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I-TRIZ:
The Next Big Thing?
The I-TRIZ method for
promoting technological innovation and Inventive Engineering
Dr.
Yoni Mizrachi
CONTENTS:
What
is TRIZ and what does it do?
Origins
of the TRIZ approach and the transition to the I-TRIZ approach
Details:
Principles and Applications
Lens
1 – Principle of Ideality
Lens
2 – Principle of Contradictions
Lens
3 – Utilization of Resources
Inventive
Problem Solving (I.P.S.)
Anticipatory
Failure Determination (A.F.D.)
Directed
Evolution (D.E.)
Considerations
regarding adaptation to the work culture in Israel
What
is TRIZ and what does it do?
If you feel that your are nearing the end
of a long and expensive development race and your competitors are about to
pass you and win a brand name and profitable chunks of the market before
you do; if it seems to you that innovation efforts in your organization
are not systematic enough and are based on chance flashes of ‘genius,’
‘apples falling down,’ and ‘water overflowing the bathtub’; if you
sense that your R&D people are sated and have settled down to
middle-class complacency, and the flow of ideas and innovation is not what
it was; if your company has an excellent product which, ‘if we could
only solve that problem,’ would conquer the world; if you are certain
that reducing development time, production costs, and product price by
fifteen percent would make your firm and your product a winner; or if
despite all the ISO and procedures, the cancer of ‘it’ll be okay’
and improvisation has taken a grip on your firm, and this is something you
are unwilling to accept; then the article before you has several ideas
that are certain to interest you.
The competitive business environment at the
end of the millennium is grounded in a new set of economic rules based on
information, knowledge, learning, and technological innovation. The almost
obsessive preoccupation of companies and organizations with management
methods and new work techniques may be explained only in evolutionary
terms, namely as an attempt by the organism (firms and organizations) at
adaptation to the changing business ecology. In economics, as in nature, a
cultivated organism such as humans and organizations can alter itself in
the course of its life without waiting for long-term hereditary genetic
processes. The initiative for the change and the decision on how to
change, and into what, is in the hands of the individuals and the
organizations. Those capable of adapting optimally to the new rules of the
business ecology will flourish. Those not are likely sooner or later to
become extinct. This plethora of strategies for adaptation and survival is
now joined by something that may be a methodology, or perhaps a theory, or
possibly a science, which is gradually shaping up as ‘the next big
thing.’ It’s called TRIZ: an acronym for Russian words for theory of
creative/inventive problem solving, and in a world where companies wrap up
their products with more intelect than material, TRIZ is on the verge of
becoming a compulsory standard.
The uniqueness of the approach, compared
with other methods based on psychology and management theory (such as
brainstorming), is that modern TRIZ (henceforth, I-TRIZ) is founded on
over fifty years of R&D in areas of engineering sciences and
technology in which time over two million patents were studied from all
across the globe and in all known domains of engineering; the goal was to
identify and refine recurrent principles and to formulate them as a series
of rules and structures transmissible across domains by means of
computerized knowledge bases and software. The software may be defined as
a combination of decision support systems (DSS) and expert systems, and
they are fed by the thousands of generic technological principles arranged
and connected in the knowledge base which is primed for intuitive and
friendly use. Accordingly, the link of the I-TRIZ method to managerial and
psychological theories and models is primarily complementary, but it seems
that its relevance to contemporary technology-based business
ecology is much greater.
The I-TRIZ method is a systematic
methodology to promote technological innovation and inventive engineering
that combines knowledge bases with a range of software tools intended for
problem definition and solution, and for supporting development processes.
The method is studied at several universities in the world and is followed
by leading companies in the United States, Japan, and Europe. In the
automobile industry, it operates in giant companies such as GM, Ford,
Chrysler, Toyota, Dana, Rockwell, and TRW; in the communications and
electronics industry it is applied at Motorola, Honeywell, and Nortel; in
petrochemicals it is used by such companies as Amoco, Dow, and Eastman; in
the field of consumer products it is used at Xerox, Kodak, and Proctor
& Gamble; and in aviation it is applied in foremost companies such as
McDonnell Douglas, Allied Signal, Boeing, NASA, and Lockheed. In addition,
the method has been used with the land and air forces of the American
military.
