tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-293559962011-11-05T13:28:49.160-07:00TRIZ is the acronym for "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving." This blog is an experiment in informal TRIZ discussions, about real situations and real problems using TRIZ. Ellen Domb is the founding editor of the TRIZ Journal, http://www.triz-journal.com, and a consultant and instructor in TRIZ, http://www.trizpqrgroup.com, and author of the e-learning system http://bit.ly/b8rcVb.Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.comBlogger1441100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-65887750508625990012011-11-05T13:28:00.000-07:002011-11-05T13:28:49.188-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/pages/TFC2011/252803378101325?sk=wall for photos, thanks to Jeongho Shin, who established the page and invited all participants to post pictures and rememberances of the conference. Eddie Commins (ooops, Dr. Eddie Commins, manager of the applied innovation department of Enterprise Ireland) did a great keynote talk—really establishing key points about innovation as a

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-17572683131268543272011-11-03T18:55:00.000-07:002011-11-03T18:55:15.084-07:00

Leonid Chechurin from St. Petersburg State Politechnical University and the Politecnico di Milano opened the session with the keynote “Creativity IN the Exact Science.” He charmed the audience with his story of the difference of his students’ reaction to learning TRIZ vs. their reaction to learning the mathematics of control systems. Both space and time domain analysis are frequently used in TRIZ

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-74008575793020685022011-11-02T15:35:00.000-07:002011-11-02T15:35:35.128-07:00

Hello from the 11th TRIZ Futures Conference of the European TRIZ Association, in Tallaght (Suburban Dublin) Ireland. More than 110 people gathered for the conference, from the broadly defined “Europe” (old joke for frequent readers of this report—Malaysia, the US, Japan, Korea, and China all have delegates and speakers here, as well as Portugal, Spain, France, Austria, Israel, Germany, Russia,

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-8807853987507423302011-10-23T23:48:00.000-07:002011-10-23T23:48:36.003-07:00

Jack Hipple was the first speaker of Day 2, with a fascinating array of ergonomics examples. His aging population (if you can’t run on a treadmill, stand still and stimulate the heart by chemicals) segment had many new examples, and his case on pill insulin- outer shell swells in stomach environment, protects medicine until it is in the right place for absorption—could change life for millions.

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-18920308401492848122011-10-23T23:46:00.000-07:002011-10-23T23:46:18.213-07:00

The 6th Iberoamerican Innovation Congress opened in Quetero, Mexico this morning with welcome from the director of the Technology Park and from Christian Signoret, organizer of the conference, treasurer of AMETRIZ, and professor at the Queretaro branch of TEC de Monterrey. The hard work of Christian’s committee (and students—thanks Rebeca and Juan Felipe) really showed in a well-run meeting. (

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-11626606529019400692011-10-13T12:17:00.000-07:002011-10-13T12:17:21.431-07:00

Day 1: Tutorials—Quite well-attended by people from the universities, government, and private industry. Nice new trend in the TRIZ tutorial—people who had heard about TRIZ before, and want to apply it in their work. I heard good things about other tutorials as well, but this is a personal report on the parts of the conference that I experienced. For the full program go to http://

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-56179690157127437302011-10-04T15:01:00.000-07:002011-10-04T15:01:38.964-07:00

Dr. Alex Marquez is the first afternoon speaker. He has a marvelously diverse history as an entrepreneur, TV personality, concert pianist, and lecturer. He captivated the audience with his stories about multiple ventures in multiple countries. http://www.alexmarquezonline.com/  will introduce you to this remarkable speaker better than I can. His theme for the conference was the current

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-75754208646188298542011-10-04T09:01:00.000-07:002011-10-04T09:01:12.185-07:00

Oct. 4. Estoy aqui en Puebla, Mexico. Here I am in Pubebla Mexico for the XIV Congreso Internacional del Ingenieria Industrial—over 1200 people, mostly students, from 6 countries, for 4 days of industrial engineering presentations, visits to companies, tutorials on a wide range of topics, and even some entertainment. Right now, during the pre-conference settling in, 2 mimes (quite good ones) are

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-32747904250785429522011-10-02T14:16:00.000-07:002011-10-02T14:16:24.372-07:00

It looks like 4th Quarter 2011 is the TRIZ learning Quarter. Here’s my speaking schedule—let me know if you’ll be at any of these venues, so we can get to know each other better.   These are all interesting conferences;  I plan to attend and participate, so look for my blog posts as I travel. Oct. 4-5 XIV Industrial Enginnering Congress, Puebla, MX. Half day tutorial starting at 9 AM and

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-7782038645133884122011-09-14T12:45:00.000-07:002011-09-14T12:46:28.182-07:00

For those of you who prefer not to try TWITTER, here are my recent posts.  Those of you who do use TWITTER, please let me know if there are other people whose Tweets are interesting to the #TRIZ and #Innovation audiences, so I can connect.  Get in touch with @ellendomb 09/15/2011 04:17 am (Thursday) India Innovation Summit -Summary thanks to @pavan_soni & friends. http://dld.bz/aqeMy  Education,

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-89017964872260182162011-08-31T13:59:00.000-07:002011-08-31T14:01:35.382-07:00

An open letter to all friends of TRIZ: As you may have heard by now, the TRIZ Journal, which became part of the Real Innovation Network after I sold it in 2006, is at great risk. A few weeks ago, the owners of the TRIZ Journal (Schofield Media) defaulted on their debt and their assets were seized by one of its lenders (or something to that effect—the details are sketchy). It appears the

