Publish at February 24 2020 Updated February 01 2023
Rigorous methods to foster creativity? Should we believe in them? Most techniques are disappointing or at least random in their results. However, the TRIZ method is an exception, probably because it provides a more structured and complete progression, at the price of greater rigor and more laborious learning. We suggest you discover its principles and steps.
The history of TRIZ, short for "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving," is inseparable from its creator, Genrich Altshuller. Of Russian origin, he was an engineer, worked in the navy and had the opportunity to consult a large number of patent syntheses. He studied several tens of thousands of them and discovered that behind the apparent genius of inventions are hidden common rules, in small numbers, and that they are found in all fields (physics, chemistry, mechanics, services ...).
Enthusiastically, he wrote to Stalin in 1950, and proposed to train engineers with one of his comrades. Unfortunately, neither his commitment, nor his mail, nor his method convince the Soviet leaders. He was even condemned and interned in a camp in Siberia. He only gets out in 1954 when Stalin dies.
He resumes his work, which he had not quite abandoned in Siberia, and finally gets recognition. He also wrote science fiction, but under the pseudonym "Altov". He died in 1998, but his method is still taught and is still the source of great industrial success. It has been
was the subject of a development in the "Project Management" mooc animated and coordinated by Rémi Bachelet. Denis Choulier offers a very clear presentation of it in a series of videos produced for this mooc.
Altshuller's method is best known for his proposal to apply "principles" to services and objects in order to transform or think about them differently. We will come back to this. But he starts especially with a vision of innovation. According to him, most of the solutions we propose consist in adding functions and elements. These elements add weight to the objects and bring other problems. Each solution has consequences. Some are intended, some are not. Some are predictable, others less so!
Denis Choulier illuminates this paradox. If I want the wax in a candle not to drip, I can consider a solution that will block the wax, a collar for example. But this will cause me storage and space problems. The solution would have to disappear when the problem stops. In this case, we're looking for a system that would keep the wax from flowing and become invisible when the candle is extinguished!
Since this ideal solution does not exist, each solution ends up generating a problem that invites the creation of new solutions, which in turn generate difficulties. Innovation is a spiral of successive improvements, which provoke the need for innovation... Altshuller is wary of inventions that consist in adding. Denis Choulier evokes "cauliflower" innovations, which increase the number of elements and become "monsters".
So let's unwind the method above. Let's have a problem that involves an object or a service. We need to learn how to define this problem. And for this, Altshuller proposes 39 parameters that can describe a technical system. He recommends asking the question in the form of "how to improve such and such a feature, while preserving such and such a feature". An online application, triz40 can walk us through and suggest generic answers, as well as give us examples.
Then Altshuller suggests listing resources. For the candle, these would be air, wick, cold and hot wax, flame, etc.
In the third step, we will define one or more actions that could provide a solution to the problem. If the issue is to prevent the candle wax from leaking, we can imagine a "block the wax" or "cool the wax" action. There are 40 of them, listed by this engineer. Of course, not all of them will be equally relevant to a given problem. "Duplicate", "delete" or "reconfigure" are among these generic operations. As we can see, this approach moves away from the idea of an enlightenment or a flash of genius. Methodically, the inventor will rigorously imagine these operations, which are broken down into suboperations.
Readers familiar with creativity techniques will think of SCAMPER, the heuristic approach that proposes seven mental operations when faced with a problem (S = Substitute; C = Combine; A = Adapt; M = Modify; P = Produce or find an alternative use; E = Eliminate; R = Reverse). But TRIZ is more comprehensive, more methodical, and most importantly it is not limited to this list of forty principles.
At first, the approach is disconcerting. No matter how hard you grind all the elements of the picture, the ideas don't come. This is because this brain gymnastics requires training, and where a beginner will come up with a dozen ideas, someone experienced in the method will come up with thirty...
A general principle emerges from this method. The solutions that emerged from the patents analyzed by Altshuller all appear unique at first glance, but they can be grouped into generic principles. In a reverse path, when faced with a problem, one can define the problem at a higher level of abstraction, solve it with typical solutions, and then work back down, to imagine how the generic solution might apply in the real world to the actual problem.
Altshuller thus suggests that we use forty principles to solve everything. As the drawing below illustrates, each principle has its own divisions, and sometimes it takes a little imagination to figure out how a principle might apply to the resources at hand!
If these three examples have left you wanting to know about the other thirty-seven, we invite you to visit the illustrated chart offered on Wikipedia.
So here's a method that goes against the grain of those used to facilitate meetings and that are largely sponsored by a brand of small repositionable stickers. It is less user-friendly, does not rely on a group dynamic and requires a significant learning curve before it bears fruit. But Denis Choulier's videos also show us the pleasure of mentally manipulating objects with this approach to bring out solutions.
Illustrations : Frédéric Duriez
Resources
The first resources presented below constitute a self-study pathway.
- presentation of the principles by Denis Choulier
- the matrix of contradictions
-list of principles, and lots of examples
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