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Toolbox 2: Scientific

How To Invent (Almost) Anything > Toolbox 2: Scientific

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Many people over many years have filed millions of patents and you might wonder whether some of them were re-inventing the wheel, or at least had something in common with other patents. And you would be right. In fact, many inventions unwittingly use the same principles.

Russian Genrich Altshuller (with a few colleagues) spent over 50 years poring over more than 200,000 patents, extracting the common scientific principles that they used and the way in which these were used to overcome various problems (or ‘contradictions’).

Scientific invention = parameters + principles + contradictions

TRIZ, the Russian acronym for ‘The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving’ contains quite a lot of detail. The following chapter extracts the key points that will allow you to use these invent for yourself.

5. Basic TRIZ

• 5.1. TRIZ Principles
  • 5.1.1. TRIZ Principles: Function
  • 5.1.2. TRIZ Principles: Harm
  • 5.1.3. TRIZ Principles: Ideality
  • 5.1.4. TRIZ Principles: Trimming
  • 5.1.5. TRIZ Principles: Substances and Fields
  • 5.1.6. TRIZ Principles: Evolution
  • 5.1.7. TRIZ Principles: Contradictions
• 5.2. Using Contradictions and Principles
• 5.3. Simplifying TRIZ Principles
• 5.4. TRIZ Thinking
  • 5.4.1. TRIZ Thinking: The Blocked Sink
  • 5.4.2. TRIZ Thinking: Mowing the Grass
  • 5.4.3. TRIZ Thinking: Plane Hatch
  • 5.4.4. TRIZ Thinking: Printing
  • 5.4.5. TRIZ Thinking: Cleaning
  • 5.4.6. TRIZ Thinking: The No-whiteboard Whiteboard

6. The 7-Step TRIZ Process

• 6.1. Resources
• 6.2. Parameters
• 6.3. Benefits
• 6.4. Ideality Gap
• 6.5. Evolution Trends
• 6.5. The 7-Step TRIZ Process
• 6.7. Resources Again

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