From the strategic-management perspective,
correct application and embedding of the system lead to significant
acceleration and improved efficiency of R&D processes, significant
reduction in time to market, and a general and rapid rise in value of the
firm’s intellectual capital through registration of patents and
copyright, and earlier identification of the firm’s products as brand
names. Furthermore, as we shall see later, the very application of the
method can serve as a lever for more profound changes in business
processes associated with the work culture and with protection and
development of the organization’s intellectual capital.
From the engineering perspective, the
method may be seen as a thinking tool and as a repository of applicable
knowledge leading to intensification of the professional capabilities of
the Subject Matter Expert and to systematic exploitation of the
professional and intellectual potential in the technical development,
production, and support teams. The target audience that has to keep
abreast of developments in the sphere includes CEOs, start-up companies,
development managers, venture capital fund managers, production managers,
industry and administration managers, product managers, engineers,
inventors, and technological/engineering entrepreneurs.
In this article we shall briefly review the
history of the method and explain the principles of the theory behind it.
On this foundation we shall discuss the main methodological tools for
applying the method and the strategic-managerial implications involved in
and deriving from its application.
Origins
of the TRIZ approach and the transition to the I-TRIZ approach
The history of the TRIZ approach is no less
colorful and fascinating than its intellectual aesthetics. The 'W. Edwards
Deming' (TQM) of I-TRIZ is Genrich Altshuller, and in 1946 he fired the
first round in a huge intellectual effort by hundreds of researchers and
thousands of students, an effort whose outcome is the present incarnation
of TRIZ, namely Ideation/TRIZ (I-TRIZ). Already at age 14, Altshuller had
won recognition as an inventor by virtue of a device he developed for
underwater breathing. On account of his talents as an inventor he was
recruited to serve in the Soviet fleet a patent tester, and during those
years in which he assessed and studied thousands of patents he began his
life’s work: identification of recurrent principles and patterns
characterizing inventive engineering thinking. The systematic study of
these principles, he thought, could lead to more rapid and efficient
application of inventive engineering solutions. He considered invention
ability inherent in every person, if only he or she were trained to think
and to use the right tools. A letter of concern he wrote to Stalin in 1948
led to a year of interrogation and torture, at the end of which he was
sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment. In the frozen North of Russia jail
the first TRIZ research institute budded. Surrounded by intellectuals,
engineers, artists, and scientists, Altshuller continued to develop the
theory, and shortly after the death of Stalin in 1953 he was freed from
prison. Two years later Altshuller’s first publication on TRIZ appeared.
As the years passed, with some advances and setbacks the method was
applied in the Soviet Union to thousands of technological problems and in
almost all the known spheres of engineering and science. Mainly for
political reasons, in certain years occupation with the method went
underground, and was studied by small groups of intellectuals -
Altshuller’s pupils, with whom he never hesitated to generously share
the knowledge and theory he had developed. Altshuller published 14 books
and wrote hundreds of articles on TRIZ subjects. He studied over 200,000
patents, of which he identified about 40,000 as representing the most
effective solutions in almost every domain. In his work he established the
classical era as a foundation for what was to follow.
A number of his outstanding pupils, headed
by one of them, Boris Zlotin, founded in Kishinev in the early 1980s a
research institute engaged in the continued intensive development of the
theory and its application on a commercial footing. In 1992, an engineer
and well-to-do businessman entered the picture, an Israeli long domiciled
in the United States called Zion Bar-El. He heard of the method, became
enthusiastic about it, and as in fairytales he purchased the research
institute in Kishinev with all its scientists and intellectual capital,
and transferred it to Detroit, the capital of the American automobile
industry; there, orders and projects from several leading companies in the
branch were already waiting.