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-8194963990193680232011-08-21T11:29:00.000-07:002011-08-21T11:29:06.884-07:00

Preparations are in work for new sites that will make the TRIZ Journal archives available, publish new papers, and provide services for ISixSigma users, too. A roundtable discussion will be held Aug. 29, in person for anyone who can visit Atlanta, GA USA, virtually for the rest of the world. Event link: http://events.linkedin.com/Whats-Next-iSixSixSigma-TRIZ-Journal/pub/752607Help the

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-43325930140970722772011-07-23T20:34:00.000-07:002011-07-23T20:34:01.975-07:00

Guest post by Joe A. Miller, jam@prairietriz.com This article is provided as an example of the identification and utilization of an enormously wide range of systemic resources, not as an example of any specific application of TRIZ. The examples contained here are thought provoking and innovative; it is hoped that readers will benefit from seeing how “Somebody, Someplace” solved a diverse set of

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-29216512425040484442011-07-21T17:46:00.000-07:002011-07-21T17:48:49.565-07:00

Good news is that the TRIZ Journal site is still up, so if there are any papers that you want (I never kept personal copies of a lot of things, because I knew I could send people to the site to find them) it would be a good idea to get them today, or soon. I have no other information, except a very short press release about the company that says nothing about the websites. Press release about

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-44069385406346511922011-06-30T12:25:00.000-07:002011-06-30T12:27:59.957-07:00

Our friends at TRIZIndia have started a podcast series that will be both a tutorial on TRIZ methods and a discussion of how to teach an apply those methods in real situations in real companies. It is free and easy (no passwords, no registration process.) Try the first one on Ideal Final Result at http://trizindia.podbean.com/ The announcement said, "Everyone, We have started a podcast series on

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-79235588542709513702011-06-28T12:21:00.000-07:002011-06-28T12:21:42.109-07:00

http://trizindia.podbean.com/  This is a new series of podcasts from TRIZ India, with several of our friends talking about their experiences introducing TRIZ concepts to their companies.  (Ideal Final Result is the first discussion.)   They explore both the concept and the teaching methods quite widely, and solicit comments from listeners, and volunteers for future work.   Try it!

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-91830891868587138702011-06-15T17:29:00.000-07:002011-06-15T17:29:52.196-07:00

For those readers who aren't Twitter followers, I'm aggregating the last week of my tweets.   Some people use these to test themselves on applications of TRIZ concepts, some to challenge me or the generators of the ideas about the solutions.    Frequently I cite lists (10 best, 50 best, etc.) but be warned--the criteria for "best" are frequently NOT TRIZ criteria.   I use these lists to stimulate

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-34112020693077955222011-05-29T17:34:00.000-07:002011-05-29T17:34:04.598-07:00

I'm not a big fan of Twitter because my ego says that it takes more than 140 characters to say important things, and because I find it difficult to extract new learning from the stream of tweets that come from hundreds of people.   BUT Twitter has been a very good discipline for me -- trying to find TRIZ lessons in the constant stream of things I read, see, and experience.   If you'd like

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-70267484742831971032011-04-29T11:02:00.000-07:002011-04-29T11:02:20.899-07:00

I’m just back from a great week at the Lean Product and Process Development Exchange in San Diego.  See www.lppde.org    for the full program, and for planning for the next 2 meeting, September in Gothenburg, Sweden and April 2012 in Indianapolis.   LPPDE is a great match for TRIZ, and I got to explore some of the areas for integration in a workshop. For the TRIZ readers, LPPDE is a system for

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-67586224307366047412011-04-10T08:58:00.000-07:002011-04-10T08:58:20.702-07:00

Karen Gadd, founder of Oxford creativity, has just published material from several of her courses in the form of an entertaining paperback, issued by Wiley.   Details: TRIZ for Engineers: Enabling Inventive Problem Solving by Karen Gadd Paperback: 504 pages Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (May 10, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 9780470741887 ISBN-13: 978-0470741887 ASIN: 0470741880 Herb

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-3288623151805404202011-03-30T10:55:00.000-07:002011-03-30T10:55:57.507-07:00

I posted the following today on the TRIZ Journal "commentary" and want to ask readers of this blog to participate, too.   Any comments posted here will be forwarded to V. Petrov.    I will write some detailed comments later--my initial response was surprise that he was doing this, since I think that rebuilding the matrix will take extensive research, and cannot be done by substituting names of

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-21834866308902802202011-03-18T23:27:00.001-07:002011-03-18T23:27:52.174-07:00

http://dld.bz/SBKa live #TRIZ discussion on internet radio, 10AM Pacific time, Monday, March 21. Listen or call in. Topic: resources.

