TRIZ Paper: Japan TRIZ Symposium 2010 Keynote


TRIZ Activities in Iran: Transfer to a new nationwide paradigm by TRIZ application and promotion
Mahmoud Karimi and Sara Salimi  (Iranian Institute of Innovation & Technological Studies (IIITS), Iran)
The Sixth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, Held by Japan TRIZ Society on Sept. 9-11, 2010 at Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Atsugi, Kanagawa, Japan
Introduction by Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin Univ.), Nov. 28 , 2010
[Posted on Sept 19, 2011] 

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Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, Sept. 17, 2011)

This paper was presented by Mahmoud Karimi a year ago as one of the Keynote Lectures at the Sixth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2010.  In Iran, Karimi and his group have introduced TRIZ by full use of newspapers, magazines, and TV programs and have succeeded in spreading the concepts of TRIZ widely among people.  This is a really amzing story.  Presentation slides are posted in PDF both in English and in Japanese translation (by Hiroshi Sakata), in the Official Site of Japan TRIZ Society and again here in this Web site for wider penetration. 

Last November I posted an introduction to this lecture as a part of my Personal Report of the Symposium.  The excerpt is posted here again in English.  I wish my introduction may be of some help for you to understand the essence of the lecture.

Top of this page Abstract Slides in PDF Slides in Japanese, PDF Nakagawa's Introduction Nakagawa's Personal Report of Japan TRIZ Symp. 2010 Japan TRIZ Symp. 2010 TRIZ Activities in Iran (1) TRIZ Activities in Iran (2) Japanese page

[1] Abstract

TRIZ Activities in Iran: Transfer to a new nationwide paradigm
by TRIZ application and promotion

Mahmoud Karimi and Sara Salimi
(Iranian Institute of Innovation & Technological Studies (IIITS), Iran)

Abstract

A multidisciplinary group of educated people interested in TRIZ as a new strange term and focused on it since then. What have done in Iran about TRIZ and why Medias like TV, Radio and newspapers are used for TRIZ promotion has explained in this paper. The paper is about how people has attracted to ask “What is TRIZ?” and guided to understand its philosophy, methodology and applications in different areas of daily activities to technical problems and business.

In the country of motivated people for learning and thinking, they want to understand the core of philosophy of knowledge before applying any tools. So it was important to explore how a new radical approach of thinking like TRIZ could be believed, accepted, developed and applied. TRIZ has used for solving different problems of its application and promotion nationwide. Several problems at strategic level of Ministry of Education and also simple problems of students in school have experienced TRIZ.

Extended Abstract

Google Trends shows the result of all the searches around the world for a phrase. Result of this tool is a graph and name of some countries, cities and language related to the search location in the world. This online brief survey about TRIZ shows that Iran is in the top of the list (as shown in figure). How it has became so popular and why?

In this paper the story of TRIZ activities in Iran explained. This story will cover several activities from the initial stage of learning this theory to its application in education area and promotion by using Medias like TV, Radio and newspapers and presentation in public and private gatherings like a conference with more than 1000 participants.

Many problems defined in the past decade of TRIZ experiences in Iran and the solutions generated and applied by using this creative methodology.

What was the main problem and why an element of society in a non-governmental and academic institute tried to introduce and influence this approach among other members of society will describe.

The following items show the levels and variety of solved and unsolved problems:

In this paper all of the major TRIZ activities in Iran and their impacts will explain together with some example and cases from people who are now TRIZ followers. Also effectiveness of Media as a unique experience in TRIZ world will discuss.

Fig. 1. Result of search


[2]  Presentation Slides of the Keynote Lecture in PDF

Presentation Slides in English in PDF (58 slides, 6.7 MB)

Presentation Slides in Japanese in PDF (58 slides, 6.3 MB) (Japanese translation by Hiroshi Sakata)

 


[3]  Introduction to the Presentation (by Nakagawa)

Excerpt from: 
Personal Report of The Sixth TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2010, Part A
by Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University),
Posted on Nov. 28 , 2010 in "TRIZ Home Page in Japan"

 

Mahmoud Karimi, Sara Salimi (Iranian Institute of Innovation and Technological Studies (IIITS), Iran) [EI02, K-1] gave the first Keynote Lecture on the first day afternoon with the title of "TRIZ Activities in Iran: Transfer to a New Nationwide Paradigm by TRIZ Application and Promotion". 

This is the first case that an international conference in TRIZ has invited a Keynote Speaker from Iran.  This decision may need special explanation first because it is quite natural that readers of this Personal Report, just like the participants of TRIZ Symposium, would be puzzled with it.  Iran is a developing country in industry and is under some conflict in international politics, and its TRIZ activities have never been presented before out of its border, hence it is natural to suppose that TRIZ is not known well there.  Nevertheless, as being known to several world TRIZ leaders, such as Darrell Mann, Valeri Souchkov, and Nikolai Khomenko, TRIZ has been penetrating in Iran very widely.  I was invited to give a video presentation in their PPST 2006 Conference , and I had a chance of getting acquainted with Mahmoud Karimi at ETRIA TFC2008 .  I was amazed with his TRIZ activities in Iran.  He wrote a draft of presentation for our TRIZ Symposium 2009 , but it arrived at my hand only in December 2009 due to a network trouble. 