The steadily accumulated experience about
the way western economy works, combined with limited capital resources and
time for development, allowed the team of scientists concentrated in
Detroit to elevate the method to new and startling theoretical and
practical levels. In recent years, the method has been augmented by dozens
of additional engineering principles, more efficient work methods than the
classical development, and new and original thinking and practical tools
(especially in systems’ failure forecasting (AFD) and directed evolution
of product development). The entire approach has been geared to work in
harmony with the new business ecology of contemporary information economy:
a real-time economy, hungry for technological innovation; an economy in
which, as the great guru of the management Tom Peters argues, a new
product must get one response by its customers: ‘Wow!’ The software
tools for defining problems and the all-embracing computerized knowledge
bases developed by the American Ideation company under the leadership of
Zlotin, Zusmann and their colleagues, have magnified the method and
advanced it so far that the we now talk of the Ideation/TRIZ (I-TRIZ)
method, which constitutes a huge leap forward as compared with the
classical TRIZ approach.
Details:
Principles and Applications
What is it in the method that allows anyone
who has learned it and applies it properly to become a solver of
technological problems? What does the method have that allows people with
a ‘natural’ bent for invention to become far more productive and
efficient technological innovators? To answer these questions let us first
turn to the matter of how the human brain works. One of the most striking
analogies for describing the thinking process of the human brain is to see
it as a barren wilderness stretching as far as the eye can see, scarred
with gashed channels of dried-up riverbeds. The raindrops that fall on
this desert always drain into channels lower than the surface and are
carried in them to the central channel, and thence to the drainage basin.
The raindrops are like the information, the stimuli, and the experiences
picked up by our brain from the environment. The river channels are
analogies to the knowledge, experiences, paradigms, and earlier axioms
that a person has experienced. As the previous rains dug deeper into the
thinking channels, so does the rigidity of thinking that a person may
suffer from become deeper and more firmly fixed. Furthermore, as a
person’s area of professional expertise grows more profound, and as the
level of his or her professional education in other fields sinks, (as a
function of times of specialization and experience), so does the
likelihood of his or her being able to see what lies beyond the walls of
the thinking channel in which he or she is trapped decrease. This
comprehension of how the human brain thinks is not new. In the 1960s
scholars in psychology and creative thinking wrote about it. The foremost
and most vocal of them was probably Edward de Bono, whose techniques of
lateral thinking were directed precisely to solving the problem depicted
here: how to free the human brain from thinking in fixed patterns and
channels, and to lead it to lateral thinking beyond the thought channels.
The I-TRIZ innovation path provides a
context in which brainware interacts with software, thereby leading to
creative synergy. In essence, I-TRIZ may be seen as a way of thinking and
methodical analysis intended to overcome the thinking rigidity by
application of systematic principles of thinking for analysis and solution
of problems, with emphasis on the engineering and technological domains. A
problem-solver who uses the theory and its methodological tools dons a
kind of pair of glasses that allow him a unique way of observing problems:
a way intended to free the observer from psychological and professional
fixations and preconceptions that restrict his or her ways of analyzing
reality. The way of thinking and seeing reality by means of TRIZ
encourages and almost forces on the human brain creative thinking outside
specialist channels and earlier paradigms. Compared with the usual
methods, TRIZ does this through transferring scientific and technological
knowledge across areas by means of analogical thinking. Exiting the
regular thought channels is not done by general creative brainstorming but
by the systematic examination of thousands of relevant applied analogies
from variegated fields of science and technology. The development from the
1990s of highly powerful computerized support tools, which include
programs for defining and visual mapping of problems, alongside knowledge
bases allowing easy, guided, and intuitive access to an enormous body of
theoretical knowledge with over fifty years of thinking, make the I-TRIZ
method a unique feature of the theoretical and applied landscape, in
connection with modern managerial and organizational sciences.
