Three words often used as synonyms which have subtly - but significantly different meanings are create, invent and innovate. Create means to cause to exist or to bring into being. Invent means to produce or contrive by the use of ingenuity. Innovate means to begin or introduce something new. When we innovate, we extract value from things that are already known. Innovation focuses on the uncovering, combination and refining of existing technologies, products and markets to provide unique benefits.
The Challange
Innovation -- it´s the buzzword of the moment, and for good reason. In today´s highly volatile business environment, the need for companies to reinvent themselves repeatedly and rapidly is the only way to ensure long-term survival. Although many organizations recognize this fact, few can define what innovation means to them, let alone create a pervasive culture of innovation.
Most companies today face an innovation dilemma. The world has become intensely competitive. China, Mexico, and other countries have much cheaper labor costs. Raw material costs are lower in the Middle East, China, South America and other areas. And recently, professional jobs are being outsourced to India and other Asian and Southeast Asian countries. American firms can no longer simply rely on existing technology to provide a low cost position. It is necessary to be innovative. Innovation is the key driver of competitive advantage, growth, and profitability. There are many parts to the whole field of innovation: Business innovation, marketing innovation, organizational innovation, open innovation, process innovation, product innovation, strategy innovation, technology innovation, suggestion systems, etc.
Much time has been devoted to developing ways to manage the innovation process but little has been done to develop more reliable and systematic innovation methods. The typical state-of-the-art innovation management process is shown in Figure 1. Ideas are generated from a number of sources. The marketing and sales organization interacts with customers on a regular basis, and gain insight into customer behavior and needs. Manufacturing personnel operate the plants and identify opportunities to improve performance or reduce costs. Many of these ideas are very good and some of them are essential to survival, but they are often incremental in scope and do not offer sustainable differentiation. Platform technologies are those existing technologies used to manufacture products or deliver services. R&D and Engineering groups are well schooled in these platform technologies. Ideas derived from platform technologies can offer larger profit impact, but they often require extensive research commitments, and require a long time to commercialize. Finally, there are new business options. Mergers and acquisitions create opportunities for innovation, but the investment is often very significant and the risks considerable. This is the so-called "fuzzy front end" of innovation.
The problem we face in the fuzzy front end is twofold. First, we must be able to generate a lot of good ideas in a short period of time, and second, we must select only those ideas which have a high probability of success.
Once the selection process is complete, we must effectively manage the development process. Stage gate methods are commonly used here. A cross functional business team consisting of management representatives from the Commercial, Manufacturing, Finance, R&D, Legal and other functions are assigned responsibility for shepherding projects through to commercialization. It is important that they not only move projects along, but also that they kill projects that run into insurmountable road blocks. Every organization has limited resources and spreading these resources too thinly, over a large number of projects usually results in a little bit of progress being made on a lot of fronts, but no projects brought through the process to commercial success.
The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) - The Cure for Your Innovation Dilemma
TRIZ is the Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving and it is the only idea generation / problem solving method based upon technology. The founder, Genrich Altshuller was a patent agent in the Soviet Navy and he saw a lot of patents, both foreign and domestic come across his desk. He began to question whether invention was the result of creative genius alone or was there a structure or method by which inventions were made? Altshuller studied about 200,000 patents looking for structure in the inventions. Of the 200,000 patents he examined, he identified about 40,000 that embodied innovations. Altshuller found that some inventions resolved inherent contradictions. A contradiction results when a useful function produces a useful effect but it also produces a harmful effect. So, a narrow hull or bean on a sailboat results in high speed but it also results in instability. The catamaran resolves this inherent contradiction by combining two narrow hulls resulting in both speed and stability. Altshuller´s study of these 40,000 odd innovative patents revealed 40 patterns of invention. These patterns are themes or abstractions that recur many times. Altshuller believed that these patterns could be the basis for an innovation algorithm. The result of this research, and the work of many others who studied under Altshuller, was the evolution of the TRIZ methodology, which includes the development of a structured set of processes, supported by software tools - that form the basis of a structured innovation system. Such a system can be incorporated into a company´s existing infrastructure by complimenting and enhancing Six Sigma, DFSS, Value Engineering, Brainstorming and other problem solving tools and techniques.
TRIZ for the Fuzzy Front End
TRIZ problem solving methods are very useful and powerful for new product breakthroughs and patent creation by resolution of existing contradictions. However, this is based upon existing systems and the useful and harmful functions that comprise these systems. This means that traditional TRIZ problem solving methods is limited to developing the next generation of product or service. In order to develop a business or Intellectual Property strategy that is far reaching, we must be able to identify how a system is likely to evolve. TRIZ Roadmapping can reveal these evolutionary trends. The primary TRIZ postulate is: Technological systems evolve not randomly, but according to objective patterns. Based of these evolutionary patterns, TRIZ Roadmapping facilitates the development of fact-based scenarios which become the basis for strategy development. Mere extrapolations of the past tend to develop strategies that are short lived. The evolutionary patterns which form the basis of TRIZ Roadmapping are abstract patterns that have been revealed from an exhaustive analysis of the patent fund to identify evolutionary patterns that are broadly applicable.
Conclusion
Innovation does not have to be an accident, and is not necessarily restricted to a few individuals with creative genes imbedded in their DNA. Invention and innovation are thought processes that can be studied, modeled, and reproduced - usable by all. It is well established that TRIZ can fuel an innovation engine to transport a company success in this globally competitive marketplace. In much the same way that quality improvement methods conceived by W. Edwards Demming and Joseph Juran were reduced to practice by early adopters such as Motorola and General Electric, TRIZ methods conceived by Genrich Altshuller are being pioneered today by many companies including Boeing, BP, Delphi, Dow, Ford, HP, P&G, Samsung, TRW, and Unilever.
Pete Hanik is the Managing Partner of Pretium Consulting Services www.pretiumllc.com, an innovation and IP strategy consulting company specializing in unique approaches to TRIZ training, the application of TRIZ for problem solving, new product development, failure / root cause analysis, TRIZ roadmapping, IP Enhancement, organizational development, and the integration of TRIZ with other innovation and creativity tools.
