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Genrikh Altshuller

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 13:10:07 +0000

Genrikh Altshuller was an engineer, inventor, scientist, journalist, and writer of science fiction and many books about inventing and innovation. He is best known as the creator of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving known by its Russian acronym TRIZ (pronounced ‘trees’). He founded the Azerbaijan Public Institute for Inventive Creation, and was the first President of the TRIZ Association. His science fiction was written under the pseudonym of Genrikh Altov.

Altshuller received his first patent at age 14 for an underwater breathing device. In his early twenties, having gained a reputation as an inventor, many people came to him for help with their inventions and he then began his quest to develop a method for invention. He found no existing methods and, being skeptical of the then current psychological methods of creativity, he looked to the accumulated results of invention as documented in patents.

Altshuller analyzed more than 200,000 patents and made several important discoveries. He defined a truly inventive problem as having one or more internal contradictions. He discovered that there were identifiable patterns of solutions to inventive problems and abstracted more than one hundred of those patterns. He discovered that technological systems evolve over time according to patterns that have predictive power. He also developed several methods and tools for applying this knowledge and he and his colleagues tested the validity of each of his discoveries through extensive practical work solving tough technological problems.

Altshuller established training and certification programs and educated hundreds of students in the use of his methods. He engaged in continuous development of a science of invention until his health declined and further development of TRIZ passed entirely to his students and colleagues. TRIZ was virtually unknown in the West until the early nineties. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union many TRIZ masters immigrated to the United States, Israel, and Western Europe. Development of TRIZ as a method for innovation and invention continues today and the community of practitioners has grown worldwide. The concepts of TRIZ are used by professional inventors and engineers and are taught in many colleges and universities. Profound enough for the professional, TRIZ principles and methods have also been successfully learned by children and youth in elementary and high schools including schools in the United States.

To learn more about TRIZ, click to Halliburton Associates.

President Obama’s State of the Union 2011

janoszd — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:25:52 +0000

About the first thirty minutes of President Obama’s State of the Union Speech tonight was dedicated to innovation, education, and infrastructure.

I don’t take lightly how the president interwove these themes with education and our schools. I especially noted this reference to the teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM): “And over the next ten years, with so many Baby Boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math.”

I admire the goal; it’s a very laudable one. However, so many people do not yet realize the power of the two middle parts of the STEM acronym and the value added to a student’s experience when they study them along with mathematics and science. Though they are hard to find and it may not be true in every school, most schools math and science departments are staffed with people that are very capable of teaching those subjects. What we do not have is enough people to teach our students about technology, engineering, and ingenuity.

Also prominent in this first segment of the speech were themes of entrepreneurship, manufacturing, how technology has revolutionized our lives, global competition, creativity and imagination, clean energy, infrastructure, and invention. Our students need to know about these things too, but there is really no time left in their math and science classes to learn something meaningful about these other important topics.

The president also made reference to Sputnik and how it led us to transform our education system and research and development.

If we’re going to reinvent ourselves and reinvent our nation, we cannot do it with the same education system that came out of the post-Sputnik era. While giving our kids more experiences in learning math and science were great things to come out of that era, we need to build on that for the future. Our education system needs more in the way of instruction in Technology and Engineering, which is core to developing ingenuity of our young people.

Here where I live in New Jersey, we have set a strong foundation for these studies. We’ve also engaged engineers, architects, industrial designers, and other professionals and showed them a path to sharing their knowledge and experience with children. Let’s build on that and truly reinvent education with study of Technology and Engineering at the core.

The Team Approach

janoszd — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 01:16:12 +0000

I’m writing this post for the first time from my new iPad. This device and Harry Roman’s post about Edison and R&D got me thinking about the process of invention and how its changed over the past century.

During Edison’s era, he made innovation happen in a unique way for that time. Having people of various backgrounds, experience, and expertise became the standard for research and development in industry and you can see the evidence of that in the iPad. While how exactly this product was developed and by whom remains an industry secret and a mystery to most all of us, one thing is certain: I imagine that hundreds of people had a hand in it’s development.

I imagine that the following types of people were involved in creating the iPad:

– Industrial Designers

– Engineers

– Marketing Professionals

– Manufacturers

– Software Developers

– Other industry professionals that had experience with original devices that failed in the market (reminder: iPad wasn’t the first of this concept)

Our young people need to learn about ingenuity is how it is applied by teams regardless of scale or market consciousness of a project. They need first hand experience being a team member as well as a team leader so they can begin to understand the dynamics of team work.

One interesting thing to me is how the credit for innovative products gets passed by the public. People seem to credit Edison alone for the invention of the incandescent light bulb. Yet, today the “inventor” of the iPad is Apple. I wonder if over time we’ll remember the companies as the inventors of things rather than the individuals the way we used to.

Project Management

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:40:30 +0000

The processes of invention and project management are very similar, and both are very important to the world of business. An inventor manages a complex project or process involving manpower, money, resources, and time schedules, just like an engineer would do when they create a new product or design and construct a new building or bridge. The inventive process is inherently STEM-based, requiring the inventor/engineer to think in a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary fashion. Since project management is a highly prized skill in the world of work, having kids involved in inventive activities is a highly relevant school-to-work activity. This is exactly the kind of thinking the business world will demand of employees.

Give young people a big jump start in the business world and help them better understand project management as a lesson of ingenuity. Here are some ideas for the classroom:

1) Integrate the business aspects of inventive thought into their activities. Engineers and inventors don’t invent because they can, but because there is an economic incentive to do so. When they are involved in an invention challenge, make sure they discuss the economics and marketing aspects and intellectual property of the invention.

2) After they conceive of a new product or invention, have them take some time to think like a project manager and identify the kinds of skills they will need on their project team to bring the invention/product to market.

3) Invite project managers and inventors to act as role models for students and to stimulate discussion about the value of invention and new product development. Also, the invited project managers and inventors can serve to discuss the educational skills necessary to hold these positions.