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-83645535789496241582011-03-10T10:38:00.000-08:002011-03-10T10:38:52.721-08:00

Some of the most popular articles in this blog are the reports from TRIZ conferences around the world. I frequently encourage readers to participate in conferences, because the exchange of information face-to-face is a far richer experience than reading the formal papers from conferences, and we need all kinds of experiences to continue to develop TRIZ. My colleagues who are regular TRIZ

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-20346354506208292112011-01-19T16:40:00.000-08:002011-01-19T16:45:29.320-08:00

Yesterday I had a conversation with a TRIZ/lean/six sigma consultant, who told me with some excitement about his new project, digital book publishing. I was glad to hear his enthusiasm, but astonished when he told me that the book is ABOUT applications of TRIZ, but that he didn't use TRIZ to solve any of the problems he had during the project. My question: What about "I want to deal with Amazon,

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-22449478266556513872010-12-20T10:57:00.000-08:002010-12-20T10:57:10.916-08:00

In July, I agreed to a friend's importunings to start a Twitter account.  I don't think I've learned to really appreciate the daily stream of tweets from people all over the world sharing their thoughts, but I've seen some very interesting occasional comments which I would have missed otherwise.   My posts are mostly intented as TRIZ discussion starters--this kind of thing is typical:  "here are

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-88592465881539672642010-11-26T00:35:00.000-08:002010-11-26T00:35:42.311-08:00

TRIZICS:  Teach yourself TRIZ, how to invent, innovate and solve “impossible” technical problems systematically.  2010.  By Gordon Cameron.  $59.95 from https://www.createspace.com/3496509 or from Amazon. The purpose of a book review varies by reviewer.  My main purpose is to tell my readers if they should buy the book.   Many other reviewers devote most of the review to telling the author what’

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-20129489323475813212010-10-08T11:03:00.000-07:002010-10-08T11:03:40.536-07:00

Kas Kasravi from Hewlett-Packard showed TRIZ applications in information technology services, a growing (but non-traditional) area for TRIZ applications. The world market size may be US$131 billion within 3 years. They apply TRIZ to both specific problems and to "next big thing" type investigations. Good news is that in 20 projects, participants said that they had new ideas in every case. The "

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-91315617615811146522010-10-08T06:43:00.000-07:002010-10-08T06:45:12.786-07:00

TRIZCON 2010 and the National Innovation Conference Day 2 opened with brief remarks by sponsor Bart Barthelemy of the Wright Brothers Institute, challenging all the participants to learn multiple innovation systems to take advantage of the opportunities that surround us. Opening speaker Steve Shapiro "chief innovation evangelist" of Innocentive emphasized that innovation is about rapid,

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-72537541753206365062010-10-07T13:39:00.000-07:002010-10-07T13:39:29.214-07:00

Wayne Fisher's premise (based on 20 years of observation at Procter & Gamble) is "Innovation is a Team Sport." P&G's growth strategy is "touching and improving more consumers' lives in more parts of the world, more completely." and innovation is DOING it. His keys to innovation are people, process, and place; and he shared some of his experiences developing the space for teamwork in a product

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-41049659914711611332010-10-07T11:39:00.000-07:002010-10-07T11:39:14.210-07:00

The audience got very engaged in Tim Basadur's "Flight to Creativity." (Yes, son of Min Basadur, but an innovation contributor on his own, too.) His "Why teamwork is often uncreative and time consuming" chart started lots of conversations.  His equations for meetings are Results = Content + Process + Tools + Style C = K x I x E (Creativity is the product of knowledge, imagination, and

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-65606853966703640392010-10-07T07:50:00.000-07:002010-10-07T07:50:42.261-07:00

Deborah Westphal from Toffler Associates asked us to take a trip to 50,000 feet to see global innovation. She set a high bar: challenge our thinking about the future of innovation, broaden our perspectives, and learn from what we are doing, specifically looking at product innovation. Her definition of the revolutionary nature of change got us to look back at transitions between the agrarian

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-76101031457125060942010-10-07T07:15:00.000-07:002010-10-07T07:15:24.803-07:00

What a week for learning!   The Business Innovation Conference near Chicago has become a "must do" item on my annual calendar, and TRIZCON, which had become somewhat un-thrilling in recent years, has been revived by joining with the National Innovation Conference for multiple perspectives.   See http://www.realinnovation.com/ or http://www.triz-journal.com/ commentary sections for reports by me

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-24086886601451042982010-09-01T16:43:00.000-07:002010-09-01T16:49:10.338-07:00

Those of you who are following my Tweets @ellendomb, and those of you who read the TRIZ Journal and earlier issues of this blog know that I frequently show a creative idea (usually technology/product, but occasionally a business system or methodology) then speculate on which of the TRIZ techniques could have been used to create the idea. I also use this method in classes, having the participants

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-63490945319307241322010-08-28T21:12:00.000-07:002010-08-28T21:12:44.891-07:00

Stop the Innovation Wars is the attention-getting title of this month's Harvard Business Review attempt at controversy by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble, both on the faculty at Dartmouth, and co-authors of a new book on innovation, due out in November. (See http://www.hbr.org/ July-Aug. 2010) What is the Innovation War? It is the battle between corporate operations groups, responsible for

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-22195791003107865422010-08-21T10:57:00.000-07:002010-08-21T10:57:34.054-07:00

Discovered since the Open Innovation posting: http://ow.ly/2sN1I http://bit.ly/dBi9PT No change in my conclusions about the role of TRIZ.

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-62287349998338176452010-08-20T10:35:00.000-07:002010-08-20T10:40:26.497-07:00

I have just (reluctantly) joined Twitter.   Those of you who participate can find me @ellendomb Why reluctant?   I like the freedom of blogging--any length, any format, with or without pictures, sometimes in this TRIZ for the Real World blog, sometimes posted to the TRIZ Journal and Real Innovation Commentary blogs as well.    So the 140 character limit of Twitter seemed designed to prevent

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-23251749870624685392010-08-19T10:36:00.000-07:002010-08-19T10:51:00.272-07:00

Two times in two weeks on two continents then twice more by e-mail people asked about TRIZ and open innovation. Sounds like a trend? I honestly had not given it much thought, and before my current exposure I would have said that my impression of open innovation was that companies invite outsiders to contribute ideas in order to get more ideas from a population that is more diverse than their

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-46852108667039772612010-07-29T20:52:00.001-07:002010-07-29T20:57:55.409-07:00

Great meeting! Day 1 report is posted -- see TRIZ Journal Commentary for running commentary and a few bad pictures. Day 2 will post later today. PLEASE send questions--I'm on a late afternoon panel discussion and I need some new questions!

