TRIZ: The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving – Systematic Innovation for Technology and Business

Our guest expert, David Conley, will familiarize participants with the scientific discipline of innovation known as TRIZ and its application in the worlds of technology and business. You will learn about the historical evolution of systematic innovation (SI), that began as early as 300 AD, and how the contemporary culmination is being applied by leading business and technology companies around the world. Several specific TRIZ and SI tools will be introduced and will include examples of their application to help companies innovate and how anyone can implement an innovation program within their organization.

Finally, we'll learn how to transcend the contradictions that the Theory of Constraints helps identify to help companies create their own Blue Ocean, change organizational posture from cautiously watching for Disruptive Innovations to becoming the disruptor and develop innovative solutions designed to meet the requirements set forth by Six Sigma and Lean programs.

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David Conley received his BS of Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University and his Masters of Finance from the University of New Mexico. As an Air Force Officer he performed plasma physics and space nuclear propulsion research and served at Los Alamos and Brookhaven National Laboratories and on NASA’s Nuclear Safety Review Panel. His private sector experience includes Johnson and Johnson, Philips Semiconductor and Intel Corporation. Employed at Intel beginning in 1995 David has held a variety of engineering and management roles including Competitive Intelligence Analyst. Certified by the St. Petersburg school of the International TRIZ Association, David’s contributions to the field of systematic innovation include: technical and business problem solving, methodology training, program integration and serving on the Executive Board of the US based Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies. In early 2007 he started Innomation, LLC: a consulting firm dedicated to the proliferaion of TRIZ and Systematic Innovation for Business. David has broad international business and engineering experience and lives in New Mexico, USA with his wife and their three sons.

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What is TRIZ?: TRIZ is a Russian acronym that stands for Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch. The English translation is “The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.” The TRIZ methodology was conceptualized and developed by Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues beginning in 1946 in the former USSR. His process involved reviewing hundreds of thousands of patents to understand how engineering systems evolved over time. Particular attention was paid to understanding how innovation was harnessed to solve difficult engineering problems in novel ways. Fundamentally, the objective of TRIZ is to discover how inventors invent. The development of TRIZ as an international science of creativity continues and has so far spanned over 60 years and encompassed the analysis of some three million patents.Elemental to the process is the understanding of how engineering system contradictions can be sufficed without the use of compromise.

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TRIZ Main Postulate: Engineering Systems do not develop randomly but rather according to objective evolutionary trends. The evolutionary trends are a natural result of engineering systems competing for resources ($s, energy, political support, etc.) within an economic, political, and technology environment. Analogous to the natural selection law from biology, the engineering systems most suited to the environment develop and flourish. The evolutionary trends describe typical features of winning engineering systems.