Accelerating Science TRIZ inventive methodology in illustrations

TL;DR

This paper extends the TRIZ inventive methodology to scientific disciplines by introducing new principles and reformulating existing ones, demonstrated through examples from physics, biology, and other sciences.

Contribution

It proposes Accelerating Science TRIZ (AS-TRIZ), adding and adapting inventive principles for scientific problem solving and illustrating their application with scientific discoveries.

Findings

AS-TRIZ identifies inventive principles in scientific discoveries

Extended principles improve TRIZ applicability to science

Examples span physics, biology, and other fields

Abstract

Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) is a powerful tool widely used in engineering community. It is based on identification of a physical contradiction in a problem, and based on the corresponding pair of contradicting parameters selecting a few of suitable inventive principles, narrowing down the choice and leading to a much faster solution of a problem. It is remarkable that TRIZ methodology can also be applied to scientific disciplines. Many of TRIZ inventive principles can be post factum identified in various in scientific inventions and discoveries. However, additional inventive principles, more suitable for scientific disciplines, should be introduced and added to standard TRIZ, and some of the standard inventive principles need to be reformulated to be better applicable to science - we call this extension Accelerating Science TRIZ. In this short note we describe and illustrate the AS-TRIZ inventive principles via scientific examples, identifying AS-TRIZ inventive principles in discoveries and inventions originated from physics, biology, and other areas. This brief note, we believe, is yet one more step towards bringing TRIZ methodology closer into the scientific community.