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-40198417788434075762010-06-02T19:41:00.001-07:002010-06-02T19:45:13.382-07:00

The new TRIZ distance learning program has been "up" for a week. Learn ideality and the Ideal Final Result, use of resources, resolution of contradictions, and how to combine these basic ideas into a problem solving system. Lessons are on-line, and homework (application to YOUR work) is e-mailed to your instructor for comments, feedback, and dialog. Click to learn more.

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-52325356380897201152010-06-02T19:38:00.000-07:002010-06-02T19:40:43.994-07:00

Rosabeth Moss Kanter (well-known management author and Harvard professor) presents her observations and challenges to CEOs who are embracing innovation during the recovery in the article "Block-by-Blockbuster Innovation" in the May 2010 Harvard Business Review. See http://hbr.org/2010/05/column-block-by-blockbuster-innovation/ar/1 I agree with many of her points, but I also noticed that with

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-21907550303037249542010-05-27T15:25:00.000-07:002010-05-27T15:36:48.654-07:00

I have written and spoken about TRIZ training and TRIZ learning on many occasions, so fans of this blog know that I'm convinced that the only way anybody learns TRIZ is by application to situations that really matter. Practice on trivial classroom cases will give you superficial knowledge, but only real work will lead to competency. This is the reason that I've avoided e-learning for a long

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-62503128551275265152010-04-10T08:36:00.000-07:002010-04-10T08:37:48.500-07:00

Technology Review magazine's listing of the world's most innovative companies has just arrived (see www.technologyreview.com/tr50). For the first time I am not going to rant about lists of "most innovative" that don't have the criteria for selection or the definition of innovation! You may disagree with the TR editors' definitions, but at least they have them.Innovative companies: demonstrated

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-12366398143551677352010-03-26T17:20:00.000-07:002010-03-26T17:34:11.605-07:00

Darrell Mann has 4 new books and a chapter in a 5th just published in the last few weeks. See http://www.systematic-innovation.com/Products/Products01.htm for details and the order form. Fans of Matrix 2003 will welcome Matrix 2010, based on Darrell's extensive research on both the patent literature and business publications for a wide variety of examples. TrenDNA by Darrell Mann and Yekta

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-72719038279236273932010-03-23T14:43:00.000-07:002010-03-23T14:46:01.087-07:00

There is a new TRIZ Power Tools book on the www.opensourcetriz.com website. It is a much expanded version of the book “Job #1 Discovering Markets.” This whole series, by Larry Ball and his consortium colleagues, have had great depth of research, a wide variety of examples, and reader-friendly graphics. Let me know what you think!

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-55952246399981786342010-03-15T11:10:00.000-07:002010-03-15T11:19:27.056-07:00

I met Peter deJager a few years ago at a TRIZ conference, where he was getting quick but intense education on TRIZ. Peter is a change management consultant, and a very popular international speaker, who does an excellent monthly (free!) webinar on a variety of subjects, with occasional guest webin-artists. He did a comprehensive introduction to TRIZ in January, and, as a result of great

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-32820412654254881122010-03-12T10:21:00.001-08:002010-03-12T10:24:30.558-08:00

My friend Toru Nakagawa has completed a great job, summarizing in English all the papers and presentations at the 2009 Japan TRIZ Symposium. Here's his announcement:Dear TRIZ Colleagues, The "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" has been updated today in English pages and in Japanese pages. (Dated: Mar. 11, 2010) http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/ [1] "Personal Report of Japan TRIZ

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-52455402711977289662010-02-18T17:06:00.000-08:002010-02-18T17:10:13.814-08:00

Can you teach other people to be innovators? Or can you teach yourself to be more innovative? TRIZ practioners learn to generate innovative ideas, but they don't always get their ideas adopted in their organizations.Sarah Miller Caldicott is co-author of "Innovate Like Edison" and author of a very good blog on innovation: http://www.powerpatterns.com/newsletter/newsletter_jan2010_online.htm

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-32261502589765657332010-02-01T11:40:00.000-08:002010-02-01T11:52:38.664-08:00

ISixSigma (a corporate "big sister" publication of Real Innovation and the TRIZ Journal) hosts the ISixSigma Live! symposium in Miami, FL USA this week, with participation from a wide variety of Six Sigma/Lean practioners and learners. Innovation is definitely the theme of the week--Bob King's tutorial "Integrating Innovation with the Voice of the Customer" and Phil Samuel's tutorial "The

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-10967960952345625172010-01-23T19:13:00.000-08:002010-01-23T19:19:54.717-08:00

After more than a year in planning, the First International Conference on Systematic Innovation is running this week in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and the second has been announced for March 24-26 in Shanghai. I'm blogging daily to the commentary column of the TRIZ Journal http://www.triz-journal.com/commentary/ so I won't repeat the comments here. The program is quite wide-ranging, including both

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-88157245937716451622009-12-20T10:34:00.000-08:002009-12-20T10:39:31.048-08:00