The R&D person who puts on the I-TRIZ
‘glasses’ and uses its software tools and its knowledge bases analyzes
the problems (problems of development and amelioration of an existing
system, problems and snags present in an existing system, problems
connected with planning a new system from zero) in a special way, so in
most cases he or she has a higher potential for identifying original and
optimal solutions. What do the lenses of the TRIZ ‘glasses’ consist
of?
To answer this question, we’ll take
problems from various fields and see how the TRIZ lenses are applied and
how they work. For demonstration purposes, we show only three principal
‘lenses’ and the approaches to solutions deriving from them.
Lens
1 – Principle of Ideality
Thinking components, methodology, and
software (knowledge bases) that lead the observer to bring a system to its
ideal state. Problem: In a large poultry farm for egg
production a conveyor belt carries the eggs from the laying house to the
packing area. In the packing area an automatic arm lifts each egg off the
belt and places it on the machine that stamps the production date, and
then the arm transfers the egg to the container. The farm managers want to
improve the process in terms of time, cost, and complexity. TRIZ
thinking about the problems from the Ideality perspective:
Problem solvers trained in the method and using its tools study the
problem from the viewpoint that emphasizes a total solution to the problem
and which avoids as far as possible offering solutions emphasizing local
cumulative improvement. The assumption of the method is that the best
system is one that performs its intended function at minimum (or without)
existence of the system. Such a concept leads the problem solvers to
identify the optimal and minimal solutions for achieving the desired
action. Systems planned by the TRIZ concept will therefore use fewer
resources, include fewer components, and their level of complexity (as
well as the number of things that co go wrong…) is expected to be
optimal. TRIZ solution of the problem by the ‘principle of
Ideality’: A stamp with the production date will be placed on
the inner side of the egg-lifting arm, so that whenever the arm lifts an
egg it stamps it with the actual stamping, and then transfers the
egg directly to the container. This solution will entirely eliminate the
date-stamping machine, and will in fact achieve the desired result without
the existence of a designated machine (with its cost and operation cost)
and using existing processes. By applying the ideality principle,
engineers of Ideation International Inc. engaged on a project for a large
producer of vehicle brake assemblies were able reduce the number of parts
in a certain braking system from twelve to only four, thereby reducing
production costs by 50 percent, simplifying production processes, and
raising the general reliability level of the system. The above principle
may of course be applied to any system (electronics, mechanics, chemistry,
optics, software) and to combinations of subsystems in various fields
(electro-optics, biotechnology, etc.).
Lens
2 – Principle of Contradictions
Thinking components, knowledge bases, and
methodology leading the observer to identify and use contradictions in a
system. Problem: A big car maker faces the following
dilemma: to reduce the weight of the car door while preserving the lateral
protection it gives passengers against impact. To improve fuel
consumption, the overall weight of the car is lowered and the weight of
the door (because of a massive steel rod in its forward part that serves
to absorb the impact of collision) has to be reduced while its strength
properties have to be maintained. TRIZ thinking about the problem
from the perspective of contradictions: The human thought pattern
seeks to avoid opacity and situations of conflict and contradiction. These
are therefore conceived as problematic and should be eliminated, and/or
mitigated and adapted to familiar frameworks and thinking patterns.
