A Better Way to Invent: TRIZ and ARIZ
 Over the last several years, there's been a significant increase in awareness of how critical innovation has become in the fight to remain competitive in the evolving global economy. Groups like the Washington D.C. based Council on Competitiveness (led by the likes of IBM's Samuel Palmisano, Vikram Pandit of Morgan Stanley, BellSouth CEO Duane Ackerman and Harvard President Lawrence Summers) have made statements echoing the thoughts that American companies and employees face an unprecedented acceleration of global change and fierce competition; and that in the quest to be successful, innovation will be one of the most important contributing factors.
And while we've also seen a gradual rise in the acceptance of a more disciplined and systematic approach to the inventive process, there are still many independent, and even corporate inventors, who appear to hold true to longstanding and somewhat outdated perceptions. Of these old school beliefs is the idea that in order to identify truly groundbreaking solutions, you need to find someone with groundbreaking mental abilities. Collaborating with (and usually paying a premium for) a proven genius, or dream team staff, will result in the discovery of unique solutions that those of average skill simply don't have the breadth of knowledge to identify. While one certainly can't argue that exceptional talent can produce exceptional results, the misconception here is that the rest of us don't have the means to effectively do this on our own.
In addition to bloodline, a second and equally common approach is based on the thought that anyone can have a great random flash of inspiration. This is where we encounter the ubiquitous light bulb, the international symbol of innovation. This is also where the plethora of brainstorming tools, some of proven value and other less so, come into play. They are tasked with generating the spark that ignites that random flash of genius. A downside of these types of activities is that they often don't really progressively and predicatively drive a solution, but rather result in a series of disassociated ideas—a large number of which end up going undeveloped.
On the amusing side, one can't discount that some really great inventions have come about as the result of pure accident. Many have heard the story of how Wilson Greatbatch put the wrong resistor in his heart monitoring device, and discovered the technology behind the first implantable pacemaker. The melted candy bar in LeBaron Spencer's pocket, turned a radar wave experiment into the idea for a microwave oven. And then there's Art Fry, who could not keep the bookmark from falling out of his church hymnal. His coworker at 3M, Dr. Spence Silver, had invented a tape product that was not sticky enough. After five years of trying to find a use for it, Art found that it was perfect for saving his page in the hymnal, and the Post-it note was born. While you can't really design a strategy for inventing in this manner, you certainly could throw some people, and money, into a room with the assignment of conducting tests with given technologies, and see if anything of value comes out—clearly a hit-or-miss approach at best.
In 1948, there was an enterprising young Soviet inventor, Genrich Altshuller, who sought to devise a more structured approach to innovation. With the best of intentions, he wrote a letter to Comrade Stalin describing how scientists could be more productive by utilizing a set of objective laws that would govern the evolution of technical systems. Rather than relying on various means of stimulating psychological creativity, his theory was based on the concept that technological systems evolve in a series of repeatable, and thereby predictable, patterns. His revolutionary theory of inventing could produce invaluable results and revolutionize the technical world.
Unfortunately, the USSR in the days of Stalin was not known as a bastion of critical thinking. As a result of his letter, Altshuller spent the next portion of his life contemplating his ideas in the Gulag. During that time, he was accused of a number of subversive activities and treated to various disciplinary tactics. After several years of hardship, the suicide of his disheartened mother and the death of Stalin, he was released from prison and launched into proving out his inventive theories.
Altshuller named his approach to inventing the Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch (TRIZ, pronounced trees), or as translated, the Theory of the Solution of Inventive Problems; which at its core is a set of objective laws governing the evolution of technical systems, and a set of processes and tools for solving technical problems based on those laws. His unique approach was so unconventional, that it took nearly 10 years before it began to gain acceptance. He began writing letters in 1959 to the leading patent organization in the Soviet Union, the All Union Society of Inventors and Innovators (yes, there is a difference, as explained on page 64). It wasn’t until 1968, in Dsintart, Georgia, that the first TRIZ seminar was held.