Trimming is a TRIZ technique of improving something by simplifying it (and a small joke in English.) Most often in TRIZ it refers to products or systems where the complexity has increased cost or decreased maintainability, serviceability, ease of use, etc. My husband and I got a gift that let us experience an extreme form of trimming used to create an innovation in experience.We walked into

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-69030875149456643452009-12-02T11:19:00.000-08:002009-12-02T11:28:28.676-08:00

The EU Lifelong Learning Program-sponsored TETRIS project has just announced the availability of the full set of materials (book, handbook, exercises) for download and videos available for viewing at www.tetris-project.org It is available in 5 languages, and I can only speak for the English one, which is very good. You'll need to test it with a sample of the students that you plan to use it

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-82784303783507688572009-11-25T09:52:00.000-08:002009-11-25T10:00:28.390-08:00

Toru Nakagawa has updated the TRIZ Home Page in Japan, including summaries of the TRIZ meeting in Japan in Sept., his paper presented both there and at ETRIA in Romania, and advance information on meetings in in 2010 in Taiwan (January), Korea (March) and Japan (September).I appreciate the tremendous work that Toru does to keep the English-speaking world aware of what's happening elsewhere!

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-29260585747299469182009-11-23T10:21:00.001-08:002009-11-23T10:30:10.329-08:00

It is not too late: Nov. 23 there will be a meeting in Israel, with a program that is mostly industrial, with some academic and consulting contributions. See www.hit.ac.il/TRIZ09 for details. Regular readers know that I get very enthusiastic at these meetings--I find it easy to ignore the self-promotional papers and the poorly structured papers (the organizing committees need to do some WORK

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-90924273981754980092009-11-07T11:20:00.000-08:002009-11-07T11:34:24.317-08:00

I'll be reporting personally from the 4th Iberoamerican Innovation Congress in Santimago, Chile, next week. Congress 1 was in Puebla, 2 in Monterrey, and 3 in Guadalajara, so it will be a big adventure to move the meeting into South America. I'm looking forward to meeting many people I have only known through e-mail, and many new innovation thinkers.The European TRIZ Association's TRIZ Futures

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-40922000425193100762009-10-14T10:31:00.000-07:002009-10-14T10:38:03.147-07:00

The "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" has been updated tonight (dated Oct. 12) in English and in Japanese pages. http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/ [1] Report: "The Fifth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2009" was held with 137 participants (including 19 from overseas). Held by the Japan TRIZ Society, NPO. On Sept. 10 though Sept. 12, 2009; at NWEC (Saitama)

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-79869014443730449752009-10-06T10:19:00.001-07:002009-10-06T10:25:51.180-07:00

This week I'm at the Business Innovation Conference near Chicago. I'm sending reports to Real Innovation and the TRIZ Journal so I won't duplicate the reports here. Kudos to organizer Praveen Gupta for terrific keynote speakers who really did deliver KEY messages that set the theme, got the audience to go from passive audience to active participants, and established a framework for the

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-84310216468358323462009-10-02T14:14:00.000-07:002009-10-02T14:28:51.192-07:00

The October 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review has a very nice article on what TRIZ calls the use of resources: "The Power of Unwitting Workers." An important part of teaching about the use of resources is explaining that resources are not just things. Energy of any sort, from the system or from the environment, is a resource. Information from the system or the environment,or

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-72942527998153355242009-09-28T16:33:00.000-07:002009-09-28T16:39:05.105-07:00

I just got this announcement from Larry Ball about the latest from his consortium of authors: Just wanted to let you know that another book is available on www.opensourcetriz.comThe name of the book is “Job 4—Simplifying”. It regards tools for simplifying or overhauling a system. The download is also free. A for-pay trade paperback will be available in a couple of weeks.My advice is that if

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-84080773530072768822009-09-20T16:54:00.000-07:002009-09-20T16:57:50.460-07:00

Please forward this to anyone who is looking for new TRIZ books. Thanks! TRIZ Journal is not publishing book reviews now, so I’m trying to reach interested people via e-mail and this blog. I just got the new book TRIZ: Systematic Innovation for Manufacturing by San, Jin, and Li (all from Intel, Malaysia, students of Sergei Ikovenko. Book available from Altshuller Institute. www.aitriz.org )

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-25799060607774649392009-09-20T11:46:00.000-07:002009-09-20T11:54:21.822-07:00

Toru Nakagawa from Osaka Gakuin University has continued his great work to tie the Japan TRIZ community and the global TRIZ community together. The following is his announcement:The "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" has been updated tonight (dated Sept. 18) in English and in Japanese pages. http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/ The Fifth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2009 has finished with

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-76399627793734823222009-08-30T19:02:00.000-07:002009-08-30T19:04:15.530-07:00

ICED – the International Conference on Engineering Design – is the flagshipevent of the Design Society. The Seventeenth Conference was held last week at Stanford University in the USA. Over 200 papers were presented by a wide range of participants. Cause for celebration for Real Innovation and TRIZ Journal readers: Two of the 5 papers on TRIZ (written by friends of the TJ!) were honored as

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-49056891928141068942009-08-23T10:09:00.000-07:002009-08-23T10:17:17.924-07:00

Great trip to China for the Computer-Aided Innovation Conference. I did an extensive report for the TRIZ Journal, so if you want details on papers, speakers, etc. see www.triz-journal.com/commentary -- YES the TRIZ Journal is back! After 2 months of restoration following the disastrous hacks, it is back, and it has been really terrific hearing from TRIZ Journal fans all over the world.

