Events, News, & Ideas

TRIZ: The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving
Systematic Innovation for Technology and Business

April 15, 12:00-1:15 PM Eastern time

Register Now - Space is Limited

Our guest expert, David Conley, will familiarize participants with the scientific discipline of innovation known as TRIZ and its application in the worlds of technology and business. You will learn about the historical evolution of systematic innovation (SI), that began as early as 300 AD, and how the contemporary culmination is being applied by leading business and technology companies around the world. Several specific TRIZ and SI tools will be introduced and will include examples of their application to help companies innovate and how anyone can implement an innovation program within their organization.

Finally, we'll learn how to transcend the contradictions that the Theory of Constraints helps identify to help companies create their own Blue Ocean, change organizational posture from cautiously watching for Disruptive Innovations to becoming the disruptor and develop innovative solutions designed to meet the requirements set forth by Six Sigma and Lean programs.

David Conley received his BS of Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University and his Masters of Finance from the University of New Mexico. As an Air Force Officer he performed plasma physics and space nuclear propulsion research and served at Los Alamos and Brookhaven National Laboratories and on NASA’s Nuclear Safety Review Panel. His private sector experience includes Johnson and Johnson, Philips Semiconductor and Intel Corporation. Employed at Intel beginning in 1995 David has held a variety of engineering and management roles including Competitive Intelligence Analyst. Certified by the St. Petersburg school of the International TRIZ Association, David’s contributions to the field of systematic innovation include: technical and business problem solving, methodology training, program integration and serving on the Executive Board of the US based Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies. In early 2007 he started Innomation, LLC: a consulting firm dedicated to the proliferaion of TRIZ and Systematic Innovation for Business. David has broad international business and engineering experience and lives in New Mexico, USA with his wife and their three sons.

What is TRIZ?: TRIZ is a Russian acronym that stands for Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch. The English translation is “The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.” The TRIZ methodology was conceptualized and developed by Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues beginning in 1946 in the former USSR. His process involved reviewing hundreds of thousands of patents to understand how engineering systems evolved over time. Particular attention was paid to understanding how innovation was harnessed to solve difficult engineering problems in novel ways. Fundamentally, the objective of TRIZ is to discover how inventors invent. The development of TRIZ as an international science of creativity continues and has so far spanned over 60 years and encompassed the analysis of some three million patents. Elemental to the process is the understanding of how engineering system contradictions can be sufficed without the use of compromise.

TRIZ Main Postulate: Engineering Systems do not develop randomly but rather according to objective evolutionary trends. The evolutionary trends are a natural result of engineering systems competing for resources ($s, energy, political support, etc.) within an economic, political, and technology environment. Analogous to the natural selection law from biology, the engineering systems most suited to the environment develop and flourish. The evolutionary trends describe typical features of winning engineering systems.

“Adversity does not build character. Adversity reveals character.”  - Vince Lombardi
 

It is with great excitement that I send this early welcome to those of you already registered for SCIP’s 2009 International Conference and Exhibition. For those of you not yet registered, I hope you will consider SCIP’s conference for the many different value-added activities you will have access to in Chicago.

Whether you are a SCIP veteran that attends every year, someone on a rotating schedule, or at SCIP for the first time, I think you will be impressed by our program this year, and I invite you to provide feedback directly to me regarding your SCIP09 experience. We have five educational tracks designed to offer you a variety of beginner to advanced exposure to ways in which you can execute on intelligence initiatives, along with several excellent half- and full-day workshops I hope you can leverage.

Our keynote speaker this year is Michael Treacy. He has spent his career advising organizations on what it takes to be a market leader, and I expect he will provide you with insights that will allow you to have an immediate impact on your organization. Outside of an excellent educational program and keynote, there are many other reasons why you come to this conference, from networking with your peers to evaluating the many capable vendors that can act as partners to your initiatives. Enjoy these benefits and the many other intangibles that SCIP Chicago has to offer.

Finally, it is in this economic climate that we are reminded of exactly how quickly things can change. Fortunate for all of us, the ability to adapt to change is one characteristic that makes you a great intelligence professional. In the past few months, I have witnessed a number of announcements that have caused me to take notice – from seeing long-tenured intelligence officers displaced from their jobs, to seeing several Fortune 500 firms receive new mandates to build enhanced intelligence capabilities.

Your peers at this conference will challenge your intellect and your energy level, but the many forms of adversity we encounter as intelligence professionals truly do reveal our character. Let’s make it a memorable SCIP09!

Derek Johnson

SCIP09 Conference Chair

Aurora WDC COO & Director of Research

Wednesday, April 15, beginning at 1:00 PM Eastern / 10:00 AM Pacific time, Derek Johnson, Aurora WDC Director of Research and Chief Operating Officer, will be host of our next live, free 75-minute webinar, featuring Dr. Niall Fraser Co-Founder and Principal Scientist of Open Options Corporation entitled “Three Rules for Getting Buy-In from Senior Management and Developing Superior Strategies from Human Capital” 

-Registration Link-

In large organizations, the direct use of quantitative information is often limited to relatively routine operational decisions. High-level strategic issues, on the other hand, are commonly decided primarily by the informed experience and intuition of corporate leadership. There is clearly a hierarchy - data professionals are the suppliers of data to the people who actually make the decisions.

This can be a bad idea. Experience and intuition have limitations that data can supplement, and vice versa. If a deep understanding of data does not directly inform corporate strategic decisions, human error is more likely. Personality and politics can intervene, for example, or things can just be too complex for the mind to deal with effectively. When a firm's fundamental strategic issues are involved, such errors can be disastrous.

In order to make the best decisions possible, organizations need to corral all of their deep knowledge, including hard data, soft data, opinion, intuition, street smarts and gut feel. This seminar shows how a well-designed decision process can do this in a very effective way. The significant characteristics of such a process are clearly explained in this seminar.

Key take-aways from this session include:

-An understanding of how different personalities and different sources of knowledge contribute to good decisions in an organization   

-Clarity on the characteristics of a process to bring qualitative and quantitative knowledge to bear on difficult decisions 

-Insight into how key elements of a well designed decision process allows for effective decisions to be made about complex multi-participant issues 

Join Arik Johnson from Aurora WDC for this exclusive 90-minute online event, hosted by the Center for Business Intelligence and featuring leaders from three of the top competitive intelligence software vendors - Comintell, Digimind and Traction - as they train you on lessons learned from case studies of best practices in solving technology driven intelligence problems from the healthcare and life science sector and how they used intelligence software systems to understand risk, create value, and drive performance and success.

SAVE THE DATE!

14 -17 June 2009

SLA 2009 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO
Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Washington, DC USA