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Understanding Secrets Of Sustainability Through Triz Philosophy, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

After creating the weapons that can destroy the world, the next challenge of man is not to win an enemy but to survive the disasters. The modern man realizes that the worst challenges to face are the manmade disasters. While the nature has given us a well-disposed atmosphere to grow we are spoiling the natural resources through various anti-environmental activities. Our partial knowledge on development has taken us through a so-called development, which is neither eco-friendly nor sustainable. It is therefore important to control our own activities and behavior to minimize their negative effects on other adjacent systems and environment. …

Simplifying Inventive Standards (Part-5), Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

As the “inventive standards” are really complicated, Generich Altshuller and other creators of “inventive standards” created a set of standards (grouped under class-5) to help using the standards. There are totally 17 standards in class-5. This article will try to simplify all these 17 standards under class-5.

While writing these articles the author realized that although the grouping and ordering of the 76 standards don’t appear to be systematic there is no easy method of regrouping or reorganizing the standards. The author tried regrouping and reordering the standards in various different ways but nothing really came out satisfactory. Much more …

Simplifying Inventive Standards (Part-3), Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

According to TRIZ most problems are “standard” problems. The standard problems are those which are known to have occurred many times in many places. Besides these problems have been solved by different people in different places (may be in different contexts) at different times. As there are many known solutions to such problems it is possible to abstract the rules of solution from the group of individual solutions. TRIZ provides a set of 76 rules to solve such standard problems.

Although “Inventive Standards” (or standard solutions) is one of the most powerful techniques of TRIZ it is hardly used by …

Simplifying Inventive Standards (Part-4), Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although “Inventive Standards” (or standard solutions) is one of the most powerful techniques of TRIZ it is hardly used by any TRIZ practitioner because of its complexity. The objective of this series of articles is to explain the rules in simple language. In this article we will discuss all the solutions in class-4. There are 17 solutions in class-4 all of which deal with the problems relating to measurement and detection. For example some objects may be extremely large (e.g. earth) or extremely small (e.g., atoms) and cannot be easily measured. Some items like germs and viruses are not visible …

Simplifying Inventive Standards (Part-2), Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

In the previous article we discussed all the standard solutions in class-1. In this article we will discuss all the standard solutions in class-2. The standards of class 2 intend to improve the system without inserting too much changes to the system and without increasing the complexity of the system. These standards guide how to use chain SFields, Double SFields and complex S-Field Models.

Simplifying Inventive Standards (Part-1), Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although “Inventive Standards” (or standard solutions) is one of the most powerful techniques of TRIZ it is hardly used by any TRIZ practitioner because of its complicacy. This article describes the rules of “inventive standards” in simple language one by one for all the standards of class-I. The standards of other classes are described in separate articles.

Triz And Spirituality: The Methods Of Maximizing Happiness, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

TRIZ is a method of high level of commonsense and can be applied in any field, whether social, economical, technical or spiritual. In this article we analyzed the concept of happiness, the ultimate goal of human being, and demonstrated the application of different TRIZ concepts like Ideality, contradictions, Principles, Resources and Trends in different theories of maximizing happiness.

Triz And Society: An Alternative Way Of Winning Enemies Without Fighting, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Although we are born and brought up in society, we are sometimes hurt by the offensive behavior of some people in our family and society, may be by the so-called friends or rivals or enemies. If we suppress our anger and don’t fight with them then we suffer from depression, frustration and other emotional disorders. On the other hand if we express our anger to fight back then the situation may become worse by inviting bigger fights and more violence. The question arises, how to solve this problem?

There are both fighting solutions and non-fighting solutions to this problem. Non-fighting …

50 Useful Software On Innovation, Concept Mapping And Idea Management, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Can any software help us innovating? Well a software may not help us directly in innovating but it can definitely help us in practicing any specific process of innovation, be it idea generation, idea management, concept mapping, problem analysis or idea presentation. There are many software which try to help us out while working through many such methods. The following is a list of 50 popular Innovation and Concept mapping software which are alive and usable.

Evaluating The Book “Triz: The Right Solutions At The Right Time”, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The book has 10 chapters, all on different approaches and methods of solving problems. Each chapter tries to solve problems using different techniques of TRIZ. The book not only describes all 40 Inventive Principles, 76 Inventive Standards, 39 Contradiction Parameters and other Techniques of TRIZ, but also illustrates a series of 114 practical problems and their solutions. The book has been translated into many languages including Japanese. This is undoubtedly one of the most impressive and essential textbooks on TRIZ.

The Ideal Ifr Is No Ifr: Criticism To The Triz Concept Of Ideality, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The limitations of TRIZ concept of Ideality hail from its root philosophy of Idealism. As the “ideas” are there in human minds/brains they are subjective in nature. The concept of “Ideal” and IFR may vary from person to person as they are biased by individual judgments. Similarly the IFR may vary from system to system and at different phases of the development of a system.