The founder of the Leningrad University of Technical Creativity, Voluslav Mitrofanov, was known to tell the story of a renowned Leningrad inventor, Robert Anglin, who developed over 40 inventions using the trial and error method. After attending his first TRIZ seminar, and after all the participants had gone home, Anglin was found sitting at a table with his head in his hands, muttering “How much time was wasted! If only I had known TRIZ earlier!” But the same slow acceptance has not been unique to the former Soviet Union. There has been a similar lengthy acceptance curve across the globe; the TRIZ tools have just recently begun to become mainstream here in the U.S.
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The Early Days of Radio and Aviation Pioneer Bill Lear
“What is it?“, asked Galvin Manufacturing Company president Paul Galvin as he leaned closer to inspect the cylindrical metal device that had been placed on his desk. Two long cords protruded curiously out one side.
“It’s an automobile radio“, came the reply from his chief engineer Bill Lear, who had been tinkering with the idea for years. While the core design was essentially complete, there were still a number of significant technical problems to solve, including how to eliminate the crackling noises that accompanied the firing of each spark plug.
“They’ll never be allowed in cars, there’ll be laws against them.“
Richard Rashke, author of the Lear biography Stormy Genius, correctly noted that both men would turn out to be right. Lear thought the idea of playing music in cars would sooth the driver, and help reduce stress in heavy traffic. But traffic experts were predicting that there would be widespread restrictions against their use. St. Paul would go on to ban the units, and New York City would place restrictions on their use in taxi cabs. One traffic authority wrote: “Imagine fifty automobiles in a city street broadcasting a football game. Such a thing as this, I am sure, would not be tolerated by city traffic authorities.“
But the public was wild about radio technology in the 1920s, and having a radio in the car was the next iteration of this popular new phenomenon. The radio would save Galvin’s company from going under following Black Thursday on October 24, 1929. “Lear and Galvin named their invention the Motorola because, unlike the home console radios including the Audiola and Radiola, it was specifically designed to be installed in cars. Galvin would later rename his company after the company’s flagship product.
Whenever young Willy had any spare change, he would rush down to the local supply store, in Hannibal, Illinois, and buy parts for his crystal radios. His mother Gertrude would scold him for wasting money. When he would stop to appease her, she would chide him for not finishing what he had started. “You’ll end up a good-for-nothing, just like your father“, she would admonish.
In 1908, when Willy was 6, Gertrude left his father Ruben, a lackadaisical carpenter, in favor of Otto Kirmse, who managed to hold a steady job. During his childhood, Gertrude was very strict with Willy, and warned him, among other things, not to talk with girls. She told him that girls were evil, and that if she ever caught him with one there would be hell to pay. One time, Willy made the mistake of giving a girl a ride home from school, on the handlebars of his bicycle. When Gertrude caught him, she promptly beat him with a broomstick and confiscated the bike.
Willy sought refuge in the Hiram Kelly Library, near West Sixty-fourth street, where he would spend long hours reading Tom Swift and Horatio Alger novels, including tales about young heroes who went from rags to riches. His other outlet was his radio experiments. By age 12, he had built a complete radio set with earphones, learned Morse code, and built a telegraph with a twenty-five cent Gelena crystal and storage batteries made of old Mason jars.
Willy dropped out of high school after only a few months, in part because he felt that he knew more about radios that his teachers. At 18, he ran away from home, seeking to put as much distance between his mother and himself as possible. Hollywood, California was his destination, where he planned to become a movie star, acting out the roles that he so often read about. He made it as far as Denver before he ran out of money. Not yet ready to admit defeat, he enlisted in the Navy.
The early 1920’s was when Americans first discovered radio, and it was a smashing hit. In November, 1920—the same month that Willy joined the Navy—Westinghouse engineer Dr. Frank Conrad set up a 50-watt transmitter in a small wooden shed on top of the Westinghouse building, and tallest building in Pittsburgh. Although nobody knew exactly how many crystal radios were in operation, Conrad decided to experiment by broadcasting the returns from the Warren Harding - James Cox election, mixing in music from a Victrola between the results. The broadcast started at 6 pm on November 2nd, and ran through 12 noon the following day. Soon after, letters began pouring in to Conrad, who responded by creating the first regularly scheduled broadcast on the station KDKA. Conrad’s program, which ran from 8:30 to 9:30 each night, was alone on the airwaves until June of 1921.
