Spotting contradictions and seeing how they’re resolved

A contradiction is when you have conflicts in what you want: either you want opposites of the same thing, or as you improve something, something else gets worse. Contradictions exist everywhere: they’ve always been around, and human beings, being natural problem solvers, have found clever ways to resolve them.

Some everyday examples of contradictions include:

• I want a cup that keeps my coffee hot but doesn’t burn my hand.
• I want a more powerful engine for my car but I don’t want it to get heavier.
• I want to cover a large surface area quickly when I’m painting but I don’t want to make a mess.

Take an umbrella. What you really want from an umbrella are opposites: you want it to be really big when you want protection from the elements and really small at all other times. Making an umbrella collapsible is the commonest way to resolve this contradiction: it can then fold down to become small enough to carry around but also open out to become big enough to shield the user from the rain. This is a very old solution; collapsible umbrellas have been around for thousands of years (you can find descriptions of them being used in Ancient Greece and dynastic China). One theory is that this design was inspired by tents, which have the same conflicting needs: providing shelter and being portable. Figure 3-1 shows how the conflicting needs of both objects are resolved.

The reason a tent is a clever invention is that it resolves the conflict of being both big and small. If you only want big, the problem isn’t hard to address – build a house! What’s difficult is creating a dwelling that you can also pack up in a bag and carry around with you.

If it’s true that umbrellas were inspired by tents, this is a good example of problem solving by analogy. Who’s dealt with a similar problem in the past and how can you reapply his solution? This is efficient problem solving: you put your knowledge and experience into making a known concept work for you.

TRIZ takes problem solving by analogy a step further. Having something both big and small is one kind of contradiction – many others exist. The TRIZ community recorded and catalogued all the different kinds of contradiction and people’s solutions to them in the past. You then have to apply these very general solutions to make a practical invention.

TRIZ identified just 40 ways of resolving contradictions: the 40 Inventive Principles. These are simple and easy-to-understand conceptual solutions, which suggest ways of changing your system to get what you want – in clever and inventive ways. I explain these principles in the later section, ‘Reapplying other people’s genius solutions’.

Understanding the two types of contradiction

Two types of contradiction exist – technical and physical:

• A Technical Contradiction is when, as you improve something, something else gets worse. You start with a solution but when you put it into practice, you find a downside. For example, you make a car safer by using lots more material but it makes the car heavier.
• A Physical Contradiction is when you want opposites of the same thing, like an umbrella needing to be both big and small.

The way that you get everything that you want (a safe and sensibly sized car or a big yet small umbrella, for example) is to understand you can separate the things that you want from each other. The traditional approach to contradictions is to compromise or give up; the TRIZ approach says other ways exist, but first you have to understand clearly what you want, and know it’s possible to get it.

Contradictions are particularly hard problems and are often behind issues you struggle to find solutions to. Contradictions often seem impossible or, at the very least, extremely difficult when you describe them – and hard problems, by their nature, require clever and inventive solutions. So, how do you resolve contradictions and get everything you want? By using one of the 40 Inventive Principles.

Reapplying other people’s genius solutions

The 40 Inventive Principles are all the clever ways people have come up with to resolve contradictions in the past, as recorded in patents. The TRIZ community back in the 1950s and 1960s identified that only about 20 per cent of patents were really inventive – the rest were relatively small or obvious changes – and what made these patents inventive was that they managed to solve a contradiction. The question then became: how many ways are there to solve a contradiction? Beginning with Genrich Altshuller and Rafael Shapiro, the first researchers to start developing TRIZ, and continuing with a community of engineers and scientists, a huge amount of research was conducted. The researchers analysed inventive patents and the contradictions they solved, and also, on a conceptual level, the solutions inventors had used to resolve contradictions. After they’d analysed 35,000 patents, they’d found 37 solutions; when they got to 50,000 patents, they’d found 40. These are the 40 Inventive Principles.

These 40 principles are very general. In reality, while the 50,000 patents contained 50,000 clever ideas, many similarities existed between them – at a conceptual level. The genius of the analysis is that it uncovered these basic principles – the concepts – and distilled them into a simple list (you can find the full list, with examples, in Appendix A).

To use the 40 Inventive Principles you have to be aware of the distinction between a concept and an idea. In TRIZ-speak, a concept is a general way of doing something and an idea is a specific way of putting that concept into practice. For example, take ‘nesting’ as a concept (Inventive Principle 7; see Appendix A): different ideas suggested by nesting include nested tables, tea nested inside a tea bag, nested measuring cups and so on.

Because the Inventive Principles are conceptual, you can reapply them without simply copying. They really are ‘principles’: general ways to do things or rules. The Inventive Principles suggest solutions such as’ make something porous’, ‘make it curved’ or ‘do something in advance’. The really clever bit is to work out how these principles could be useful in your specific situation. You aren’t reinventing the wheel: you’re finding out how you can use a wheel to help solve a problem.

