "Kill The Losers", he writes that creative ideas generated by many companies are short of resources because other projects are kept going beyond a rational point. "Projects that are interesting and have some potential benefit keep going because of the resources that have already been invested", he says. "It is the 'we can't stop now' syndrome. But the key question is this: is this the best use of these resources right now?"
Another short section urges leaders to spend at least some time "disconnected". This, of course, goes against all current thinking about the time lost through not being able to contact customers, employees and colleagues while on the move and the need to be in touch in case of problems. But it does create the free thinking time that is needed to come up with new ideas. Sloane quotes a senior financial services executive who says he has neither a mobile phone nor a Blackberry ("My motto is, I don't want to be connected - I want to be disconnected".) He insists that the most important part of his day is not on the trading floor but in the gym, where while riding the exercise book or doing a bit of yoga, "all of a sudden some significant light bulbs seem to turn on".
If it sounds as though remaining innovative involves handling all sorts of contradictions, you would be right. Sloane himself recounts in his conclusion: "Typically the innovative leader is both analytical and creative". He or she encourages the testing of new ideas and yet is prepared to kill off those that are not working.
Above all, innovative leaders set the scene for innovation with a clear vision and a supportive culture but do not expect to do it all themselves. Rather, a key role is enabling their teams to be creative. And this is a crucial
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/sme/article2615300.ece
From cubicle dweller to innovator
Reviewed by Michael Murray
Published: 05 June 2007
As its subtitle, "How to inspire your team and drive creativity", suggests, this book is a practical volume aimed at helping managers achieve the business world's current Holy Grail of innovation. Its author, Paul Sloane, writes in his introduction: "The need for innovation is well understood. It is now commonplace for leaders to stress the critical importance of creativity and innovation to the future of their organisations".
And while it is widely realised that just doing the same things that have always been done more quickly or more cheaply than before will not lead to sustainable success, it is not so obvious how you break out of this habit. Sloane, an expert on lateral puzzles, creative problem solving and the like, who has also held senior executive positions in information technology companies, looks just the sort of person to assist managers in turning their "cubicle dwellers into innovation warriors" and in replacing "a culture of comfortable incremental progress into one of hungry adventure".
To be fair, the primary audience appears to be managers working in large companies, but many of the issues discussed are of great concern in growing businesses. Indeed, the need to retain or reinvent the entrepreneurial spirit can be especially acute in a business that is trying to manage the transformation from start-up to established enterprise.
Fortunately, Sloane makes it easy for both managers in corporates and owner-managers of growing businesses to learn how to deal with such problems - because the book is simple, accessible and admirably brief. Many of the sections run to little more than a page - just the sort of length that a hassled line manager or entrepreneur can handle.
Typical of the pithy advice on offer is a section entitled "Give Everyone Two Jobs". Sloane writes: "Give all your people two key objectives. Ask them to run their current jobs in the most effective way possible and at the same time to find completely new ways to do the job." In another section - "Trust Your Intuition", he says that MBA graduates are often surprised to learn that businesses run much less on logic and much more on emotion. "It is not cold, intelligent analysis that drives most organisations forward. Emotional energy is often the real engine behind successful people and organisations." Among the famous examples of eminent people using logic and analysis to dismiss innovative ideas are Western Union turning down the telephone because it could not see why people would want to chat to each other, and Decca passing on the Beatles. "Logic and analysis can always find fault with innovative ideas. Use these tools but use them warily", writes Sloane. "If your intuition tells you that you have a great idea, then pursue it a little while longer".
At the same time, though, he encourages the reader to be ruthless when deciding which projects to back or to keep going. In a particularly brief section called "Kill The Losers", he writes that creative ideas generated by many companies are short of resources because other projects are kept going beyond a rational point. "Projects that are interesting and have some potential benefit keep going because of the resources that have already been invested", he says. "It is the 'we can't stop now' syndrome. But the key question is this: is this the best use of these resources right now?"
