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6.6. The 7-Step TRIZ Process: 6. Contradictions

How To Invent (Almost) Anything > 6. The 7-Step TRIZ Process > 6.6. The 7-Step TRIZ Process: 6. Contradictions

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Consider the contradictions in the system. As you improve one function, does another get worse? If you are not sure, then imagine magnifying the ‘improvement’ many times. For example, rather than making it 10 times faster, make it 10,000 times faster! This method can help to make the contradiction really stand out.

Now try to solve that contradiction by imagining you really have to make it go that fast. Use the 40 Principles (Appendix C) and the evolution trends to guide you and give you ideas for solving this contradiction. Do not accept compromises!

You can use the 40 Principles simply as a creativity list or you can use the Contradictions Matrix (Appendix B) to find principles used by other inventions in this circumstance.

The most powerful use of contradictions is to create them in your imagination. If you thought about how your device might change if something was changed by 5 or 10%, it might well be difficult to imagine what would happen. But if you magnified the change to 1000%, the effect should really stand out.

You can also think about how you might vary the conditions in which your device will operates in order to challenge how you could improve it further still.

For example, a contradiction with a suspended table is that to wind up the table you need a flexible suspension, yet for stability you want rigid suspension. Perhaps you could use a hydraulic system which becomes rigid when it stops? What if the table-top was liquid-filled?

Using the Contradiction Matrix, we can change 3 (length of moving object) with the undesirable 13 (stability of object). This offers the following principles:

1: segmentation (telescopic system?)

8: counterweight (balanced folding system?)

15: dynamicity (use the potential energy of raised table to propel in a rigidity device?)

34: reject/regenerate (use wires to lower and add snap-in stabilizers?)
 

Steps in the 7-step TRIZ process:

• 1. Resources
• 2. Parameters
• 3. Benefits
• 4. Ideality Gap
• 5. Evolution Trends
• 6. The 7-Step TRIZ Process
• 7. Resources Again

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