MAP OF MODERN TRIZ

Valeri Souchkov, ICG Training & Consulting, The Netherlands

© October 2018

 Is TRIZ complex? How big is it? What are its parts?

During more than 60 years of development (starting with the first publication on TRIZ in 1956 [1]), TRIZ has grown from a single tool to solve specific inventive problems to a large area of knowledge which includes many different methods and tools to support different tasks of innovation: solving specific inventive problems, improving existing products, developing disruptive products and technologies, innovative improvement of processes, radical cost cutting, technology benchmark, forecast and roadmapping of future innovations of technical products and manufacturing technologies.

Although new tools continue emerging to improve support of technical innovation, current TRIZ developments expand applications of essential methods and tools of TRIZ beyond engineering: TRIZ tools are being adapted for solving innovative problems and roadmapping future innovations in non-technical areas. In particular, one of such areas which is of high interest today is business and management. A relatively new development which uses TRIZ background is TRIZ Pedagogy which utilizes a systematic approach to creativity to develop creative thinking and critical thinking skills in pre-school, school and college environments.

Although there are many books which present TRIZ, not all parts of modern TRIZ are collected and mentioned in a single book. The questions I hear more and more often are, "What is included in TRIZ? What is a scope of TRIZ"? A while ago a group of TRIZ developers published a paper "TRIZ Body of Knowledge" [2] but at that time it did not present all parts of today's TRIZ.

The picture below is my attempt to structure and map the body of TRIZ knowledge to show what TRIZ consists of today, what its subjects of study are, what tasks are supported by TRIZ, and what tools are used by TRIZ practitioners.

Large size image is available at http://www.xtriz.com/trizmap/

References

[1] Altshuller G.S., Shapiro R.V. “About a technology of creativity”, Questions of Psychology, #6, 37-49. 1956.

[2] Litvin S., Petrov V., Rubin M. & Fey V. "TRIZ Body of Knowledge", MATRIZ, 2007.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Valeri Souchkov, TRIZ Master, co-founded Invention Machine Lab (later Invention Machine Corporation) in 1989 and the European TRIZ Association (ETRIA) in 2001. In 2003, he founded ICG Training and Consulting. In total, he trained TRIZ to more than 6000 professionals and students from over 60 countries and participated in more than 100 innovative projects. His customers list consists of more than 300 organizations, including such companies as 3M, ASML, ABB, BASF, Canon, Danone, Fujifilm, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Orange, Philips, PepsiCo, Siemens, Shell, TNT, Unilever. He is author of several modern TRIZ tools and over 100 publications on TRIZ and Systematic Innovation. Currently, he also teaches TRIZ at the University of Twente and TIAS Business School. Valeri was co-founder of the European TRIZ Association and Vice President of the International TRIZ Association (MATRIZ).