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-14002829505314487272009-07-24T11:52:00.000-07:002009-07-24T11:53:35.107-07:00

Real InnovationJuly 24, 2009While most of iSixSigma’s websites have been restored, the CTQ Media site Real Innovation, which includes the TRIZ Journal, needs a little more attention from our programmers. We should be able to reopen Real Innovation within a few days.We appreciate your patience as we return every component of our sites to full service.Regards,Frank DucceschiVice President and

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-69104473692164985842009-07-23T10:03:00.000-07:002009-07-23T10:05:34.509-07:00

From: The TRIZ Journal [trizjournal@triz-journal.com]If all goes well, iSixSigma.com will be back online by the end of this week. And CTQ Media’s other websites – RealInnovation.com (including the TRIZ Journal), BPMEnterprise.com and Sourcingmag.com – will be up and running shortly thereafter. It has taken more than a month to fix what hackers did. While it has been painful to be offline for so

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-1749272580673008192009-07-10T12:23:00.000-07:002009-07-10T12:38:10.978-07:00

TRIZ journal (http://www.triz-journal.com) is my "baby" since I co-founded it with Jim Kowalick in 1996 and editited it with Michael Slocum until 2006, when I sold it to CTQ Media, and I've happily stayed a member of the editorial board, with Katie Barry becoming the editor/publisher. But even when the "baby" grows up, it is still your "baby" and anything that hurts it hurts you.In early June

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-87275704658102888582009-06-17T08:26:00.000-07:002009-06-17T08:33:16.024-07:00

Toru Nakagawa reports that the new update of the TRIZ Home Page in Japan is ready athttp://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/Professor Nakagawa does a tremendous amount of work to provide an excellent resource to the world community as well as the Japanese TRIZ interest group. Today he has new articles, a preview of the September Symposium, and a personal essay "Suggestion of Several

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-34055527044078552022009-05-17T13:33:00.000-07:002009-05-17T13:41:12.112-07:00

http://www.triz-journal.com/commentary/ellendomb has my report on Toru Nakagawa's report on the best papers from the 2008 Japan TRIZ Symposium, as decided by vote of the participants. Toru has done a great job of English summaries and English versions of the slides, so that the non-Japanese audiences can benefit from these papers.Now in preparation: Darrell Mann and I will both be keynote

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-12242591330050710852009-04-07T09:13:00.000-07:002009-04-07T09:17:50.187-07:00

The Lean Product and Process Development Exchange is happening in Hilton Head, South Carolina, USA this week. I’m not a dis-interested participant, of course: my co-author Katherine Radeka is the conference chair (see http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/2009/04/04/ for our article linking TRIZ to LAMDA, one of the basic tools of LPPD) and I did a TRIZ tutorial in the pre-conference session. If

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-25447368220083203852009-03-30T13:33:00.000-07:002009-03-30T13:46:06.432-07:00

Rick Blauw has done a great job with 3-4 minute humorous TRIZ lessons. He has posted them on Youtube to make them more accessible, and also on Facebook for those who prefer that format. Please send him comments! Start with any one--they are all different styles.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SEJpu_tVF8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7z8ot_Yvkshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6DIoxwk2e0Also, this

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-70553630738195296142009-03-19T19:29:00.000-07:002009-03-19T19:34:04.402-07:00

TRIZCON 2009, the eleventh meeting of the Altshuller Institute, is going on this week in Canoga Park, California, where the primary sponsor for the event, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is located. About 75 people are involved in a variety of learning and discussion events. Monday featured pre-conference tutorials by Zinovy Royzen, Sergei Ikovenko, and Isak Bukhman, and demonstrations by

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-81412560441902414862009-03-19T19:25:00.000-07:002009-03-19T19:29:40.514-07:00

The day opened with a short business meeting of the Altshuller Institute. Isak Bukhman was elected Vice President and Don Coates was elected Secretary. Mansour Ashtiani continues as President and Richard Langevin continued as Treasurer and executive director. Noel Leon announced the Computer Aided Innovation meeting in Harbin, China, in August and the 4th IberoAmerican Innovation Congress in

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-47466511477863339092009-02-19T12:55:00.000-08:002009-02-19T12:56:01.672-08:00

Part 2: “How to persuade your boss that innovation is a good thing?”The last week of January I posted a commentary, telling our readers that I had been asked to substitute for a speaker on the subject of “how to persuade your boss that innovation is a good thing.” http://www.triz-journal.com/commentary/archive/innovation_is_good.html I decided to have the audience members answer the question

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-70520622673512927582009-01-28T14:14:00.000-08:002009-01-28T14:16:53.529-08:00

I was recently invited to speak at a conference on this topic—way outside my usual comfort zone of “What is TRIZ” or “How to merge TRIZ into your Lean Six Sigma System” or “Innovation for Everybody” speeches. This conference is focused on innovation in general, not specifically TRIZ.My initial reaction was pretty negative in several ways: 1. If you need to persuade your boss that innovation

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-87376962620735728702008-12-10T18:00:00.000-08:002008-12-10T18:04:19.383-08:00

I'm very glad to see the plans for improving the ARIZ system. We'll need one of the participants to volunteer to be a reporter for the TRIZ Journal. Here's an extract from Simon Litwin's letter, Results of TRIZ Developers Summit 2008; preparation for TRIZ Developers Summit 20091. TRIZ Developers Summit 2008 (TDS 08)1.1. General results of TRIZ Developers Summit 2008The 4th TRIZ Developers

