The hardest problems are often not the ones we fail to understand. They’re the ones that resist every reasonable attempt to solve them.

We improve quality, but slow production. We add control, but lose flexibility. We simplify one part of a process, only to create instability somewhere else.

Eventually, someone says, “That’s just the nature of the system.”

But what if it isn’t? What if many of the trade-offs we accept are actually signs that we are framing the problem incorrectly?

Those questions are at the heart of TRIZ.

Where TRIZ came from

TRIZ is the Russian acronym for Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadach, translated as “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.”

Beginning in 1946, Soviet researcher Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues studied hundreds of thousands—and eventually millions—of patents to understand how innovation occurs.

What they discovered was surprising:
• Problems and solutions repeat in many industries.
• Patterns of technical evolution repeat in many industries.
• Breakthroughs often come from applying principles from one field to another.

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