It was a pleasure to be at the international TRIZ Future conference in Morocco held last week and be one of the presenters.

A staggering 72% of businesses have no process of innovation! TRIZ provides problem definition and solution tools, in order to support a creative mindset for people at all levels of an organisation.

The three main principles of TRIZ are: 

1. There are ‘ideal’ solutions to complex problems; ones that need minimal resources and have maximum benefit
2. Opportunities/Issues are created due to some sort of a contradiction
3. There are 40 generalised principles we can use to allow us to resolve contradictions and create innovative (and in theory frugal innovation)

Meeting people from across the globe from all the continents led to some fruitful conversation particularly during lunch! It was also great to hear that the Moroccan Government has its own innovation unit looking to ensure collaboration within industry, between industry and government, to take Morocco to greater heights.

The most fascinating part of the conference for me was finding out about the multitude of realms in which TRIZ is now used. It has developed from a principle used solely in engineering to one used for all kinds of design and application work. Here is some of the areas in which TRIZ is being used:

1. Frugal thinking which emerges from India is also about innovation with little resource. Innovations generated from this include a low cost clay fridge. Frugal thinking is a natural bedfellow to TRIZ which also seeks to use free or cheap resources first in its innovative step.
2. Many organisations use a Lean Canvas when starting up which sets out problem, solutions, value proposition and product/service advantage on a single canvas. However, the innovative leap in searching for unique value proposition and unfair advantage needs a radical rethink of why a problem exists in the first place. TRIZ’s 40 principles and contradiction matrix make this an exciting combination.
3. Our very own TRIZ game for service sector. 70% of western industry is around service processes. Therefore, TRIZ used in this area becomes very powerful. The card game has been sold to over 10 countries and has had extremely positive review when demonstrating the game in Morocco.

In summary,  TRIZ thinking as an innovation tool is alive and well and being used in new areas within organisations and disciplines.