Module 10•Unit 3 of 6•11 min

TRIZ & ARIZ

Where Design Thinking is for human-centred systems, TRIZ is for technical and engineering problems. TRIZ (a Russian acronym for the "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving") was developed by Genrich Altshuller, who studied hundreds of thousands of patents and discovered that inventive solutions follow recurring patterns. ARIZ (the "Algorithm of Inventive Problem Solving") is its step-by-step procedure for the hardest problems.

The core insight: most tough technical problems contain a contradiction - improving one thing makes another worse. Conventional engineering trades them off ("compromise"). TRIZ says: don't compromise - resolve the contradiction using patterns others have already used.

The technical contradiction

Click to see a classic example of a contradiction and how TRIZ reframes it.

40 inventive principles

Altshuller distilled recurring solutions into 40 Inventive Principles (segmentation, nesting, "the other way round", prior action, and so on) and a Contradiction Matrix that suggests which principles tend to resolve a given pair of conflicting parameters. It is a systematic, almost algorithmic aid to invention.

When to use it

Use TRIZ / ARIZ when you face a hard technical or engineering contradiction - not for human-experience design (that's Design Thinking) and not for market discovery (that's Needfinding / ODI). And like Design Thinking, the heavy TRIZ work is best done before a scheduled NPD project, not squeezed inside it.

Discuss

Think of a technical trade-off your team has simply 'lived with'. Is it actually a contradiction that could be resolved rather than compromised?

Try this at work this week

Write your hardest technical problem as a contradiction: "To improve X we must worsen Y." Just phrasing it this way often reveals that the two goals need not truly conflict.

Sources

Altshuller, G., The Innovation Algorithm: TRIZ, Systematic Innovation and Technical Creativity, 1999.
Global Innovation Institute (GInI), Foundations of Innovation body of knowledge.
Ilevbare, I., Probert, D. & Phaal, R., "A review of TRIZ, and its benefits and challenges in practice", 2013.

Design Thinking & HCD

Reframing & Ideation Methods