Problem solvers versed in the method and who use its tools study the
problem from the viewpoint that looks for contradictions in the system and
utilizes them to its advantage. Contradictions exist in every
engineering/technological system. For example, the physical strengthening
of certain components will require an increase in the thickness or weight
and by contrast will reduce the speed and/or will enlarge the volume of
the parts. Every element and/or property in a system has positive and
negative qualities. Classic improvement methods in systems strengthen one
component and simultaneously add some negative property arising from that
very strengthening (strengthening a component by thickening, for example,
will increase its weight and volume). On the basis of this thinking mode,
Altshuller constructed his Contradiction Table, which examines fundamental
contradictions among 39 engineering parameters (e.g., weight, strength,
speed, cost, productivity), and proposed inventive solutions (arising from
the study of hundreds of thousands of patents) for each of these generic
contradictions. The problem solver who thus identifies a contradiction in
the system (e.g., between strength and weight) can turn to the
Contradiction Table (39 x 39 contradictions) and to the major inventive
principles that arose from study of the patents, and chooses from a large
number of solution concepts the optimal way of resolving the
contradiction. The method’s advantage is that the spread of fundamental
solutions offered to the solver is not limited to those in his or her area
of specialization, but derives from a much wider range of ‘working’
solutions in all fields of science and technology. The TRIZ solution
of the problem according to the Principle of Contradictions: Using
the classic table (interactively accessible in the knowledge base), we
look for the main inventive solutions for the contradiction between the
engineering parameters ‘weight of moving object’ (door weight) and
‘strength’ (door’s ability to protect passengers from lateral
impact). The software automatically provides us with four alternative
solution tracks for the basic problem, of which we shall consider only two
for the purpose of illustration. One of these fundamental solutions for
the kind of contradiction presented here for discussion calls for the
utilization of composite materials (plastic reinforced with carbon fibers,
for example), which are lighter and stronger than steel. This is done
nowadays in certain components of advanced fighter aircraft. The other
fundamental solution for the given kind of contradiction supplied by the
knowledge base concerns replacing fixed components in the system by
alternative components that change their physical nature only when
appropriate conditions are met. The analogy is replacement of the steel
rod by an entirely different component that will achieve identical results
to those of the steel rod only when the condition of impact is met. A
possible solution according to this principle is therefore installation of
airbags in the side door (as is done today in several luxury automobiles).
The use of the principle of contradiction and others stored in the
knowledge base allowed Ideation’s engineers working on a project for a
large manufacturer of jet engines to reduce the weight of a particularly
heavy engine part by over 30 percent, and thus increase the engine
efficiency and decreased the energy loss of the aircraft.
Lens
3 – Utilization of Resources
Thinking components, knowledge bases, and
methodology leading the observer to identify and utilize most of the
existing resources in the system. Problem: Exhaust gas
emissions from internal combustion engines (which use fuels) and/or from
various production processes cause damage to the environment in general
and to people working in vicinity of the systems in particular. New laws
to protect the environment and the workers now require a significant
lowering of pollution levels and the installation of expensive machinery
in plants and cars to trace and control gas emissions. TRIZ thinking
about the problem from the perspective of use of existing resources in the
system: Problem solvers trained in the method and who use its
tools scrutinize an engineering/technological system from an angle that
looks for overt and/or hidden and/or derived resources present in the
system, and work to harness these resources for solving problems. The
assumption is that an optimal solution to problems in
engineering/technological systems does not add resources to the system but
exploits existing resources, even if they are hidden. For example, in
systems there may be energy resources (heat emitted in the system
operation processes), time resources (dead time intervals in which a
sub-component of the system performs its action), material resources
(waste products and/or components present in the system), and more. The
combination of existing resources allows production of many secondary
resources, for example, a certain waste product in a system in combination
with heat resources generated by the system may create a new kind of
material resource that can be utilized for coating or energy, for example.
The use of existing resources in a system allows better utilization and
maximization of their advantages, and also firms up connectivity among
sub-systems of the super-system without adding new components to it. The
TRIZ solution for the problem by the principle of ‘Resource
Utilization’: The knowledge bases guide us to examples and
principles indicating utilization of emission of gases in combustion
engines for many positive purposes: exhaust gases from a car engine can be
used to operate alarm sirens in the case of auto theft, inflate airbags as
necessary (for example to help change a wheel), and more. In some cases
the problem can be solved entirely, together with a direct benefit: in
advanced plows harnessed to tractors, the exhaust pipe of the tractor is
connected to the plow and emits the gases next to the blade under the
surface. In this process some of the noxious gases are filtered through
the soil (an efficient filter), the plow blade gets a coating for its
protection, and the soil is enriched by organic particles. This is a
particularly elegant solution to the problem of gases because it achieves
both a direct solution to the problem and a series of benefits without
allocation of additional energy and/or material resources to the system.
