Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Design News Asks if TRIZ is "Best"
"TRIZ and DFSS are controversial. Strict methodologies do little more than stifle innovation, says the brainstormers. Random idea generation is undisciplined, often unproductive and a big money pit, counter the backers of TRIZ, who are often MBA and accounting types. I want to know what you think so please drop me an e-mail." This is the lead paragraph from the new issue of Design News:
http://www.designnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6490721&industryid=43656
I answered, but I want to encourage everyone else to answer, too, and not just TRIZ advocates. My theme was that BOTH-AND beats EITHER-OR (the comment is posted both adjacent to the article and on the TRIZ Journal Discussion Forum.)
If you don't want to answer, think about why or why not? I'll be glad to get into that discussion, too.
http://www.designnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA6490721&industryid=43656
I answered, but I want to encourage everyone else to answer, too, and not just TRIZ advocates. My theme was that BOTH-AND beats EITHER-OR (the comment is posted both adjacent to the article and on the TRIZ Journal Discussion Forum.)
If you don't want to answer, think about why or why not? I'll be glad to get into that discussion, too.
Monday, October 22, 2007
TRIZ Commentary plans
eHello, Blog-friends:
I posted "Dean Kamen's new arm" (about the development of a prosthetic arm for injured soldiers) and "Limitations Stimulate Creativity" in the Commentary column of the TRIZ Journal, http://www.triz-journal.com/ this week.
Plans for the next few weeks:
Oct. 29-Nov. 1 IberoAmerican Technological Innovation Conference in Monterrey, Mexico. I will do a tutorial for TRIZ teachers, a keynote address on "Why Innovation? Why Technological?" and present a technical paper co-authored with Joe Miller on using the TRIZ concept of the 5 elements of the complete system to generate problem statements. I will post comments to the TRIZ Journal Commentary progressively throughought the conference. Fans of this blog may recall that I was particularly impressed last year by the excellent student papers that came from the requirement that senior engineering students at 7 universities use any 2 of the 3 methods: TRIZ, Axiomatic Design, and QFD in projects that they do for local industry, and the sponsoring industry has to agree to implement the student design. That's why I agreed to help teach the faculty for 20 more universities.
Nov. 6-8 European TRIZ Association TRIZ Futures Conference 2007, Frankfurt Germany. The program looks excellent--LOTS of industrial papers, not just consultants. I will give a shorter version of the complete system paper.
I did not go to the Japan conference in September, but I just got a copy of the proceedings and we will be asking the authors of key paper in English to allow us to reprint them in the TRIZ Journal. Some consultant papers, but many from Panasonic, Hitachi, Toshiba, Sekisui, Pioneer, Matshusita, Konica, Minolta, and many other global brand names and significant universities. Several Korean companies (LS Cable, Samsung) and others (CREAX in Belgium, Honeywell from the US, Systematic Innovation from the UK) were also featured.
Remember that readers are invited to submit comments to the blog. If you go to conferences that I don't get to, we'd love to have your reports!
Ellen
I posted "Dean Kamen's new arm" (about the development of a prosthetic arm for injured soldiers) and "Limitations Stimulate Creativity" in the Commentary column of the TRIZ Journal, http://www.triz-journal.com/ this week.
Plans for the next few weeks:
Oct. 29-Nov. 1 IberoAmerican Technological Innovation Conference in Monterrey, Mexico. I will do a tutorial for TRIZ teachers, a keynote address on "Why Innovation? Why Technological?" and present a technical paper co-authored with Joe Miller on using the TRIZ concept of the 5 elements of the complete system to generate problem statements. I will post comments to the TRIZ Journal Commentary progressively throughought the conference. Fans of this blog may recall that I was particularly impressed last year by the excellent student papers that came from the requirement that senior engineering students at 7 universities use any 2 of the 3 methods: TRIZ, Axiomatic Design, and QFD in projects that they do for local industry, and the sponsoring industry has to agree to implement the student design. That's why I agreed to help teach the faculty for 20 more universities.
Nov. 6-8 European TRIZ Association TRIZ Futures Conference 2007, Frankfurt Germany. The program looks excellent--LOTS of industrial papers, not just consultants. I will give a shorter version of the complete system paper.
I did not go to the Japan conference in September, but I just got a copy of the proceedings and we will be asking the authors of key paper in English to allow us to reprint them in the TRIZ Journal. Some consultant papers, but many from Panasonic, Hitachi, Toshiba, Sekisui, Pioneer, Matshusita, Konica, Minolta, and many other global brand names and significant universities. Several Korean companies (LS Cable, Samsung) and others (CREAX in Belgium, Honeywell from the US, Systematic Innovation from the UK) were also featured.
Remember that readers are invited to submit comments to the blog. If you go to conferences that I don't get to, we'd love to have your reports!
Ellen
