SYSTEMATIC INNOVATION

Once you have gathered and analysed the neccesary business knowledge, you need to move into a more creative area to define your product or service. The most common creativity tool is brainstorming, which relies on the knowledge of the team, and can therefore be random and unreliable.

Systematic Innovation is based on logic and data, which accelerates the team's ability to solve problems and think creatively. It works on the premise that:

• Somebody, somewhere has already solved your problem (or one like it)
• By tapping into this knowledge, you can shortcut the innovation process

TRIZ is a (large) subset of Systematic Innovation and is the Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. Developed by Genrich Altshuller in the former USSR in the 1940s, it started life as a study of patents to identify the patterns that lead to breakthrough developments. Now it has expanded into an international science that seeks to find solutions from trends and patterns, rather than relying on individual intuition for innovation. The main benefits are:

• You save time and money in developing creative solutions
• You develop more creative solutions because you are not reliant on knowlege the team already has, but can build on experience from other industries or applications
• You can look ahead to identify what future generations of your product or service might look like to make sure you have maximised the innovation in your current generation
• You can maximise revenue from your Intellectual Assets

True North Innovation uses proven systematic innovation tools and methodologies to help you in a number of ways:

Innovation Strategy – For innovation to be successful, it is critical that there is a strong innovation strategy in place. True North Innovation can work with you to improve your organisation's capability to deliver innovation by:

• Develop coherent innovation strategies to meet your objectives
• Provide a framework to drive your innovation activities

Product Development – New Product Development (NPD) is the lifeblood of any company. as product development cycles shorten and the customer becomes ever more discerning and demanding, the need for faster, smarter NPD increases.

TRIZ provides you with the framework to develop truly innovative products that will differentiate you from your competitors. At True North Innovation we can help:

• Develop an NPD process to meet your requirement
• Create a plan for optimising your NPD project
• Select the best systematic innovation tools for the situation. This might include:
  • Ideal Final Result – formulate the ideal vision for your product
  • Benefits Analysis – analysis of the combined objectives of all the stakeholders
  • Functional Analysis – identify effective and ineffective relationships between components in your existing product
  • Problem Hierarchy Explorer – exploring the broader and narrower problem associated with the original one
  • Contradiction Matrix – find out how others have solved a similar problem to yours
  • Evolution Trends – look ahead to see the next generation of your product's features
• Work together to generate ideas for potential solutions and evaluate the final concepts

Process Improvement – Systematic Innovation can be applied not only to product development, but also to process improvement. Again a logical approach can reduce the time for documenting, analysing or re-designing processes. True North Innovation can help you to:

• Measure the existing status of the process
• Select the best systematic innovation tools for the situation. This might include:
  • Ideal Final Result – formulate the ideal vision of how the process should work
  • Functional Analysis – clarify the functions within a process in order to identify areas for improvement
  • Trimming – useful tool to eliminate unnecessary components
  • Contradiction Matrix – find out how others have solved a similar problem to yours
• Work together to generate business process re-engineering alternatives and evaluates the final concepts

Problem Solving – Systematic Innovation is ideal for creative problem solving. (In fact, the word TRIZ is the Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.) Problems involve a contradiction, and solving contradictions is one of the central tenets of TRIZ. BY 'translating' your problem into more generic terms, and identifying how others have solved similar problems in the past, you can shortcut the innovation process and come up with a more inventive solution. True North Innovation can help you to:

• Fully define the problem
• Select the best systematic innovation tools for the situation. This might include:
  • Ideal Final Result – formulate the ideal vision of how the system should work
  • Functional Analysis – clarify the functions within the system and find the harmful and ineffective relations
  • Resource Analysis – identify all the unused energy, space and time resources
  • Contradiction Matrix – find out how others have solved a problem similar to yours
• Work together to generate alternative solutions and evaluate the final concepts

OUR PROCESS

Each project is seen as unique and we work closely with you to define your needs and meet your objectives. The process we use for systematic innovation follows the same steps for product development, process improvement or problem solving.