Another short section urges leaders to spend at least some time "disconnected". This, of course, goes against all current thinking about the time lost through not being able to contact customers, employees and colleagues while on the move and the need to be in touch in case of problems. But it does create the free thinking time that is needed to come up with new ideas. Sloane quotes a senior financial services executive who says he has neither a mobile phone nor a Blackberry ("My motto is, I don't want to be connected - I want to be disconnected".) He insists that the most important part of his day is not on the trading floor but in the gym, where while riding the exercise book or doing a bit of yoga, "all of a sudden some significant light bulbs seem to turn on".
If it sounds as though remaining innovative involves handling all sorts of contradictions, you would be right. Sloane himself recounts in his conclusion: "Typically the innovative leader is both analytical and creative". He or she encourages the testing of new ideas and yet is prepared to kill off those that are not working.
Above all, innovative leaders set the scene for innovation with a clear vision and a supportive culture but do not expect to do it all themselves. Rather, a key role is enabling their teams to be creative. And this is a crucial
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/sme/article2615300.ece
An interesting e-book....
It´s from one of my favorite Innovation writers..... Paul Sloane.... www.destination-innovation.com..... hier you the description, how to inspire your team, how to an innovative leader.... please visit his web-page...
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:::
All leaders understand the importance of creativity and innovation to the future of their organizations. But how do you do it? What are the secrets that successful leaders use to really drive innovation?
The Innovative Leader will help you to transform the creative capabilities and innovative performance of your business. It contains examples, advice, guidance, and a wealth of invaluable tools you can put to use immediately to help you to:
Encourage your team to analyse problems and generate ideas;
Implement innovation processes;
Build a creative culture;
Develop creativity in yourself and your team.
With examples from Virgin, Google, IBM, Toyota, 3M, Disney and WPP, The Innovative Leader will help you to transform your team into innovation warriors, and turn your organization into a powerhouse of invention and entrepreneurial achievement.
'Innovation is a key characteristic of great leaders?Paul?s book provides practical tips to help anyone in their quest to develop their creative muscles.'
Mark Durrant, Communications Director, EMEA, Motorola
'Guaranteed to make you think differently, challenge the way you and your team work and produce results. Read it end to end and you should be ready to make your fortune!'
Geoff Dodds, Head of Brand Strategy, Lloyds of London
'Sloane, an expert on lateral puzzles, creative problem solving and the like, looks just the sort of person to assist managers in turning their "cubicle dwellers into innovation warriors" and in replacing "a culture of comfortable incremental progress into one of hungry adventure".'
Michael Murray, The Independent (read full review)
Paperback 196 pages (May 2007)
Publisher: Kogan Page
ISBN: 0749450010
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION:::
All leaders understand the importance of creativity and innovation to the future of their organizations. But how do you do it? What are the secrets that successful leaders use to really drive innovation?
The Innovative Leader will help you to transform the creative capabilities and innovative performance of your business. It contains examples, advice, guidance, and a wealth of invaluable tools you can put to use immediately to help you to:
Encourage your team to analyse problems and generate ideas;
Implement innovation processes;
Build a creative culture;
Develop creativity in yourself and your team.
With examples from Virgin, Google, IBM, Toyota, 3M, Disney and WPP, The Innovative Leader will help you to transform your team into innovation warriors, and turn your organization into a powerhouse of invention and entrepreneurial achievement.
'Innovation is a key characteristic of great leaders?Paul?s book provides practical tips to help anyone in their quest to develop their creative muscles.'
Mark Durrant, Communications Director, EMEA, Motorola
'Guaranteed to make you think differently, challenge the way you and your team work and produce results. Read it end to end and you should be ready to make your fortune!'
Geoff Dodds, Head of Brand Strategy, Lloyds of London
'Sloane, an expert on lateral puzzles, creative problem solving and the like, looks just the sort of person to assist managers in turning their "cubicle dwellers into innovation warriors" and in replacing "a culture of comfortable incremental progress into one of hungry adventure".'
Michael Murray, The Independent (read full review)
Paperback 196 pages (May 2007)
Publisher: Kogan Page
ISBN: 0749450010
This one is good... about solve the problems, in reverse.......
This one i´ve found in www.innovationtools.com ... really interesting, and easy to understand... what if ...........................
