Business to the Buddha

Tag: innovation

  • The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ)







    I have written few blogs using concepts of TRIZ, so let me explain what is TRIZ?
    It is a problem solving methodology, more below from my earlier post at other place.
    How do we look and try to solve our problems?
    Generally, it is observed that everyone thinks in his circle of intellectual dominance (emotional, intellectual, social or technical). But when our interest is to find out solution for any problem relating to any particular technical field this becomes rather more obvious and clear that we tend to search into our field of expertise to find a better way or solution for anything. I shall explain this with a joke I heard when I was doing my Engineering:-

    Once four Engineers, namely mechanical, Electrical, Chemical and Computer science, were traveling in a car. Suddenly the car stopped and everyone was puzzled. Mechanical Engineer suggested that that there is some problem with the engine. Electrical Engineer suggested that its due to the fault in ignition system. Chemical engineer said “no-no car was making some strange knocking and the problem was with the fuel.” Suddenly the computer science Engineer intervened and said that “I think we need to go out and then come in the car (log out and log in).”

    The above joke may give you an idea about the “circle of intellectual dominance” I am talking about, that is everyone tries and looks into his field of expertise for finding solution of any problem.

    A new look at same things
    This “circle of intellectual dominance” called “Psychological Inertia”, which limits even experts to come up with better perhaps “OBVIOUS”, solutions (in terms of expert of other field) for any particular problem or improvement.
    TRIZ provides a big leap for experts to learn to look beyond their area of expertise and get a general look at a problem, find a similar problem in other field and its method of solving the problem then customize the solution according to need. Thus, it gives a generalized method for solving virtually every problem in any field.
    History
    TRIZ is a Russian acronym which means “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving”. This concept and theory came in to existence when a Russian Patent Expert Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues studied over 200,000 patents looking for problems and the way they were solved. Of these only a small fraction 40,000 had somewhat inventive solutions; the rest were straight forward improvements. With these studies Alshuller came up with a systematic approach, termed TRIZ. It was a generalized way for finding out solution of any technical difficulty or for any further improvements.

    TRIZ concept in nutshell
    The method used in solving problems in TRIZ can be summarized in the following points –
    1. Identifying the problem or finding out opportunity for improvements in the present product, design etc.
    2. Formulating the problem and searching for similar, previously solved problems with an overview to understand the concept of solution.
    3. Looking for analogous solution(s) for presently defined problem or conceived improvement.
    4. Applying the best identified analogous solution.

    Thus, TRIZ gives a general concept, for virtually every field, to find out opportunity and solutions for problems or improvement sought. I myself have played with concepts of TRIZ beyond engineering fields such as social sector innovation, medical field, Travel infrastructure in Mumbai and currently working in management domain specially economics, marketing and finance.

  • Ideate – Save the sinking ship







    Prof Mankad said in our class ‘there seems to be possibility of double dip’ while teaching us macroeconomics. I have written on this in my blog at times. At times question comes in mind, why not using concepts of one field to the other the way we do it in TRIZ (The theory of inventive problem solving). I recalled a news shown on NDTV (it was shown in 2008 somewhere in Aug-Nov). I remember this news because it was unique and I rarely watch TV(:)). So, here comes use of TRIZ to tackle the economic crisis in a non conventional way. I am sharing the idea with a hypothetical scenario.

    As an everyday ritual Vijay logged on to his mail box, amongst others the mail from HR stared back at him. Feeling the heat of economic crisis the company was in process of layoffs. How many Vijays have the same stories to recount? How this time can bring us together and make us more innovative to reckon with the challenge – this challenge is not questioning us only on one front of economics but also on cultural and creative fronts?

    Employee-employer relations are unlike marriage where a pair takes an oath to live together, and share all the grief and joy. In this tough time each should support other for survival and future growth and say – “yes! We are for each other”. It has been proved important and useful in the Japan after the World War II. Lately, a group of ex-workers of a mill bid to revive a dead mill; Garware Nylons Ahmednagar. All the workers joined hand for revival of the mill. In this successful bid the sense of belonging was such that the families of ex-employees even-handed over their jewelery and large sums from their provident fund. Way back in 1996 instead of shutting the mill down, if the management and the workers had come together and decided to make a plan to save the mill on a model of a marriage by surviving in the tough time, they might have come up winning and everyone might have lived happily.