What the TRIZ community uncovered was a way of modelling contradictions and their solutions in a more conceptual way, and to solve contradictions you have to step through what’s called the Prism of TRIZ (explained fully in Chapter 6, but shown here in Figure 3-2). To do this, you distil your real-world problem to a more simple, conceptual problem: this is your contradiction. You can then look up the Inventive Principles that will be most useful for you, and use those concepts to diverge your thinking and generate practical real-world solutions. When you step through the Prism of TRIZ’ you leave the real world and think about your problem in a more conceptual, abstract way; that is, TRIZ suggests a conceptual solution from which you can generate lots of specific ideas.

Improving imperfect solutions with a little help from your friends

Spotting Technical Contradictions when you’re working with other people is easy, because the first thing that happens after you suggest an idea to someone is they tell you what’s wrong with it! When someone says ‘that won’t work because…’ they’re pointing out a Technical Contradiction. This problem-identifying approach to other people’s ideas seems to be a fundamental part of human nature: we all love our own ideas and can’t see anything wrong with them; other people’s ideas, however, seem full of problems! This kind of logical, problem-finding thinking is fantastically useful but not at the initial conception of an idea: at that point, it’s best to allow ideas to flow without judgement. Then, if you can capture all the problems associated with that idea, you can see them as opportunities to develop and improve on it: you can solve those problems and improve your idea very early on in the process.

Using the Contradiction Matrix

When you’ve identified a Technical Contradiction, you can resolve it by using the Contradiction Matrix. This matrix resulted from the patent research undertaken by the TRIZ community in the 1950s and 1960s. Technical Contradictions can be mapped onto 39 Engineering Parameters, shown in Table 3-1, such as strength and shape. When these parameters had been identified, researchers classified inventive patents that resolved Technical Contradictions according to these parameters; then recorded which Inventive Principles had been used to solve the contradiction, and how often each Principle was used. Performing statistical analysis then allowed them to build up a matrix of the most commonly used Principles that solved each specific contradiction.

You can look up your contradictions in the Contradiction Matrix in Appendix B and see which Inventive Principles, described in Appendix A, are most likely to be useful for you.

For example, you want to make a cheese grater that can grate cheese really quickly. A simple solution is to make it bigger. However, if you make it really big, the cheese goes all over the kitchen. These two parameters are fundamentally linked: as the size of the grater decreases, control over where the cheese goes increases, but the rate at which you can grate cheese drops. A conventional approach to this problem is to find a reasonable middle ground, a compromise: a size of grater that allows fast-enough grating and a reasonable-enough ability to direct cheese.

The TRIZ approach is to say, ‘No – I want both: I want incredibly fast cheese grating but also to be able to direct the cheese to where I want. How can TRIZ help me get both?’ You can use the Contradiction Matrix to tell you how people who’ve faced similar problems in the past solved this contradiction. Now, before you get too excited, the Contradiction Matrix doesn’t mention cheese! In order to use the Matrix you have to think about your problem in a more general way – stripping out any detail about your specific situation. You first understand what your contradiction is, and then you see which of the 39 Technical Parameters your contradiction fits against.

Contradiction: Faster cheese grating versus bigger surface area.

Now you have to see how what you’ve identified as good and bad matches with the 39 Parameters. I’ve done it for you, and the results are shown in Table 3-2.

Now turn to Appendix C, where you can see the 39 Parameters laid out in the Contradiction Matrix. If you look up where 39, Productivity, intersects with 6, Area of stationary object, you find the numbers: 10, 35, 17, 7, as shown in Figure 3-4.

These numbers are the 40 Inventive Principles that people have used most often in the past when trying to solve a problem, in this case: as productivity increases, the area gets worse. (I cover the Principles in more detail in the next section.)

The next step is to take each of these Principles and work out how to use it to generate a practical solution. So, taking each in turn:

10. Prior Action. This would suggest buying pre-grated cheese or spreading newspaper to catch the errant cheese.

35. Parameter Change. One parameter that can be changed is the degree of flexibility, so create a flexible cheese grater that can be big to grate cheese but curve to direct cheese where you want it.

17. Another Dimension. Go from two to three dimensions by curving the cheese grater, and also increasing the length, which gives a larger surface area for grating but directs the cheese, such as the grater shown in Figure 3-5.

7. Nested Doll. Place an object inside another – so you have a built-in container for the cheese underneath the grater, as shown in Figure 3-6.

What you’re doing is stepping through your Prism of TRIZ (graphically demonstrated in Figure 3-7) from your real-world situation to understanding your problem in a more general way (Chapter 6 covers the Prism of TRIZ in more detail). You can then see how it’s similar to other people’s problems, and take the clever solutions from the past to apply to your situation. Familiarise yourself with the 39 Parameters and 40 Principles and apply your creativity and experience and you have a very sure route to generating practical solutions.