Creativity in reverse: a new way to use TRIZ
By Jack Hipple
In the innovation and creativity world, we spend a lot of time solving problems or designing new things to replace or improve what already exists. Usually, the problem is complex or the solution is not obvious (or it wouldn’t need creativity, right?).
Sometimes, though, the problem is not one of trying to improve something, but to find the cause of a failure in a system, product, or organization. Something has gone wrong, maybe on a once in a while basis, and we can’t figure out why. We develop hypothesis derived from checklists we had previously developed, or from conventional brainstorming ideation techniques. But we don’t always get to the root cause and have to deal with the problem again at a future date.
Those of you familiar with TRIZ problem solving know that it has an overriding algorithm and set of tools in a toolkit. Many don’t know that within that toolkit is a very unique process for solving failure related problems. We use the simple TRIZ algorithm in reverse. Normally, we use TRIZ as follows:
Define the ideal state for the system, product, etc.
Identify the resources available for achieving this state
Identify and resolve the contradictions that prevent this state from being achieved
The concepts of the ideal state (ideal final result, ideality) and resources are far deeper than the words imply, as those of you who have used TRIZ know. If what we have is a failure problem, we need to invert this process as follows. We’ll use an example of a car failing to start as a simple example. Maybe your friendly mechanic or neighbor has given all the help they can, and still, once in a while, the car won’t start.
Define the ideal state: we want the car to start every time we start the ignition
Invert this statement: we don’t want the car to start
Exaggerate the inverted ideal statement: We don’t ever want the car to start
How would I accomplish this? What resources are required?
Now this may sound very simplistic, but what we have done is to change the basic question from “what went wrong?” (A checklist type of approach) to “how do I make it go wrong?” (A pro-active saboteurial question). We’ve changed the question from “what?” to “how?”. This puts peoples’ brains in a different quadrant—they are now permitted to be evil and do things not normally permitted! There is no time when I have run this process on electronic bank fraud, food contamination, or chemical releases that this process did not produce answers not obvious in the first place, greatly improved answers, or THE answer that wasn’t even considered in the first place.
In a project with a chemical plant which had a release of a toxic chemical from a scrubber (despite having complied with all the required checklist processes from their company, OSHA, and the EPA). It turned out that the flow to the scrubber was inadequate to contain the normal flow. Now this was something that should not have happened and was already on the checklist, but in the process of this analysis, we used this reverse algorithm in the following way:
We want no release of chemical from the system
We want a release of chemicals to the atmosphere
We want the system to leak ALL THE TIME and cause severe environmental damage all over the surrounding geographic region.
What resources do I need?
The normal review process here was to review every pressure, flow, temperature, etc. and ask the consequences of not being at the specified point (Higher? Lower?), but not to question the fundamental design. Approaching this problem using TRIZ in reverse, we ask the question, “what resources do we need to have a leak?” The group starts our saying things like high pressure, high temperature, etc. but none of these is sufficient without another resource—A HOLE. We then ask about the hole at the top of the scrubbing system. It turns out that it’s there because we have to vent an inert gas used to bubble into a storage tank to obtain its level reading. Once we realize this, we ask if there are other indirect ways of measuring level not requiring a gas which must be scrubbed. The answer is yes, so the whole root cause of the problem disappears and the hole and its associated scrubbing system are no longer required.
Though this was a technical example, consider the use of this thinking process in other areas such as:
How can I improve communication within my organization? (How do I make sure that NO ONE ever finds out ANYTHING that’s going on around here?)
How can I improve the variability of my product quality? (How do I make sure that I NEVER produce any quality product and am shut down by the FDA?)
How can I improve my on-time delivery? (How do I make sure my product NEVER arrives on time and all customers are lost?
In practice, there are additional tools and techniques to assist in this basic algorithm, but just changing your thinking process to become a saboteur will produce new answers you never thought of!
Jack Hipple is a principal in Innovation-TRIZ, Inc., a consulting company specializing in unique approaches to TRIZ training, the application of TRIZ to non-technical and organizational problems, and the integration of TRIZ with other innovation and creativity tools.