    In recent week there was news in FT that EU is considering bailout in some forms. Bailout is a ‘self-mutually exclusive’ option that is – bailout is needed in the toughest time but it is ill-advised as it is ‘passing-the-buck to taxpayers’. Government needs to bail out various industries; however, the companies may misuse the amount. In such case questions are asked that – How to make companies accountable for the same? When to loan, how to loan and how to gauge the performance of the waived organization?

    Bailout can be tackled when government separate this option of bailing-out upon condition of time and space i.e. conditional separation of amount of money offered, accountability of use of money, time-to-time checks and balances. Separation of assets and liabilities can be one more initiative and offering incentives other than monetary could be other.

    Additionally, if we attentively look around we can learn from nature too. Birds fly in flocks, why? Because flocking helps conserve energy, defends against predators and facilitates orientation and communication. Energy is everything involved in the business – various resources, money and time – it needs to be conserved. Instead of salary cut and layoffs companies can take loans from employees, offer shares or bonds to the employees to generate money. This not only can engender trust in teams but also can invigorate teams to work for their own company. Are you keeping those many Vijays in your team? Are you willing to take on the challenge by sticking together, being creative and innovative to carve success over the slump to ply in the present to fly in the future?

  • Every problem is a nail… if you only have hammer in your tool box!







    In a class of Prof Moradian we were learning about a model, a model which had two dimensions. Each axis has ‘Low’ and ‘High’ as the extremes. I have learnt that for few thing quantification is not necessary, ok! When I saw this combination of ‘Low’ and ‘High’, I understood it is a qualitative measure. I waited for two minutes (a long duration for struggle in mind), at last a typical attribute of a classic personality came out.
    “Sir, how do I define a number is ‘Low’ or ‘High’ on this model and on the scale?”
    I took two minutes because I struggled to put this in my mind – ‘do not try to quantify everything’. I was thinking quantify or not to quantify? It was equally a struggle for Prof Lopez to teach me – don’t try quantification of everything. Old habits die hard! Six Sigma taught me to be data centric and this struggle has always been in mind – clarity with data or instinct with less or no data (I worked as TRIZ/Innovation consultant). Seemingly two different approach six sigma data centric and innovation instinct based.
    I knew it is qualitative, and Prof Mordian said – ‘Pravin, it is not necessary to quantify this measure, come out of the engineering mind’. To save my face I can say I was just questioning my assumptions, you may check possibility thinking and questioning assumptions blog.
    Let me come to the “classic personality” type. Personally, this incident was making the same mistake (of course learning from that too). The trait I want to highlight here is ‘engineerish’ e.g. engineer and mathematician type thinking. What else can you expect from an engineer – numbers, data, technical details and much more concrete information?
    Here, I came up with few future blog ideas of Blue ocean strategy, frameworks and problem solving. I will try to cover them in future. As I wrote in my introductory blog, not necessarily every blog entry will be on relation between Business and the Buddha. I will not offer correlation here, though I can do that. For a change I would quote a real life example which many of us are suffering from –
    Dr Mankad taught us in class of Macroeconomics that – few bright engineers turned MBAs have created many models e.g. financial models that ‘quantified rationality/irrationality’ which became one of the worst problems and resulted in the melt down.
    So, I write here a cliché of many management consultants – Every problem is a nail… if you only have hammer in your tool box! I also encountered it many a times. It is occasionally a struggle to pull people out of their thought process and make them realize that – some problems are not nails. Our myopic thinking can be summarized in (again a cliché) joke to explain the issue –
    Once mechanical, Electrical, Chemical and Computer science engineers were traveling in a car. Suddenly the car stopped and everyone was puzzled. Mechanical Engineer suggested that that there is some problem with the engine. Electrical Engineer suggested that it is due to the fault in ignition system. Chemical engineer said “no-no car was making some strange knocking and the problem was with the fuel.” Suddenly the computer science Engineer intervened and said “I think we need to go out and then come in the car (log out and log in).”
    The message is …
    “Every problem is a nail… if you only have hammer in your tool box!”
    And the lesson – “Because you have a hammer, don’t go searching for a nail”!!