So, to uncover and solve contradictions, follow these steps:

1. Identify your Technical Contradiction (a solution makes something better but causes something else to get worse).
2. Ascertain which technical parameters these relate to (use the table of technical parameters in Appendix C).
3. Look up where the technical parameters intersect in the Contradiction Matrix in Appendix B.
4. Use the Inventive Principles suggested to explore solutions.

Resolving Physical Contradictions

When you’ve identified that you have a physical contradiction, you can resolve it by working out how you can separate the opposite things you want. In the tent scenario, you’ve identified that you want it big and small. You then have to work out how you can separate these things. In TRIZ, you can separate in four ways:

• In Time: Having opposite things at the same time. Do you want a tent to be big and small at the same time? No: you want it small when you’re carrying it and big when you want to sleep in it. So you can separate in time; that is, you need a solution that has these opposite features at different times – it somehow changes.
• In Space: Wanting opposite things at the same time but in different places: In the sticking plaster example, you want sticky and not-sticky at the same time – but in different places. There’s a place for it to be sticky (on your skin) and a place for it to be not-sticky (on your wound). For this kind of contradiction, you need to separate in space.
• On Condition: Sometimes you want opposite things at the same time, in the same place – but for different features of your system. For example, you want a window to allow light in but not wind or rain; a colander to catch pasta but also allow water through.
• By System: Separating by system is understanding that you want opposite things at different levels, for example in the broader context and in the detail. For example, a bicycle chain is rigid to transmit force, and flexible to go around circular gears. If you want to move a long way to get exercise but not move so you can stay indoors, you can use a treadmill (instead of you moving over the stationary ground, the ground moves beneath you).

When you’ve identified how you can separate the contradiction, you can use the Separation Principles in Table 3-3 to find out which of the 40 Inventive Principles have been used in the past to solve these Physical Contradictions. You then take this sub-set of Inventive Principles as triggers to generate solutions.

Applying the 40 Inventive Principles to real problems

‘If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it,’ said Albert Einstein, and identifying your contradictions first will help you define the problem correctly. Generating clever solutions to the wrong problem takes you further away from where you want to be – not closer! – so devoting some time and energy to understanding your contradictions beforehand is absolutely crucial. A well-defined contradiction suggests a number of Inventive Principles, which you then apply to generate solutions.

When applying the 40 Inventive Principles, you still have to work hard. You have to apply your domain knowledge and experience: real creativity is about coming up with an idea that’s not only novel but also useful. To be useful it has to be practical, which is why experience and knowledge of how stuff works is absolutely critical. Sometimes, however, your experience of what works and what doesn’t (and what’s been tried before and failed) can get in the way of new ideas. The 40 Inventive Principles help stimulate your creativity and hence come up with new ideas, allowing you to think freely and apply all the rules of brainstorming as you generate new ideas.

Many creativity techniques apply golden rules for idea generation (see the nearby sidebar, ‘The rules of brainstorming’), and they’re fantastically useful. However, they’re not enough. Unfocused brainstorming for new ideas is a completely random process: you may come up with some genius solutions or you may not. Generating solutions is a bit like digging for buried treasure, and TRIZ provides the map: the 40 Inventive Principles suggest the parts of your treasure island where people have found the most gold in the past.

So apply all the rules of brainstorming but also use the 40 Inventive Principles to focus your energy and creativity in the areas where you’re most likely to find inventive and clever solutions.

Digging for buried treasure in the right places

Defining your contradiction and the Inventive Principles most useful for solving your problem ensures you focus your energy on the most useful solutions for you. You step through the Prism of TRIZ and apply those solutions that other people have found particularly useful for this kind of problem. This gives you real confidence, and if you get a Principle you think can’t be useful, still stick with it! Most people reject Inventive Principle 32, Colour Change, when it’s first presented, but it can form the basis of some clever and practical inventions. It’s often the Principle that initially seems the most unlikely that provides the breakthrough – for the very reason that no one would intuitively look there.

Imagine you want a dressing for a wound that protects it from dirt and germs but allows you to track how well it’s healing. This is a Physical Contradiction that you can separate on condition, and one suggested Inventive Principle for doing so (explained in the ‘Resolving Physical Contradictions’ section earlier in this chapter) is 32, Colour Change, which would suggest a transparent dressing. Figure 3-8 shows the Prism of TRIZ to find this solution.

Applying the 40 Inventive Principles helps you find clever solutions: you’re prompted to apply your knowledge in new ways, and look for solutions in new places. Sometimes you may not know how to do something – make transparent wound dressings, for example – but TRIZ prompts you to go and find out, directing you in a focused way to the places you need to investigate to locate the knowledge you need. So as your experience and knowledge grow, so does your ability to apply the Principles in pragmatic ways: your ability to use TRIZ effectively increases, directing both your expertise and your creativity to where you’re most likely to find clever solutions.