Patent of the Month – Negative Refractive Index Meta-Materials

Darrell Mann

Patent of the month this month takes into another foray into the realm of so-called ‘negative materials’. Or, as seems to be becoming more popular, ‘left-handed materials’. Which has a certain ring to it, if you happen to … Read More

Best of The Month – Radical Help

Darrell Mann

I had the very good fortune this month to hear this month’s Best Of The Month author speak at a Summit held by the Welsh Government for 250 of its leaders. One of the themes of the day … Read More

Innovation Capability Maturity & Complexity

Darrell Mann

To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy, ‘all happy enterprises are alike; each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way’. About six months ago now (time flies!) we assembled our first version of the Complexity Landscape Model (CLM) (Reference 1). … Read More

Contributions to the further development of TRIZ

Dietmar Zobel, Wittenberg

Preliminary remarks by the publisher

In developing TRIZ as an inventive methodology, G.S. Altshuller made the explicit claim to develop „Creativity as an exact science“ (the title of one of his books). The scientific core of the … Read More

Not So Funny – 40 Inventive Nature Principles

Darrell Mann

1. Segmentation 2. Taking Out 3. Local Quality 4. Asymmetry 5. Merging 6. Universality 7. ‘Nested Doll’ 8. Counterweight 9. Prior Counter-Action 10. Prior Action 11. Prior Cushioning 12. Remove Tension 13. ‘The Other Way Round’ 14. Spheroidality/Rotation … Read More

The Operationally Excellent Sinking Of The Titanic

Darrell Mann

One of the most enduring workshop features in the TRIZ community is the ‘save the Titanic’ exercise first conceived by Ellen Domb. Nominally it is about resources, and as such often gets used alongside the 9-Windows tool. In … Read More

Biology – Owl Neck

Darrell Mann

It is one way of seeing the world from a different point of view. This short-eared owl made sure to turn heads, by swivelling its face completely upside down. The bird was captured by wildlife photographer Alain Balthazard … Read More

Short Thort – Tightrope

Darrell Mann

Innovation Tightrope #155: managers want to challenge solutions, but don’t want their questions challenged; engineers want to challenge questions, but don’t want their solutions challenged…

…innovators have no (ABC-M) ego.

Related posts:

1. Testing … Read More

Investments – Electrocatalysis Reactor

Darrell Mann

CO2 could be repurposed in an efficient and environmentally friendly way with an electrolyzer that uses renewable electricity to produce pure liquid fuels. The catalytic reactor developed by the Rice University lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Haotian … Read More

Generational Cycles – Teen-Movie Re-Makes

Darrell Mann

Many would say that there are only three different films. Some would say seven. Either way, that’s never stopped film companies from making thousands of the damn things. Occasionally, they run out of ideas so badly, they decide … Read More

Wow In Music – Just The Way You Are

Darrell Mann

One of the funniest things I ever saw on television happened about twenty years ago when a very hip and trendy TV music programme invited Paul McCartney onto the show for an interview. It was a big coup, … Read More

Who Do They Think You Are? (Measuring Mental Gears)

Darrell Mann

Take a look at the following list of words:

Now imagine someone who knows you really well looking at the same words. Which is the word or phrase they would choose to best describe how they see … Read More

Best of The Month – The Hidden Order Of Art

Darrell Mann

Such has been our desperation to find something – anything! – to recommend this month, we’ve found ourselves digging a long way back into business literature history. We ended up going back over fifty years to 1967. But … Read More

Patent of the Month – Bioelectrochemical Bioremediation

Darrell Mann

Some months are better than others. Some weeks are better than others. The first week of September saw a swarm of below-average patents. The second week, on the other hand gave us several candidates for this Patent of … Read More

Not So Funny – I Fought The Law…

Darrell Mann

As we all know, innovation starts with breaking rules. The Laws of Physics, for example, make for very good rule-breaking innovation opportunity-finding targets. Except out-thinking people like Einstein can sometimes be hard work. For easier to find dumber … Read More

The ABC(-M) Of Workshop Design

Darrell Mann

Most times people tell us they ‘get’ something, it means they don’t. I hear the word all the time with S-Curves. Everyone, it seems, these days ‘gets’ the theory, but the moment they’re put in a situation … Read More

Short Thort

Darrell Mann

“You’re thinking too much, just let it flow.” E. Paluszak

Two Different Kinds Of Flow:

The Creative Kind:

“And it was then I began to realize for the … Read More

Generational Cycles – Judy Blume

Darrell Mann

“I was goddamn lucky those books were part of the usual fare on the shelves of my public middle school library. My sudden guilt at age 33 about omitting [Judy] Blume from my influence list led me to … Read More

Investments – Sound Projector

Darrell Mann

A University of Sussex research team have demonstrated the first sound projector that can track a moving individual and deliver an acoustic message as they move, to a high-profile tech and media conference in LA.

Dr Gianluca Memoli … Read More

Deming’s Fourteen Points & Innovation

Darrell Mann

When there was such a thing, I was a regular attender at British Deming Association meetings and conferences. This was the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Deming’s thinking – in the UK at least – was at … Read More