However, the same limitations may be considered as the strengths of Idealism. As the IFRs can be different for different people and groups, the solution developer should not always take his own IFR for granted. …

Introduction To The Concept Of Ideality In Triz, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Ideality is one of the most powerful concepts of TRIZ. According to ideality, the ideal state of the system is where all its functions are achieved without causing any problem. The system is better, faster, low cost, low error, low maintenance and so on. In other words, an ideal system consists of all positives and no negatives. An ideal product or system may not materially exist, or may not be possible to achieve, but the knowledge of the ideal system helps us to improve an existing system. Once we conceive the features of the ideal product (or system), we keep …

Application Of Triz Principles In Software Concepts, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The Inventive Principles of TRIZ are not only applicable to mechanical or technical field; they are also applicable to Software solutions. Most of the 40 principles are easy to learn, but the question arises where to apply and how to apply. This article shows some simple examples of applying TRIZ principles.

Some people may ask, the solutions in this article are all known, what is the use of trying out TRIZ Principles on them. My answer is the art of problem solving is like learning a bicycle. If you are capable of riding the cycle on a known road, there …

The Concept Of Resources In Triz, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

An ideal system should have all advantages and no harms. If the resources consumed are expensive than the output produced then the invented system becomes ridiculous. The objective should be to use least amount of resources, cheapest resources, easily available resources and resources available within the system.

Every system intends to achieve a main useful function. The use of resources should target to improve its main useful function. If certain parts of a system or certain resources lead to unwanted functions or harmful effects then that part of the system needs to be modified and those resources need to be …

An Introduction To Ariz, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

ARIZ- the Algorithm of Inventive Problem Solving, is a part of TRIZ. It is not as popularly used as other methods in TRIZ. The steps in ARIZ are difficult to follow and requires more intellectual effort. This method is used only to solve complex problem which are not solved by applying other methods of TRIZ. It is a tool for thinking in alternative directions to solve complex and non-standard problems.

From another point of view, ARIZ is a method of problem solving by redefining and restructuring the problem. Although problems can be solved by using other methods, it is better …

The Revised 40 Principles For Software Inventions, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Applying 40 Principles is one of the earliest and most popular techniques of TRIZ. There are no controversies on application of 40 principles by any of the TRIZ schools. Although they are fundamentally sound, there is some difficulty in applying those in software related problems. As they were originally developed for mechanical or technical problems, the meaning of many terms like 'thermal', 'aerodynamic', 'hydrodynamic', 'ultrasonic', 'infrared', 'temperature', 'liquid', 'gas' etc. are embarrassing in a software context.

This article reviews the 40 principles in the context of software industry and rephrases the principles and their applications to make them suitable for …

Patentability Of Software Inventions, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

Software is very expensive to develop but very inexpensive to copy. Just by copying a software you create an exact duplicate of the original software and all with the same functionality. There is no difference between the original (which is bought) and the copy (pirated). The worse is when the source code is copied. The copier can even claim to have developed the software where the credit of the developer might go. The software developers use various methods to protect their source code such as copyright, trade secrets etc. but each having limitations. The developers are keen on finding legal …

Can A Triz Software Help You Inventing?, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

A software on TRIZ and/or Innovation can certainly supplement human brain and memory in order to speed up an innovation job. There are various TRIZ and Innovation software available in market. Some are too complex to use, some deal with only limited number of TRIZ techniques and some are having good features of innovation without much emphasis on TRIZ. An obvious task remains to evaluate them and find which software can help you best in inventing.

This article does not recommend or reject any TRIZ software per se. It only describes the expected features of a good TRIZ software and …

Evaluate Patentability Of Your Invention, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The patent system is designed to encourage inventions that are useful to society by granting inventors absolute right to make profit from their inventions. While disclosing the invention benefits the society, protecting the invention benefits the inventor. But patents cannot protect each and every person who conceives an invention. While there are some common criteria of accepting an invention for patenting, the laws of patenting differ from country to country to some extent. The concept of patentability is also very vague in some instances of the legal system. Hence it is important to check the patentability of your invention in …

Patentability Criteria In Different Countries, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The patent system is designed to attract inventors to disclose and protect their inventions. While disclosing the invention benefits the society, protecting the invention benefits the inventor. However, the invention must fulfill certain criteria to be patentable. Hence, patentability assessment is extremely important before filing a patent application. Although there are some commonalities in the criteria of patentability there are some differences from country to country depending on the law of the land. In many cases the criteria are very vague and the patent application may be rejected for several unforeseen reasons. A proper patentability assessment helps the inventors assessing …

Three Tests Of Patentability, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

United States patent law prescribes three major criteria of patentability, viz, novelty, usefulness and non-obviousness. These "three tests of patentability" are fundamentals behind issue of any patent from USPTO. It is important to know these fundamentals for any person who intends to work on patents.

The Father Of Triz- As We Know Him- A Short Biography Of Genrich Altshuller, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The life of Genrich Altshuller, the father of TRIZ as we know him, is an inspiration to all TRIZ lovers. His startup as a patent clerk, extreme struggles in the prisons of Gulag, and great inventions on TRIZ are interesting to anybody who likes to know about the great soul.

The Five Levels Of Inventions- A Classification Of Patents From Triz Perspective, Umakant Mishra

Umakant Mishra

The Five levels of Inventions is a popular concept in the study of TRIZ. Generally patent databases (like USPTO) classify inventions according to their topics or areas of invention. But they don’t classify inventions according to their easiness or usefulness or inventiveness. Altshuller classified patents into five levels according to their levels of inventiveness. The higher levels of inventions are difficult (and rare) while the lower levels of inventions are easy and plenty in number. This article attempts to explain the five levels of inventions in simple terms and the purpose behind such a classification. Although there are limitations and …