The Allen Family Chronicles: TRIZ – Creative Problem Solving

Friday, September 2, 2011

TRIZ – Creative Problem Solving

Amplify’d from bgallen.com

Problem solving is a key function of leaders and we need all the tools to help us that we can find. A leader always should be looking for “tools” to add to his leadership toolbox. TRIZ is a good one to add.

MindTools has a good article on TRIZ. By the way, “TRIZ” is the (Russian) acronym for the “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.” Following is a brief segment from the article on TRIZ:

“. . . a huge range of possible solutions can be missed, simply because they’re outside the experience of the project team.

TRIZ is a problem solving methodology based on logic, data and research, not intuition. It draws on the past knowledge and ingenuity of many thousands of engineers to accelerate the project team’s ability to solve problems creatively. As such, TRIZ brings repeatability, predictability, and reliability to the problem-solving process with its structured and algorithmic approach.

About TRIZ

“TRIZ” is the (Russian) acronym for the “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.” G.S. Altshuller and his colleagues in the former USSR developed the method between 1946 and 1985. TRIZ is an international science of creativity that relies on the study of the patterns of problems and solutions, not on the spontaneous and intuitive creativity of individuals or groups. More than three million patents have been analyzed to discover the patterns that predict breakthrough solutions to problems, and these have been codified within TRIZ.”