Following last month’s meeting, Belinda, the executive council’s facilitator, contacted the group’s consultant, Henrietta, and explained that they were interested in seeing a step-by-step approach for problem solving with TRIZ, something akin to what they had learned with Six Sigma and 5S (one of the lean tools).

Henrietta was pleased by how the group had been using TRIZ and sharing their implementation stories with each other. She understood their desire to see some kind of a flow diagram—something that would allow them to view the different paths as they looked for an ideal solution. However, she was a bit hesitant in just sending them a copy of a process map. She strongly believed that people recall something more effectively when they are involved in the discovery and development of a process. Therefore she decided to help the group develop a TRIZ flowchart at the upcoming meeting.

Prior to the session, she requested that they submit their standard approach to problem solving before they had learned anything about TRIZ. After assimilating their different methodologies, she organized the group’s input into the following buckets:

Editor’s note: This article continues the series exploring structured innovation using the TRIZ methodology, a problem solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data.

Last week’s executive council meeting ran long, but there were no objections because the council members were introduced to an advanced tool: functional analysis. They wanted to apply this tool when they returned to their businesses, but the holiday season and year-end tasks prevented that from happening.

Editor's note: This article continues the series exploring structured innovation using the TRIZ methodology, a problem-solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data.

Lessons about TRIZ learned at the monthly meetings of My Executive Council (MEC) had not only been eye-opening for most members, but also had piqued their curiosity to learn more. Because TRIZ is also about understanding how a problem has been solved in other areas, they were anxious to hear how TRIZ had been applied in other industries not represented by their group.

One of the suggestions from their consultant, Henrietta, had been to research uses of TRIZ. So she shared a couple of pharmaceutical case studies presented at the European TRIZ Association’s “TRIZ Futures Conference” in Florence, Italy.

Editor’s note: This article continues the series exploring structured innovation using the TRIZ methodology, a problem-solving, analysis, and forecasting tool derived from studying patterns of invention found in global patent data.

The members of the executive council had been focusing on TRIZ for several months, learning its tools, and applying it in their own businesses with guidance from their consultant Henrietta.

Josh, who ran an electroplating business, was one of the ardent supporters. He had started his career as a marine engineer and had worked in a shipyard, eventually purchasing the business he currently operated. He still had an interest in ship design and was interested in learning how TRIZ could be applied in shipbuilding. He found, not surprisingly, that TRIZ had already been applied to solve some of the common issues in that industry, and he was anxious to share some of these examples with the group.