This kind of solution makes possible identification of an endless range of
specific gas emission problems.
In recent years these and many other
principles have been arrayed in a framework of three systematic work
methodologies (intervention areas) intended to lead the user along the
path to identifying the principles most relevant to his or her specific
problem in the shortest time. In practice, the method and the software
tools support managers, R&D teams, work teams, and support teams in
the following three intervention areas, each of which is now separate
(with its own theory, methodology, and software tools), but which may be
operated in an integral fashion.
Inventive
Problem Solving (I.P.S.) –
The I.P.S. area is meant to support identification, definition,
problem solving, and technological-engineering development in existing and
planned systems. The problem solver who has to improve and/or plan a new
system is conducted along a work path supported by software designed to
allow him or her rapid and optimal detection of fundamental planning
problems and their speedy solution. The software tools make it possible to
formulate the various aspects of the problem and include production of
flowcharts and computerized relationship systems among sub-systems,
automatic production of the principal solution paths (concepts for
solution), and direction to the parts of the knowledge base identified by
the system as specially relevant to the application of the principal
solutions. The problem solver exposed to the concepts of solution and the
many illustrated examples showing earlier relevant patents used for
solving similar problems to the one in hand may in most cases derive a
creative analogy (solution) between the patent described in the knowledge
base (which may come from any existing area of knowledge and technology)
and his or her particular problem (in any existing area of knowledge and
technology). The I.P.S. domain has been applied in the solution of
thousands of problems, from improving truck fenders (Ford) to optimal
planning of complex production lines and processes in the oil and fuel
industry (AMOCO). At present, advanced experiments are being conducted on
the application of these principles to the software industry.
Anticipatory
Failure Determination (A.F.D.)
– The A.F.D. area is designed to support the location, diagnosis and
anticipation of failures in existing and planned systems. The problem
solver needing to identify failures in an existing system or to apply
preventive anticipation (debugging) of failures in a new or planned system
is guided along a software-supported work path constructed to allow him or
her rapid and optimal detection of failures and their effective solution.
The method user is required to engage reverse thinking: he or she becomes
a ‘saboteur’ systematically testing how to wreck the system in the
most efficient way. To do so, he or she uses software tools that afford
him or her systematic mapping of potential causes of failure in order of
importance and probability, and automatic direction to those parts of the
knowledge base identified by the system as specially relevant to solving
the problem. In military terms, the approach is particularly efficient and
applicable for locating the ‘soft underbelly’ of weapons systems in
the hands of the opponent and inflicting damage on enemy systems. Here too
the fundamental failures under consideration, like the abundance of
offered solutions, are inter-domain in nature, so the problem solver is
not restricted to solutions within his or her area of expertise or
conceptual limits of thinking. The A.F.D. field has been applied to
problems such as mechanical failure in helicopter rotors, producing
microwire with intermetal compositions, and many others.
Directed
Evolution (D.E.) – The
D.E. area is designed to support technological prediction and active
direction of evolutionary development of products and systems. D.E. is
considered the latest and most complex area of the method, and space is
too short to go deeply into detail about it here. In principle, it is
identification of the place of a given system in relation to
fundamental-general development tracks of technological systems as
observed by longitudinal historical studies of thousands of products and
systems throughout the course of human technological history. From
analysis of the existing state of a system for which technological
prediction is sought regarding these evolutionary principles, it is
possible to identify the developmental stage at which the system is at the
moment, and to identify alternative development tracks envisaged for it.
