In this post I continue to talk about how the methods from the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (abbreviated as TRIZ in Russian) can be used by anyone to solve day to day challenges.

This time, again we’ll look at the problem I had in my house and how it was resolved using inventive approach.

Inventive situation

The door lock handle that you see at the top of this post is a typical one that is used across North America, particularly, in Canada. The side of the lock that has a handle resides inside the house. The main issue I had with it was that it was very difficult if not impossible to understand what position handle was in. Is it locked or unlocked, especially in evenings when the lighting conditions are poor. Just look at the image below and tell me whether you can see the handle at all?

As you saw the handle blends with the circular base it attached to and is hardly visible if at all.

As in the previous post where there issue was to find who had stolen a tire valve cap the contradiction is that a cap and in this case a handle has the same color as the base of the lock and is poorly discernable to understand what the sate of the lock is.

You possibly guessed that as in the previous case we possibly can play with the shape of the handle, its color or something else. Again, Ideal Final Result in this inventive situation is for the handle to notify by itself that it’s locked or unlocked. And as you, probably, guessed correctly we can use the same solution as before, namely, we can color it in a white color with wite-out.

And this is what I did at first as can be seen in the image below

This wasn’t a bad idea, but I thought I can do even better, especially at night, since the white color doesn’t glow in the dark. But a luminous tape does. So that was what I did, I used such a tape. When the lights are on it absorbs light and later it emits it and this way the tape glows. This allows you to see at a glance whether the door is locked or unlocked as can be seen below

As you’ve noticed the solution to this problem looks very much like the one before. And actually, in TRIZ there are typical problems and non-typical problems. When you see that a problem at hand is a typical problem it means that there are already existing solutions that you can use out of the box to solve it. In TRIZ one such toolbox is Standard Inventive Solutions also known as Standards. This can be seen in the diagram taken from Vladimir Petrov’s book TRIZ Basics.

What is it all about?

As I mentioned in the previous post I’d like to share with you how anyone can be an inventor and solve everyday problems from simpler to not so using the methodology from the Theory Of Inventive Problem Solving (aka TRIZ in Russian).

Today we will look at a real problem that I faced while living in an apartment building in Israel.

Inventive problem

That apartment building had a public storage where tenants could store their bicycles and other stuff. So it was natural for me to store my own bike there as well. But it happened that someone stole the black valve cap on one of the tires of my bike.

This is how the valve cap I am talking about looks like

How to solve it?

Well, how would you solve this issue? I can tell you right away that at that time there were no cameras installed in the the storage room, and installing one would be prohibitive. It was possible not to do anything as well as a solution.

So let’s try to approach this problem using tools from TRIZ. As I mentioned before that’s first identify a contradiction that happens in this situation. I want to have my valve cap in place without people ‘borrowing’ it. Then more specifically, we may say that we want the cap to be distinguishable if it is stolen, and ideally not to be stolen in the first place. This is what called in TRIZ as administrative contradiction.

The issue lies in the fact that the valve cap is black on any of the bikes and it is indistinguishable when stolen. So the technical contradiction as it’s known in TRIZ, means that the cup isn’t distinguishable when it should be clearly distinguishable.

Ideal Final Result (IFR)

Now, it’s time to introduce one more term, which is an Ideal Final Result. It will help us to focus the contradiction and to resolve it. Ideal Final Result means that we are interested in such a state when the problem that exists resolves by itself, or it does not require any solution at all. When we think about the valve cap issue this way the solution becomes crystal clear.

How about making the valve cap to notify us by itself that it was stolen? One way to achieve it is to have a valve cap that has a different structure, like shape or color. Well, indeed changing the color of the cap was what I did. I took a BIC wite-out and simply colored the cap in white color! Yep. That solved the issue, since even if the cap was stolen I’d see it right away on another bike.

This approach solved the issue and also made the valve easier to spot when I needed to inflate the tire.

Well, thank you for reading until the end and stay tuned for the next blog post in the series.

Take care.

From idea to invention by an algorithm

I think I’ve exhausted the nutrition and fasting topics, so I decided to move on to something else like creativity and inventions. You’ve heard it right, inventions. I’ve already posted a number of posts on this subject before. It happened that around 2004 I stumbled upon an article by Pavel Amnuel about how to come up with sci-fi ideas using an algorithm and since then I was hooked. Through Pavel Amnuel I learned about Genrikh Artshuller a soviet sci-fi writer and an inventor of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (aka TRIZ in Russian). Later I met with Pavel Amnuel who was a sci-fi writer and astrophysicist himself. Reading articles and books at altshuller.ru website I came alone Searing Mind short sci-fi story that Altshuler wrote. So I decided to translate it into Hebrew which I did together with Israela Beker. Through this work I came to know Vladimir Petrov who was an inventor and an engineer and also Altshuller’s close student as Pavel Amnuel was.

