Immersive Technologies to Accelerate Innovation

5Some Creative Problem-Solving Methods: TRIZ, C-K, CPS, Design Sprint

Great ideas are like air, everyone breathes them, everyone feeds on them.

ALAIN

5.1. The TRIZ method

TRIZ is a method of inventiveness rather than creativity in the sense that it is exclusively about solving technical problems to improve a technology. TRIZ is a Russian acronym that, when translated, means “inventive problem solving theory”.

The story began in the 1940s, when a Soviet engineer by the name of Genrich Altshuller and his teams began analyzing hundreds of thousands of patents in order to identify the main principles that guide innovation. He found that most inventions were based on a limited number of geometric, physical or chemical principles. He thus listed 40 general principles at the origin of most inventions. Thus, an engineer faced with a technical problem can apply one of these principles to find an innovative solution.

Problem solving with TRIZ consists, first of all, of translating the problem to be solved in a more abstract way to make it independent of its physical domain by describing it in the form of contradictions. Then comes a generic problem-solving stage. It is a question of identifying the means of solving the contradictions identified. The proposed solutions are also generic, that is, independent of the physical domain of the initial problem. Finally, the third stage consists of making the generic solutions imagined to solve the specific problem concrete.

Figure 5.1. Overall ...