Related Web site: http://www.innovation-triz.com
Creativity in reverse: a new way to use TRIZ
By Jack Hipple
In the innovation and creativity world, we spend a lot of time solving problems or designing new things to replace or improve what already exists. Usually, the problem is complex or the solution is not obvious (or it wouldn’t need creativity, right?).
Sometimes, though, the problem is not one of trying to improve something, but to find the cause of a failure in a system, product, or organization. Something has gone wrong, maybe on a once in a while basis, and we can’t figure out why. We develop hypothesis derived from checklists we had previously developed, or from conventional brainstorming ideation techniques. But we don’t always get to the root cause and have to deal with the problem again at a future date.
Those of you familiar with TRIZ problem solving know that it has an overriding algorithm and set of tools in a toolkit. Many don’t know that within that toolkit is a very unique process for solving failure related problems. We use the simple TRIZ algorithm in reverse. Normally, we use TRIZ as follows:
Define the ideal state for the system, product, etc.
Identify the resources available for achieving this state
Identify and resolve the contradictions that prevent this state from being achieved
The concepts of the ideal state (ideal final result, ideality) and resources are far deeper than the words imply, as those of you who have used TRIZ know. If what we have is a failure problem, we need to invert this process as follows. We’ll use an example of a car failing to start as a simple example. Maybe your friendly mechanic or neighbor has given all the help they can, and still, once in a while, the car won’t start.
Define the ideal state: we want the car to start every time we start the ignition
Invert this statement: we don’t want the car to start
Exaggerate the inverted ideal statement: We don’t ever want the car to start
How would I accomplish this? What resources are required?
Now this may sound very simplistic, but what we have done is to change the basic question from “what went wrong?” (A checklist type of approach) to “how do I make it go wrong?” (A pro-active saboteurial question). We’ve changed the question from “what?” to “how?”. This puts peoples’ brains in a different quadrant—they are now permitted to be evil and do things not normally permitted! There is no time when I have run this process on electronic bank fraud, food contamination, or chemical releases that this process did not produce answers not obvious in the first place, greatly improved answers, or THE answer that wasn’t even considered in the first place.
In a project with a chemical plant which had a release of a toxic chemical from a scrubber (despite having complied with all the required checklist processes from their company, OSHA, and the EPA). It turned out that the flow to the scrubber was inadequate to contain the normal flow. Now this was something that should not have happened and was already on the checklist, but in the process of this analysis, we used this reverse algorithm in the following way:
We want no release of chemical from the system
We want a release of chemicals to the atmosphere
We want the system to leak ALL THE TIME and cause severe environmental damage all over the surrounding geographic region.
What resources do I need?
The normal review process here was to review every pressure, flow, temperature, etc. and ask the consequences of not being at the specified point (Higher? Lower?), but not to question the fundamental design. Approaching this problem using TRIZ in reverse, we ask the question, “what resources do we need to have a leak?” The group starts our saying things like high pressure, high temperature, etc. but none of these is sufficient without another resource—A HOLE. We then ask about the hole at the top of the scrubbing system. It turns out that it’s there because we have to vent an inert gas used to bubble into a storage tank to obtain its level reading. Once we realize this, we ask if there are other indirect ways of measuring level not requiring a gas which must be scrubbed. The answer is yes, so the whole root cause of the problem disappears and the hole and its associated scrubbing system are no longer required.
Though this was a technical example, consider the use of this thinking process in other areas such as:
How can I improve communication within my organization? (How do I make sure that NO ONE ever finds out ANYTHING that’s going on around here?)
How can I improve the variability of my product quality? (How do I make sure that I NEVER produce any quality product and am shut down by the FDA?)
How can I improve my on-time delivery? (How do I make sure my product NEVER arrives on time and all customers are lost?
In practice, there are additional tools and techniques to assist in this basic algorithm, but just changing your thinking process to become a saboteur will produce new answers you never thought of!
Jack Hipple is a principal in Innovation-TRIZ, Inc., a consulting company specializing in unique approaches to TRIZ training, the application of TRIZ to non-technical and organizational problems, and the integration of TRIZ with other innovation and creativity tools.
Related Web site: http://www.innovation-triz.com
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