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-55332750605516423182008-11-29T11:22:00.000-08:002008-11-29T11:23:55.744-08:00

The last Thursday in November is the Thanksgiving holiday in the US. Originally a harvest festival with religious roots, thanking God for enough food to get through the winter, it has evolved into a family-oriented celebration of all the things for which we give thanks, usually centered around a holiday meal where each family member makes a specialty dish, and those who don’t cook bring the

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-65893496713805308912008-11-25T17:56:00.000-08:002008-11-25T18:00:03.625-08:00

I won't be at this meeting--it is practioners only, no consultants. Larry Ball has a note in this announcement that he hopes no one is offended, and I told him that if the other meetings, with consultants and "vendors" were meeting the needs of the customers, he wouldn't need this meeting, so people should be glad that he's taking the initiative, not offended! I hope that all the travel

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-87617131144470537772008-10-26T16:46:00.000-07:002008-10-26T16:47:32.038-07:00

There are now 2 TRIZ-related discussion groups on LinkedIn and many more elsewhere (and the original TRIZ topica listserve, and the discussion Forum in the TRIZ Journal.) I'm concerned that the fragmentation of the groups will be wasteful--for example, I just spent time answering the question about resources in English and Spanish for Trees of Evolution on a Linked-In list, then found it on

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-33270732189444809932008-10-15T16:25:00.000-07:002008-10-15T16:29:28.562-07:00

Darrell Mann's LONG-awaited book Systematic (Software) Innovation is now available from http://www.systematic-innovation.com/. I'm offering this blog as a way to collect comments/questions/discussion, either on the book or on the subject in general.

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-46494151039862049752008-10-15T13:05:00.000-07:002008-10-15T13:17:25.216-07:00

I've been posting travel reports to the TRIZ Journal commentary column, so this blog has been languishing. Interesting happenings at the Business Innovation Conference in Chicago, the Innovation and Quality Forum in Zacatecas Mexcio, and the 3d Iberoamerican Innovation Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, plus a report from Paul Filmore on the Japan TRIZ meeting.I have had several reminders that

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-91692015427866312542008-08-12T19:54:00.000-07:002008-08-12T19:58:17.297-07:00

Thanks to Business Week for doing all the research for this article—they have a great slide show and article about the innovations in Olympic equipment, whether non-Olympic athletes can buy it, and if yes, the details. The range is pretty extreme: Ø US$24 for a swim cap that doesn’t wrinkle (I saw Michael Phelps wearing it over his older-style cap) and covers the ears. Apparently both

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-16709474131653557782008-07-30T11:34:00.000-07:002008-07-30T11:45:46.913-07:00

A basic precept of TRIZ is "somebody, someplace has already solved your problem"--maybe for a different reason, in a different industry, so searching for those solutions and adapting them to your problem becomes the new challenge for innovation.BUT you can't even search if you don't know that the possibility of solutions exists. That's one reason that I continually encourage my colleagues,

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-87864758892405156302008-07-19T10:57:00.000-07:002008-07-19T11:07:12.243-07:00

For my thoughts on using holiday/vaction time to practice TRIZ seehttp://www.triz-journal.com/commentary/ellendombI've seen a number of organizations waste their TRIZ training, by waiting for an "important" problem. Most educators agree that if you don't use new learning within 2 weeks, you lose 80% of it! So, when you learn something new, you should use it as often as possible on a wide range of

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-64830659397001925332008-07-18T11:38:00.000-07:002008-07-18T11:45:34.001-07:00

I frequently read Report 103 and find both new ideas, and old ideas presented in a new way. The current issue is at http://www.jpb.com/report103/archive.php?issue_no=20080715Both articles are very useful: 1. Many companies are using their innovation methods for cost cutting. These are the same methods that were previously used for product/service development. This is no surprise to TRIZ

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-71604731886608235222008-07-07T14:26:00.000-07:002008-07-07T15:12:38.349-07:00

Frequent readers know that I have regarded this blog as an experiment, and that when the TRIZ Journal started its "commentary" and "forum" columns, I started putting most of my "TRIZ for the Real World" thoughts in those two venues. Thanks to all of you who have participated in those dialogs--the experiment in ways to increase TRIZ discussions is ongoing.This month I've discovered two new blogs,

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-39116872949815170032008-05-06T19:50:00.000-07:002008-05-08T07:40:40.714-07:00

Our friend Toru Nagagawa writes: The "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" has been updated today (dated on May 4) in English and in Japanese.http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/The whole set of pages of 'TRIZ Links' in Japan and in the World have been rebuilt after 7 years since I built the 2001 version.In the English pages you read:TRIZ Links in Japan: Selected 10 sitesTRIZ Links in the World

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-41656969903567985832008-04-18T14:17:00.000-07:002008-04-18T14:22:04.752-07:00

I posted daily blogs from TRIZCON2008 in Kent, Ohio, USA this week. Seehttp://www.triz-journal.com/commentary/ellendombfor all the details. I'll be at the Lean Product and Process Development Experience in Denver next week, and will report live from that conference as well.http://www.lppde.org/overallagenda.phpReaders who would like to do guest postings are invited to let me know--other people

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-86518651175136169282008-04-09T17:03:00.000-07:002008-04-09T17:08:07.902-07:00

Consultants write articles for a lot of reasons. Two leading reasons are: (1) A genuine desire to share their research with the world (2) Show how smart they are, to get people interested in hiring them.Since I am a consultant writing an article, it would be ungracious to attribute selfish motives to the most recent article on trends of evolution in the IT world to the McKinsey researchers. As a

