Book

Description

BECOMING CREATIVE BY BUILDING ON CONTRADICTIONS From Conflict to Invention with TRIZ Every real problem has a contradiction at its core. This book shows you how to use it. Stronger but lighter. Stiff enough to clean, yet gentle on the gums. Faster but safer. Designers, engineers and researchers face trade-offs like these every day. The usual response is to compromise, or to fall back on trial and error, which costs time, money and effort. This book takes the opposite view. It treats a contradiction as the clearest sign that an inventive solution is within reach. Starting from the foundations of creativity, innovation and invention, the book explains why breakthroughs so often come from combining distant fields of knowledge. It then shows how to recognize a contradiction, question it, and model it rigorously using systems thinking, the reversal test and cause-and-effect analysis (RCA+). Finally, it puts TRIZ to work: the contradiction matrix, the inventive principles and the separation principles. These tools come together in an eight-step method that runs from framing a problem to a validated solution. Worked examples show the method in use, from a wildfire-risk platform built by crossing disciplines to redesigning an everyday toothbrush. The book is rigorous and practical. It is written for engineers, scientists, product designers, R&D managers, and students and teachers of innovation who want a reliable way to invent, rather than waiting for inspiration. Hafid Aourag is Professor of Physics at the University of Science and Technology of Oran (USTO). His teaching and research combine materials science, systematic innovation and TRIZ.