Thus the system builders can actively steer towards whichever
developmental alternative they choose, and prepare drawer plans
(preliminary R&D) for the subsequent stages and define new markets for
new products, while establishing the game rules and business primacy on
the grounds of technological superiority (via securing its intellectual
capital by means of patent fences, brand-names, and prior and obligatory
definition of standards). Application of principles and tools in the
domain allowed I-TRIZ people to propose R&D directions and strategies
of commercial development to the American Northern Telecom (Nortel)
company in the area of voice recognition. Similar projects are being
conducted today for the petrochemical industry and in fields of wireless
communication. In the world of business, where R&D constitutes an
ever-growing part of company budgets, D.E. is considered the most
promising and interesting area in the method. Because of its complexity,
it is only partially supported by known software means.
Of two competitors working in the same
eco-business branch, the one that adopts the method and inculcates it
correctly may expect a more impressive adaptation ability to the
contemporary knowledge economy, characterized by products’ short
shelf-life and encouragement of frequent technological innovation. The
secret is simple, and in business terms it lies in the fact that the user
of the method, its knowledge bases, and its software can gain more and
richer solutions at a given point in time. The direct significance is
higher potential to test and choose the best option for performance in a
given time and/or to shorten the time of bringing to market a product that
not only appears earlier but is also optimal from the viewpoint of
production, development, and customer’s needs.
Considerations
regarding adaptation to the work culture in Israel
One of the most apt comparisons known to me
between the work culture of the Israeli technical person and his or her
American counterpart relates to the different way in which the two deal
with a new machine and/or technology. The American carefully undoes the
packaging (and of course saves it because of a possible change of
apartments in the future), diligently fills out and sends off the
guarantee form, reads the abbreviated operating manual, moves on to the
full operating manual, makes a couple of phone calls for technical support
to clarify things he or she doesn’t feel too sure about; only then does
he or she gather up courage to operate the machine. The Israeli colleague,
born and raised in the southern part of the eastern Mediterranean basin,
rips off the packaging and slams the plug into the electricity socket. It
works? Fine. It doesn’t work? Improvise and moan. There are many
advantages to both approaches. The truth is probably always in-between.
Either way, the smart thing is to find the proper balance between the two
ways exaggeratedly depicted here, and to maximize the advantages of each
and minimize the disadvantages of each.
The I-TRIZ approach is in principle meant
for people of the first variety. Nevertheless, it is a highly powerful
tool when placed in the hands of people of the second. In my estimation,
Israeli managers, engineers and technicians who have the smallest yearning
for and appreciation of the advantages of thinking and systematic work and
wisdom will surely learn to admire the power of the system. My belief is
that after savoring the taste of success though the method, they too will
yield to a certain degree of adaptation to it. If such is the case, the
introduction of the I-TRIZ method into Israel may be a starting point for
wider and deeper processes of change in the culture of development,
production, and operation in organizations that until now have tended to
behave according to chance and localized patterns of improvisation and
brilliance.
About
the Author:
Yonathan Mizrachi (Ph.D., Harvard
University, 1992), is an anthropologist and information specialist. He
writes and teaches at the departments of Library and Information Science
and Human Services at the University of Haifa, Israel on the following
subjects: evolutionary thought and social theory, management of knowledge
and intellectual capital in modern organizations, the history of
information technology, information theory of cyberspace, the workplace of
2000, and information systems and organizational theory. In 1994, Dr.
Mizrachi graduated from the School for Educational Leadership in
Jerusalem, where he specialized in curriculum development for adult
education and application of Information Technology to education. He is
the recipient of a number of teaching awards from both Harvard and Haifa
universities.
Dr. Mizrachi's consulting work spans the
areas of competitive business intelligence, knowledge management, the
coordination of information systems with organizational architecture and
information workflow, and information technology and education. Among the
organizations he has worked with are Dan Hotels (the largest hotel chain
in Israel), the Israeli Defense Forces, the Israeli Ministry of Education,
and Kupat Holim Klalit (Israel's largest health service provider).
Dr. Mizrachi is the fourth generation of a
family of viticulturists (growers of grapes) in Givat Ada, Israel, where
he now lives with his wife Noga, their three children, and their many
pets.
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