A review of TRIZ, and its benefits and challenges in practice

TRIZ (the theory of inventive problem solving) has been promoted by several enthusiasts as a systematic methodology or toolkit that provides a logical approach to developing creativity for innovation and inventive problem solving. The methodology, which emerged from Russia in the 1960s, has spread to over 35 countries across the world. It is now being taught in several universities and it has been applied by a number of global organisations who have found it particularly useful for spurring new product development. However, while its popularity and attractiveness appear to be on a steady increase, there are practical issues which make the use of TRIZ in practice particularly challenging. These practical difficulties have largely been neglected by TRIZ literature. This paper takes a step away from conventional TRIZ literature, by exploring not just the benefits associated with TRIZ knowledge, but the challenges associated with its acquisition and application based on practical experience. Through a survey, first-hand information is collected from people who have tried (successfully and unsuccessfully) to understand and apply the methodology. The challenges recorded cut across a number of issues, ranging from the complex nature of the methodology to underlying organisational and cultural issues which hinder its understanding and application. Another contribution of this paper, potentially useful for TRIZ beginners, is the indication of what tools among the several contained in the TRIZ toolkit would be most useful to learn first, based on their observed degree of usage by the survey respondents. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Quantification of the benefits of a streamlined tether for a high-altitude-tethered balloon

A high-altitude tethered balloon (HATB) reaching a height of 20 km has numerous applications including communications, meteorological monitoring, surveillance and, for the current paper, geoengineering. The HATB configuration consists of a 20 km tether rising up from the ground through the troposphere, where the wind-regime can be turbulent and include high-wind velocities due to the jet-stream, up into the more stable stratosphere where the tether would be attached to a spherical balloon. This paper evaluates wind-excited vibration of a HATB and will investigate the advantages of using a streamlined instead of a circular tether profile. Streamlining the tether reduces drag but introduces stability problems and complicates the numerical modelling. Consequently, prior to a thorough investigation of the stability issues due to fluid-structure interaction, a 3D nonlinear lumped-mass HATB model is used to quantify the benefit of a streamlined tether. The benefit is quantified by comparing the system specifications - such as balloon size and the tension in the tether - required to meet certain design requirements driven by the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project. The SPICE project is investigating the feasibility of climate engineering using a HATB.

Unexpected benefits of rapid growth rate for III-V nanowires.

In conventional planar growth of bulk III-V materials, a slow growth rate favors high crystallographic quality, optical quality, and purity of the resulting material. Surprisingly, we observe exactly the opposite effect for Au-assisted GaAs nanowire growth. By employing a rapid growth rate, the resulting nanowires are markedly less tapered, are free of planar crystallographic defects, and have very high purity with minimal intrinsic dopant incorporation. Importantly, carrier lifetimes are not adversely affected. These results reveal intriguing behavior in the growth of nanoscale materials, and represent a significant advance toward the rational growth of nanowires for device applications.