About Commentator: Rod King

Rod King

Dr. Rod King is a thought leader, consultant, and trainer on business model analysis, design, and innovation. In today’s world of globalization and increasing competition, enterprises need new ways to do business as well as create highly desirable and … Read More

About Commentator: Bob Malanga

Bob Malanga

Bob Malanga is a graduate of Princeton and Stony Brook Universities where he majored in Mechanical Technology and Total Quality Management.  Bob’s time at Princeton was a U.S. Navy sponsored program.   Bob spent most of his career in the … Read More

Innovation in a Zero Capital World: Ask and Trim!

Jack Hipple

In a recent issue of Industry Week (3/16/09) a major point was made about using employee input for continuous improvement without using capital. I would suggest a broader use of this principle through the use, not only of the … Read More

Be On the Lookout for Fresh Concepts

Lynda Curtin

Be on the lookout for fresh concepts: sometimes you have to start over. —– UC Riverside: The Arts and Letters Lecture Series: An Evening with Elizabeth Gilbert; March 12, 2009 Palm Springs, California. —– 

Elizabeth Gilbert is noted for … Read More

Report from TRIZCON 2009 in California

Ellen Domb

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 … Read More

Innovation Policy for Obama

Prakasan Kappoth

The current economic scenario has triggered several discussions on emphasizing an innovation action plan for Obama administration to revitalize the US (and apparently the world) economy. The recent Business Week article by Thomas D. Kuczmarski proposing a step-by-step innovation … Read More

Pointers to Effects for Non-technical Problem Solving

Efficiency and effectiveness of TRIZ for solving non-technical problems appears to be much lower than what is used for technical problem solving. The absence of pointers to effects for non-technical problem solving should be one of the main causes.Read More

Welcome to the March 2009 Issue of The TRIZ Journal

Function-behavior-structure, knowledge-based system, non-technical problem solving, pointers to effects, gamma, soil… All this and more in March’s issue of The TRIZ Journal.Read More

Student Corner: Measuring Moisture Content of Soil

The mass of a neutron is practically equal to the mass of an atom of hydrogen. Because of this closeness, it is possible to use a neutron gage to determine the moisture content of soil.Read More

TRIZ on Design-oriented Knowledge-based Systems

How to establish a relationship between the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) functional basis and TRIZ taxonomies as a first step toward the creation of a library of TRIZ-based algorithms.Read More

Innovation in Hard Times

Jack Hipple

It’s all around us. The language of hard times is everywhere, in every journal, every newspaper, in the State of the Union address, in your stockbroker statements, and in your daily conversations. In a short, but insightful article in … Read More

More With Less

Michael S. Slocum

More and more the economic pressures will increase the need for proficiency unilaterally. One way for us to respond to this challenge would be to optimize those things that we currently do. This means of course that … Read More

Sir Ken Robinson in Seattle

Katie Barry

At the end of January I had the opportunity to see creativity and innovation expert Sir Ken Robinson speak in Seattle. His new book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, talks about how adults (in his experience) don’t know … Read More

2009 – European Year of Creativity and Innovation

Katie Barry

If Europe has a dedicated year of creativity and innovation, do other countries/regions need their own? ————-

There’s been a lot of talk – particularly since the global recession became a reality – about whether or not government … Read More

Smart Materials Solve Contradictions

The value of smart material comes from its contradiction-solving abilities; linking the contradiction-solving material to a specific market need is critical to commercializing the product. Contradiction resolving is important to innovation.Read More

Substance-field Models for Fourth Class Standards

The problem solving standards are a powerful tool in TRIZ for individuals who understand each standard. It is difficult, however, for new people to grasp the concept because each standard is a sentence with no corresponding graphics.Read More

Logistic Substitution Model and Technological Forecasting

The application of several models (more than 300) based on the logistic growth function including simple logistic, component logistic models (CLM) and logistic substitution models (LSM) in the context of technology changed the future of forecasting.Read More

Welcome to the February 2009 Issue of The TRIZ Journal!

February may be the shortest month of the year, but The TRIZ Journal is as busy as ever. Beyond February’s new articles, a chatty field of commentators and a lively discussion forum will keep readers clicking, reading and sharing their own views.Read More

Innovation With A Little Help From Your Friends

James Todhunter

Community and Web 2.0 continue to be a recurrent theme in many of the conversations I have with innovation leaders.  Helping innovation workers leverage each other is extremely important.  The value of intellectual assets within most companies is largely … Read More

Innovation Is Good?

Ellen Domb

“How to persuade your boss that innovation is a good thing?”

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 … Read More