Problem solving Design

TRIZ

TRIZ uses recurring principles of invention to get past trial and error when a design faces a contradiction.

The questionWhat contradiction is stopping us from improving this, and has someone in another field already resolved a version of it?

A Russian acronym for teoriya resheniya izobretatelskikh zadach, the theory of inventive problem solving.

Process · Genrich Altshuller, 1946 onward

1
Specific problem Your system's own contradiction
2
General problem A pair of parameters, as in the matrix
3
General solution Inventive principles from patents
4
Specific solution A concept translated into your system

Schematic of the abstraction route, from your own problem to a general one and back to a concrete solution.

When to use it

An engineering or product design is stuck on a trade-off: stronger and lighter, faster and cheaper, more features and simpler to use.
Brainstorming keeps returning the same compromise, such as a medium setting on every dial.
You want a disciplined way to search other industries for solutions to a problem with the same structure.
A process problem has the same shape as an engineering one, where improving one measure worsens another, and the team has technical depth.

When to avoid it

The trade-off is about people, politics, or strategy. TRIZ comes from engineering, and its business adaptations are thinner and less proven.
Nobody on the team can state the problem in technical parameters. The matrix needs a clean contradiction to work from.
The client has two weeks and no technical lead. The learning curve is steep, and a plain brainstorm or a first principles review will give more for the time.
A known solution already exists. That is a sourcing question, not an invention problem.

Overview

TRIZ is a structured way to resolve a technical trade-off without settling for a compromise. You state the contradiction, describe the ideal outcome, and use patterns drawn from patent literature to suggest the kinds of change that have resolved similar contradictions elsewhere. It supports design decisions where a team has run out of obvious options.

It was built from engineering problems and works best on them. The tools take real training to use well, and the adaptations for management problems are thinner and less proven. The contradiction matrix suggests directions only. The translation into your own system is the work.

The main tools

Technical contradiction

Improving one parameter of a system makes another worse. Adding strength adds weight, and shrinking a device raises its temperature. Naming the pair is the first real step, and loose naming ruins the rest.

Physical contradiction

One property of one element has to take opposite values. A coating must be thick enough to protect and thin enough to conduct heat. Physical contradictions point toward separating the demands in space, in time, or between parts and the whole.

The 40 inventive principles

Altshuller's list of solution moves that recur across patents, such as segmenting an object, taking a part out, merging functions, nesting, and acting in advance. Each is general and has to be translated into the system in front of you.

The contradiction matrix

A lookup table that crosses the parameter you want to improve against the one that worsens, using a set of 39 engineering parameters. Each cell lists the principles used most often in the patents Altshuller reviewed. It gives a shortlist to think from, and later practitioners have revised it.

Ideal final result

A statement of the outcome in which the function is delivered with no added cost and no harm, as if the system did the job itself. It is rarely reached. Its value is that it pushes you to ask what could be removed, not what could be added.

What it is not

A brainstorming method. It is a structured search that starts from a stated contradiction. Open idea generation skips the part that makes it work.
A lookup that returns the answer. The matrix points to principles, and you still have to translate each into your system and test it.
A general management toolkit. It was built from engineering patents. Business uses exist, but they are less developed.
The Liberating Structures exercise of the same name. That is a group facilitation activity inspired by one element of the original, and it is a different thing.

The steps

Describe the system and its function

State what the system is for, what its parts are, and what it must do. Keep the description in plain engineering terms, and keep it to one function at a time. What comes out is a short description that a colleague from another discipline can follow.
State the contradiction

Choose the parameter you want to improve and the one that gets worse when you do. If a single property seems to need opposite values, write it as a physical contradiction. Expect to rewrite this several times. What comes out is one precise statement of the contradiction.
Write the ideal final result

Describe what the system would do if the function were delivered with no added cost or harm. This usually exposes a part of the system that exists only to compensate for another. What comes out is one sentence that the team accepts as the target.
Look up principles and analogies

Use the contradiction matrix to shortlist principles, then read each one and ask what it would look like in your system. Also look for how other industries have resolved the same pair of parameters. What comes out is a list of candidate concepts, each tied to a principle.
Test concepts against the contradiction

For each concept, ask whether it removes the contradiction or moves the trade-off to a different point. Discard compromises. Prototype or analyze the concepts that remain. What comes out is two or three concepts, with a note on which resolve the contradiction.

In practice

The packaging engineer wanted a thinner film for a snack bag to cut material cost, and every thinner trial split at the seal. Strength fell as thickness fell, which is a technical contradiction between material use and strength. Three earlier sessions had ended with the same compromise, a film slightly thinner than before and slightly weaker, which pleased nobody.

The team wrote the ideal final result as "the film is thin everywhere and strong where it needs to be, without adding material." Working through the shortlisted principles, they landed on local quality: give different parts of the object different properties. A thin film with a reinforced band at the seal removed the contradiction at the point where it bit, and left the rest of the bag thin. Tooling for the banded film turned out to be the real cost, which became the next project. The team then rechecked whether the result was a resolution or only a new compromise.

What you leave with

A one-sentence statement of the contradiction, in parameters the team agrees on.
The ideal final result, written for this system.
A shortlist of principles, each with the concept it suggests for this system.
Two or three concepts tested against the contradiction, with notes on which resolve it and which only compromise.

Failure points

A loosely stated contradiction

The team picks parameters from the matrix list that roughly fit. The matrix then returns principles for a different problem. Spend most of the time on the statement, and have an engineer who knows the system check it.

The matrix treated as an oracle

A list of numbered principles is read as the answer, without translating them. The matrix was built from patents of past decades and is best treated as a set of prompts.

A compromise labeled a resolution

Moving a dial to the middle position removes nothing. If the trade-off is still there after the change, the team has not resolved it, and the question to ask is what changed about the system.

A one-day workshop and no practice

Becoming fluent takes real training and repeated use. A short session leaves the group with the vocabulary and no skill, and they return to ordinary brainstorming.

Forcing a business problem into engineering parameters

Teams map a management trade-off onto the 39 parameters and pick whichever fits. The mapping becomes arbitrary and the principles that come back sound like advice, not findings.

The failures above are usually Leverage & IP: it was used once, and nothing was left that makes the next engagement easier.

Origin

Genrich Altshuller, a Soviet inventor and writer, began the work in 1946 while evaluating invention proposals for the Soviet Navy's Caspian flotilla. He read patents looking for the pattern behind inventions that solved a problem instead of compromising on it. Published accounts say the study covered hundreds of thousands of patents, but treat any exact figure as reported. His conclusion was that inventive solutions repeat across fields, and that the problems behind them usually involve improving one property while another gets worse. He was imprisoned from 1950 until after Stalin's death in 1953, and the work continued afterward with colleagues. The tools were built up over the following decades, and the list of 40 inventive principles and the contradiction matrix are the best known.

After the Soviet Union ended, emigrant practitioners spread TRIZ internationally. Several variants now exist, including TOP-TRIZ and I-TRIZ, and the International TRIZ Association (MATRIZ) does not recognize all of them as the standard version. Some are proprietary products of consultancies, so check the terms before reusing their materials. A facilitation exercise in Liberating Structures also carries the name TRIZ, but it borrows only one small idea from the original.