WBZ in Springfield Massachusetts, and WJZ in Newark were among the nine additional start ups to join KDKA. The first broadcasts were done using huge horn shaped microphones—some as long as 8 feet—which represented music well enough, but the human voice was difficult to understand. It was not uncommon for broadcasters to stick their heads partially down into the horn, trying to get better results. The number of crystal sets soon doubled, from an estimated 30,000 to 60,000, among them the Westinghouse cabinet model, the Aeriola Jr., which featured headphones and sold for $25 to $50.
After Willy joined the Navy, he was stationed at the Great Lakes Training Station, just north of Chicago, right back where he had started from. He quickly grew bored with his assignment, serving as a wireless instructor, and jumped at the offer for an early discharge when the Navy announced that it was cutting back. He went back home to Gertrude and Otto, who welcomed him back with no questions asked.
In 1922, the family moved to Plainville, Illinois, following the death of his father who had managed to develop a wheat and corn farm there. One day, as Willy was walking down main street in the neighboring Quincy, he saw a shop with home radio parts in the window. Willy entered the shop and proceeded to tell the owner, Clifford Reed, that he was a radio engineer and wanted to sell radios for him.
Although the boy was not well dressed, Reed sensed something sincere about him and gave him a job. At the time, tube sets were scarce, and Willy’s primary duty was to help customers select the right parts for their crystal radios (and single-tube units), that they would then assemble at home. He moved to Quincy, into the second story of a small carriage house, where, in exchange for rent, he taught the landlord’s son how to build radios. When he wasn’t working in the store, he was repairing and building custom radios at home.
One of the customers who he built a radio for, Julius Buerkin, was a building contractor who spotted Lear’s potential and offered him a business partnership. Lear would operate his own radio shop, helping customers assemble radios, and Buerkin would provide the financing. Deciding to take him up on this offer, Lear soon posted a small ad in the Quincy Daily Herald that read: “QRL - Quincy Radio Laboratories - 645 Hampshire.“
What made QRL truly innovative was the basement workshop that it made available for customers to assemble their own equipment. Customers would buy parts on the main floor, then between the hours of 5pm and 10pm they could rent space among the set of 6-foot long work benches. The shop was equipped with work lights, drills, soldering irons, pliers, wire cutters and all the other tools needed. Lear would provide paper templates of radio consoles, with cut-outs for the tuning knob, volume control and on-off switch. Lear hired fellow radio enthusiast Elmer Wavering, specifically to help customers with the assembly activities in the workshop. Wavering would later follow Lear to Galvin’s company and be a key contributor to many of the innovative ideas developed there.
While Lear was making a name for himself in Quincy, the number of radios sold had grown to an estimated 1.5 million, and there were soon over 600 radio stations in operation. The growth was explosive. In only two years, it was estimated that 3 out of 4 households had purchased a unit. RCA had begun to manufacture their new vacuum tubes, the UV-199 and UV-201A, which led to the development of multi-tube sets. These units were sold under the names Magnavox, Vocarola and Audiola. Some had enough amplitude for external speakers, which commonly were goose-necked or tuba shaped, and were often placed on the floor. In 1922 RCA was selling their Radiola units for $50 to $100, and their RCA Aeriola Grand for $400 to $500, with batteries and headphones. These early units were powered by two batteries, an A-battery (the size of a car battery) used for storage, and a smaller B-battery (the size of a cereal box), to supply high voltage.
In their spare time, Lear and Wavering started experimenting with a car radio. The basic design called for using the car battery as the A-battery, and installing a B-battery on the floor behind the driver. While this setup worked just fine while they were parked, the minute the engine was fired up the music was drowned out by a barrage of static, whistles and crackling noises. Adding resistors on the engine spark plugs helped a little, but clearly their design had a long way to go. But the early unit still had some uses. In the evenings they would drive up to Riverview Park, with its expansive view of the Mississippi, where young couples would often hang out. The reception was terrific on cool clear evenings, and the duo would treat the couples to evenings of Harry M. Snodgrass (a.k.a. King of the Ivories), who was an inmate at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson city.
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