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-25263532609004814492008-04-08T10:43:00.000-07:002008-04-08T10:54:03.186-07:00

News notes: I'll be at the Altshuller Institute's TRIZCON2008 April 12-15, and I'll be blogging to the commentary page of the TRIZ Journal, www.triz-journal.com -- if you can't get to the conference (Kent, Ohio, USA) check the page every day for a stream of consciousness from the meeting. Regular readers know that I think the value of most conferences comes from the hallway conversations and

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-56786540603328677162008-03-09T15:47:00.000-07:002008-03-09T15:51:48.662-07:00

TRIZ Journal readers have been given more terms for this one element of TRIZ than any other—laws of technology evolution (many translated texts), guided evolution (Victor Fey), directed evolution (Alla Zusman and Boris Zlotin), trends of evolution and evolutionary potential (Darrell Mann), DNA (Simon Dewulf) and others. Bad news—this is confusing to people who are learning TRIZ. Good

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-45482990785396410802008-02-08T17:54:00.000-08:002008-02-08T18:02:44.715-08:00

A discussion is underway on the TRIZ Topica e-mail list about TRIZ, ARIZ, how to teach TRIZ to beginners, and some fascinating history of how Altshuller taught ARIZ, and how and when he changed his teaching methods. To read this discussion, you need to join the list, but it isA. Easy. Go to http://lists.topica.com/lists/trizB. FreeC. Relatively safe--in more than 6 years, I've gotten only a very

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-86391804971595720892007-11-13T11:17:00.000-08:002007-11-13T11:19:58.157-08:00

Our friend Jim Todhunter did a comprehensive blog from the Computer Aided Innovation conference in October. See:http://www.innovatingtowin.com/innovating_to_win/2007/10/computer-aide-1.htmlJim's blog connects to many other innovation resources--highly recommended!

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-27359847238541596022007-11-13T11:03:00.000-08:002007-11-13T11:08:40.630-08:00

Great TRIZ enthusiasm! Creative TRIZ applications! And some serious TRIZ research as well.Both the Iberoamerican meeting (Innovation, not just TRIZ) and the European meeting had a lot of very good papers and a lot of very good interactions between the participants. NOTE: the abstract deadline for the Altshuller Institute meeting is Nov. 15--two days from now, so you need to do some work if you

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-12358328786918646722007-10-24T17:12:00.000-07:002007-10-24T17:16:52.107-07:00

"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://

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-70057063779433898602007-10-22T11:01:00.000-07:002007-10-22T11:18:38.735-07:00

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

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-13019293986547875712007-08-20T20:16:00.000-07:002007-08-20T20:23:42.007-07:00

No sense blogging in two places--please seehttp://www.triz-journal.com/commentary/ellendombfor my report on the Process of Innovation Conference in Chicago this week. I'll be posting reports every day of the meeting. NOTE to Chicago area people interested in TRIZ: Dinner Aug. 21 at Heaven on Seven, 600 N. Michigan Ave. 6 pm. Just show up! We'll post anything interesting that happens.Opportunity

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-63725060616865012782007-07-28T13:14:00.000-07:002007-07-28T13:42:29.456-07:00

I continue to experiment with the concept of blogging--this column has been "dormant" for about 2 months, while I made short contributions to both the Commentary and Discussion Forum sections of www.realinnovation.com(which is also the portal for www.triz-journal.com) There were no protests from readers, so either there are no readers (part of the experiment) or you have other things keeping you

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-82116115719091672972007-05-19T11:16:00.000-07:002007-05-19T11:24:55.580-07:00

Our friend Roni Horowitz introduces the concept "over innovation" in his recent ASIT newsletter. For more about his work, his courses and books, see www.start2think.com. The rest of this commentary is reprinted from his newsletter 282--thanks, Roni!Why do we need innovation? I will skip the obvious: innovation is needed to adapt to an ever changing commercial, social and technological

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-7795928564955023502007-05-03T16:19:00.000-07:002007-05-03T16:25:53.543-07:00

The 90th anniversary issue of Forbes magazine (May 7, 2007 cover date) is a treasure trove of informal research on patterns of evolution. There are 28 essays on the subject of networking by such luminaries as Robert Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) and Fredrick Smith (inventor of FedEx) with discussion of what they did, why they did it, and how results were both expected and unexpected. TRIZ

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-45884026376625887172007-04-24T09:06:00.000-07:002007-04-24T09:18:29.273-07:00

The Altshuller Institute www.aitriz.org is the US TRIZ association. The annual meeting TRIZCON2007 is being held this week in Louisville, KY. Joe Miller and I did the beginner tutorial yesterday, while our colleagues Isaac Bukhman, Sergei Ikovenko, and Zinovy Royzen did segments of "advanced" tutorials on psychological inertia, intellectual property, and ARIZ, respectively. Last year I

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29355996.post-63505648650533664872007-03-29T09:28:00.000-07:002007-03-29T09:34:13.407-07:00

This Post will appear in www.realinnovation.com in the "commentary" starting April 2, but I thought I'd give TRIZ for the Real World readers and early view.Real Innovation Commentary fans (that's everybody, right?) know that I get obsessive about lists of the most innovative--Business Week's deisign awards, Popular Science's 100 best new things of the year, Technology Review's editors' choice for

Ellen Dombhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13670310132504936956noreply@blogger.com0