Biology – Electric Eel

Darrell Mann

From Nature last month, an article describing scientists’ search for safer, more natural ways to power devices that go into our bodies. Sticking toxic battery elements inside the body, and having to periodically replace them with invasive surgery … Read More

Case Studies: Milk-Shake

Darrell Mann

I read the latest Clayton Christensen book, Competing Against Luck, last month. In the fractured, fractious world of innovation, Christensen is one of the few ‘must-read’s. Even though an awful lot of his output is a re-hash of … Read More

TRIZmeta – A Game Of Rules For Breaking Rules

Darrell Mann, Cara Faulkner

Abstract

TRIZ is the world’s leading breakthrough solution generation methodology. TRIZ is in effect a series of heuristics that offer innovators the ‘rules for breaking the rules’. TRIZ tells us that there are many, many … Read More

Short Thort

Darrell Mann

The Perception Mapping tool continues to be one of the most frequently used within the SI suite. Since the beginning, there has been a debate about whether it is better to formulate the initial question as a positive … Read More

Design Thinking – Philosophy, Method, Tool

Darrell Mann

There’s an old joke in the Six Sigma world. One of the founding fathers is on a panel at a conference. Alongside him is one of the founding fathers of the preceding Total Quality Management world. Questions are … Read More

Patent of the Month – Monocentric Lens

Darrell Mann

If I was a betting man, I’d say that this month’s patent of the month had the smell of TRIZ about it. US9,860,443 was granted to a trio of inventors at the University of California. Two of them … Read More

“A Good Question Is Worth A Thousand Answers”

Kobus Cilliers

This article is an expanded version of an interview conducted for Tata Review in December 2016. The official version can be found at the online Tata Review website: http://bitcast-a.v1.o1.bom1.bitgravity.com/tatas/ebook/tata-review-jan-2017/mobile/index.html#p=96)

Darrell Mann speaks at a speedy clip and … Read More

Start With Converge?

Darrell Mann

Things are always at their most interesting when we find contradictions. We’ve spent quite a bit of time trialling our COBRA+ process last year. We didn’t think about it at the time, but the first step in the … Read More

How to Invent Strong – A Framework

Navneet Bhushan

Abstract: One of the most important outputs of human mind has been continuous stream of inventions over many eras of civilization. However, human mind has been inventing using what is called “trial and error” methods on its evolutionary … Read More

Biology – Lobarina scrobiculata

Darrell Mann

The Lobaria scrobiculata lichen is unique. Unlike the majority of lichen with green microalgae, which use environmental humidity to activate their photosynthesis, this species requires liquid water in symbiosis to activate the cyanobacteria living in it. This makes … Read More

Short Thort

Darrell Mann

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, … Read More

Patent of the Month – Smartphone Detection Of Vehicle Maneuvers

Darrell Mann

There’s an awful lot of talk these days about autonomous vehicles. A lot of it is naïve. We won’t all be driving around in autonomous vehicles in the next five years – or even ten – because there … Read More

Generational Cycles – Deadhead Stickers On Cadillacs

Darrell Mann

“I was driving down the San Diego Freeway and got passed by a $21,000 Cadillac Seville, the status symbol of the Right-wing upper-middle-class American bourgeoisie – all the guys with the blue blazers with the crests and the … Read More

Best of the Month – The Patterning Instinct

Darrell Mann

Seeing as some of us are heading in to the holiday season, and therefore, in theory at least, have a bit more time available to get stuck into a really big book, I thought I’d recommend a 442 … Read More

Investments – Graphene Meta-Lens

Darrell Mann

On the quest for miniaturization, scientists at the Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea), in collaboration with researchers from the University of Birmingham and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science … Read More

Algorithm for choosing technical contradiction

Konstantin Chugunov

This article is Translated from Russian to English and both versions are published here.

1. Check whether there is no problem in most restrictions make it impossible to use one of the TA.

Note 1: Constraints … Read More

Analysis of TRIZ’s Invention Principles

Kotaro Kageyama

TRIZ, which was created by G. Altshuller and enhanced by many scholars and practitioners, has been used practically as “the scientific way of making inventions” all over the world.

In TRIZ, with the starting point of “Contradiction Matrix”, … Read More

Law Of System Completeness Hierarchies

Darrell Mann

Constructing Function and Attribute Analysis (FAA) models is one of my least favourite TRIZ-related activities. At the same time as trying to avoid drawing them, I also know it’s the most important problem definition job I have to … Read More

Wow In Music – Summertime In England

Darrell Mann

In February 1980, Van Morrison and a group of musicians travelled to Super Bear, a studio in the French Alps, to record (on the site of a former abbey) what is considered to be the most controversial album … Read More

Not So Funny – Feedback Loops

Darrell Mann

Feedback loops are an essential element of any and all complex systems. Its always a good idea to understand what loops are in place. And which new ones you can create.

2017 has been a year of some … Read More