There seem to be a lot of people in and around the TRIZ community with the mistaken impression that the 40 Inventive Principles are some kind of a magic shortcut to innovation.

Anyone that checks out the ‘Not So Funny’ section in our monthly e-zine will have noticed a theme over the years. The 40 Inventive Principles map just as well to really bad solutions as they do to the 2% of good ones that will end up being called ‘innovation’.

To be clear: there is absolutely no correlation between evidence of an Inventive Principle having been (explicitly or implicitly) used to generate a solution and the future commercial or value-delivering success of that solution. The driver in the above photograph could be said to have exploited Inventive Principle 17 to solve his contradiction, but its unlikely that anyone else would necessarily see it as a ‘good’ solution.

The 40 Principles are merely a collection of ‘provocations’ that enable problem solvers to break out of their current ways of thinking to hopefully derive ‘better’ solutions. The fact that the list is a comprehensive one – i.e. we haven’t been able to add anything meaningful to the list since the 1970s – is one of its main attributes over other solution-triggering taxonomies. If we haven’t generated solutions we like from any of the 40, it’s either because we haven’t thought hard enough, or that there aren’t any.

Some people, when they realise that the Principles will just as likely deliver bad solutions as good ones tend to then make the incorrect follow-on conclusion that ‘TRIZ is no good’.

This is a big mistake. Sadly, it is also a common one.
On some level, I find it difficult to motivate myself to argue against such people these days. The more people that don’t use TRIZ, the bigger the playing-field of breakthrough opportunities for those of us that do. On the other hand, I don’t think rectifying the erroneous thinking demands too much effort.

Here goes:

1) The 40 Inventive Principles offer a comprehensive suite of solution directions that point just as much to ‘bad’ solutions as ‘good’ ones.

2) The Ideal Final Result tool within TRIZ offers a clear compass heading describing what ‘good’ looks like for any given situation.

3) The Contradiction Matrix provides a ranked list of Inventive Principles that specifically do point in the direction of the ‘good’ solution directions for any given conflict situation.

4) There is strong causal evidence to show solutions derived from the use of two of the Matrix-recommended Principles are more likely to be successful than those using one. Similarly, solutions derived from three will do better than those derived from two. And so on, at least up to five.

5) For those that don’t wish to take advantage of the Matrix, it is perfectly sensible to use ‘all’ the 40 Principles to help provoke new ideas and directions, provided that solvers bring to bear a clear idea of the IFR compass-heading when evaluating and combining those ideas and directions into the eventual solution