Everyone can be an inventor

Since then, I am back and forth with regard to TRIZ having read a number of books that Genrikh Altshuller wrote and trying to use his approach in a real life. So I thought to myself that I could write a series of posts where I’d describe how it was possible to use TRIZ methods in solving every day’s problems. How it is possible to approach various issues that each one of us face in everyday life. As one author wrote all that we see around us that was artificially made was once a one’s person idea. And it’s correct. Anything from houses, furniture, cars, computers didn’t exist and had to be invented. Actually, almost everything that we deal with on a daily basis which is a non-leaving matter was created by humans.

What I intend to write?

So there you have it a post that is dedicated to looking at a problem and how it was solved using TRIZ methodology. By the way what I refer to as a problem is actually defined as a contradiction in TRIZ. Contradiction lies at the heart of TRIZ, since its machinery is useful only when contradiction found and clearly reviewed to be later resolved. By the way, invention defined in TRIZ as a resolution of a contradiction. So if there was no contradiction there was no invention either by TRIZ definition. This makes it much more easier to decern among patents what is actual genuine invention in comparison to being a clone or a modification of an existing invention.

Next post will be such a post as described above. Till then take care.

Hello everybody,

In summary this post is about creativity and whether or not it can be developed. That`s define ‘creativity’ as an ability to propose novel ideas, ways of doing things, new approaches to tackling everyday issues.

It is natural to ask whether creativity can be developed or is it an inborn gift that is present or not. To spare debates let’s assume that creativity though inborn to some extent can be developed by exercise and practice. This is a topic for research on its own but everyday experiences corroborate our assumption.

Here comes the question:

Have it happened to you to feel the feeling of being not the silliest person in the world but at times when there was a need to create some novel idea, image it was pretty hard to do it? Good example of this is drawing exercise when there is a need to draw on free topic. It may be somewhat painful experience since good ideas do not seem to come out.

I felt this too until in about 2005 I came across very interesting article on hard science-fiction and how it is written by Pavel Amnuel a science-fiction writer and physicist. His approach to science-fiction was unconventional. He wrote about scientific ideas as a core for any serious Sci-Fi writing. The article talked about levels in Sci-Fi ideas and methods of developing creative thinking by reading Sci-Fi and analyzing underlying ideas and trying to develop them if possible. Amnuel also mentioned well known Soviet Sci-Fi writer Genrikh Altov who had influenced him a lot and was his friend and teacher. It is thanks to Altov influences that Amnuel started to work on a Manual for developing creative imagination.

Well. What hard science-fiction has to do with creativity you may ask? And the answer is that there is a direct link between them. As you may testify yourself Sci-Fi has an ability to expand and develop our imagination by letting us imagine worlds that are non-existent. But to gain the most of it this process may be guided instead of been spontaneous during reading.

There are a number of well known methods or approaches to developing creativity if you will. Certainly you’ve already heard about brainstorming the method that facilitates generation of ideas by group of people. This method was popularized by Alex Faickney Osborn in the 1963 book Applied Imagination. About the same time period Synectics came to scene. Its three assumptions according to its inventor  William J.J. Gordon are

• The creative process can be described and taught;
• Invention processes in arts and sciences are analogous and are driven by the same “psychic” processes;
• Individual and group creativity are analogous. (taken from Wikipedia)

Edvard De Bono‘s method of hats that described in his book Six Thinking Hats  is worth mentioning too. It is about thinking of problems while wearing different hats that symbolize different mindsets.

But let’s return to the beginning of the post and mentioned earlier creativity development by elaborating on science fiction ideas. I personally find this approach most interesting and engaging.

OK. What literature we may find on the subject. It happened that Genrikh Altshuller (pen-name Altov) in addition to being a Sci-Fi writer was also an inventor of a methodology or Theory of inventive problems solving (TRIZ) or ТРИЗ in Russian. This methodology description deserves post on its own but for now it is sufficient to know that Development of creative imagination is an integral part of it.

If this information is of interest to you, you may find additional information in following books. Some of them in Russian, English and Hebrew.

This one is for free and is a bit of self-promotion

• Translation of Altov’s hard Sci-Fi Scorching Mind novel into Hebrew by Andrei Cheremskoy and Israela Becker.

And following are books that you may find as a very good reading at least

• Books in English by Genrikh Altshuller at Amazon.
• Hard Sci-Fi books in Russian by Pavel Amnuel.
• Altshuller’s  And Suddenly the Inventor Appeared book translation into Hebrew by  Yehuda Stupniker.