Kobus Cilliers | On 12, Nov 2019

John Sainsbury

The use of Systematic Innovation is generating some attention in health and social care settings in the UK. Workshops are proving effective in analysing problems and providing strong innovative solutions. Problem exploration tools have enabled workshop participants to understand the context, details and complexity of their problem, and have shed more light on scenarios under exploration.

The use of inventive principles has been fruitful, but is proving slightly more challenging, in that access to case examples demonstrating their use in the health and social care domain is limited.

Of course, an element of TRIZ is about reaching into other domains to find where somebody else might have already solved the problem. However, for those in a specific domain silo, it is helpful if there are pointers in their contextual language annotating the use of particular inventive principles.

Perhaps, by seeking for health and social care examples we may create a risk of reinforcing psychological inertia, but the social worker/ parent in me feels that stabilisers are required before the health and social care world can peddle off with confidence on the TRIZcycle.

This, therefore, is a call for TRIZ/Systematic Innovation practitioners to share or invent brief/one line examples of the use of Inventive Principles in the health and/or social care domain.

Please send examples to john.sainsbury@gmmh.nhs.uk