On the basis of such information, Japan TRIZ Society decided to invite Mahmoud Karimi as a Keynote Speaker of the Symposium and announced about it in the Call for Papers in February 2010.  To our pleasure he sent us a new articles on his activities prior to the Symposium, and hence I posted them in this site "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" .  These articles were accepted well by readers in Japan and overseas.  The visa for his entering Japan was issued very smoothly in early July by Japanese Government, to our relief. By virtue of these prior information, the Keynote Speaker and his Lecture were accepted warmly at the TRIZ Symposium, to our great pleasure. 

The slide (right) shows the overview of the Keynote Lecture.  The presentation contains many photos and some short videos and is designed very attractive. The overview slide demonstrates vivid records of his activities, e.g., an introductory article published in a newspaper, a photo of the TRIZ seminar in 2001, Late Professor Salimi in a video lecture series, Nikolai Khomenko and the Author in a TV talk show, the auditorium of PPST 2006 conference, the Author talking to the main moderator of Morning Talk Show on the 'Father and Son' strory, and Valeri Souchkov and the Author at a Morning Talk Show.
The article we received first in December 2009 was written in a very formal way without showing his personal contribution.  Thus I asked the Author to talk on his (and his team's) activities more vividly as 'story telling'.  So he wrote two story-telling articles for us later in January and March.  The first manuscript of the Keynote was formal again, so I asked the Author to add more personal sense.  The slide (right) is the one added in response to my request to show the Author's personal history how he got involved in TRIZ.  Mahmoud Karimi has the background of industrial engineering, especially interested in Japanese QCC, KAIZEN, VE, QFD, etc. before much involved in TRIZ.  IIIE is an academic society established by young leaders including the Author. 
The slide (right) shows the history in early days.  The Author was interested in QCC, KAIZEN, TQM, VE, etc. Meanwhile in Tehran Polytechnic University, Late Professor Dr. M. Hosein Salimi was working on KAIZEN, TQM, QFD, Six Sigma, etc.  Around 1998, Late Prof. Salimi and his students encountered TRIZ and were puzzled about it.  The Author's group in IIIE and Late Prof. Salimi's group joined to form IIITS (Iranian Institute of of Innovation and Technological Studies) in 2000.  IIITS is an academic, not-for-profit organization for studying and promoting initially VE and TRIZ but later mostly TRIZ .  In 2001 they organized a TRIZ workshop by a trainer from overseas, but the trainer noticed "I can not come!" just two weeks before the seminar.  So they quickly invited Prof. Miloslava Zinovkina and Dr. Rifkat Gareev from Moskow and carried out their first TRIZ Workshop .

After the official establishment in 2002, IIITS seems to have grown steadily under the direction of Late Prof. Salimi as President and the Author as Vice President.  The Author's introductory articles on TRIZ were published every week in a column of a popular newspaper and also a weekly magazine.  Darrell Mann was invited to Iran for a workshop. The International Conference of Problem Solving Strategies & Techniques (PSST 2006) was a successful conference having 11 panels and over 1000 participants, the Author says (see slide, below left).  I was invited as a Keynote Speaker; being not able to make a trip, I sent a video presentation.  At the PSST my video presentation (13 minutes) (slide, below right) was projected with the Author's introduction.  [*** At the present Symposium, I was happy to see my own video presentation for about 30 seconds.] [Last March 2010, I posted this presentation as the record in PPT slides and in PDF .]  Professor Salimi passed away in 2007, to their sorrow, and his daughter Sara Salimi succeeded the President of IIITS.

 

The side (right) shows the recent part of history, with the focus on TRIZ promotion with mass media.  The items listed here are really amazing: (a) "Introduction of TRIZ" TV series of 5 volumes (35 minutes, each), broadcast several times on Channels of TV4 and TV7.  (b) Live Breakfast Show in TV2 and Night Talk Show in TV4 broadcast more than 160 times (30 minutes each). [**Karimi: 25 minutes to 30 minutes and some time more than that. Also, all the 160 times was not mainly about TRIZ. The approach was creativity in different fields of science and application, education and innovation. TRIZ was the subject of several talk shows in my morning TV experience.]  (c) New projects in TV7 starting in 2010.  etc.

After telling these stories somewhat informally, the Author started his talk more officially, as you see in the PDF file of the presentation .  Maybe I should better quote his Abstract here [Note: the words in [ ] are inserted by Nakagawa]:

A multidisciplinary group of educated people [became] interested in TRIZ as a new strange term and focused on it since then. What have done in Iran about TRIZ and why Media like TV, Radio and newspapers are used for TRIZ promotion has [been] explained in this paper. The paper is about how people has [been] attracted to ask “What is TRIZ?” and guided to understand its philosophy, methodology and applications in different areas of daily activities to technical problems and business. In the country of motivated people for learning and thinking, they want to understand the core of philosophy of knowledge before applying any tools. So it was important to explore how a new radical approach of thinking like TRIZ could be believed, accepted, developed and applied. TRIZ has [been] used for solving different problems of its application and promotion nationwide. Several problems at strategic level of Ministry of Education and also simple problems of students in school have experienced TRIZ.

Postponing Author's philosophical discussions on nation-wide TRIZ activities for a while, I would like to introduce you their activities more concretely. 

The slide (right) makes an overview of their daily activities, which have been carried out already and will be extended further.  Among the activities arranged in a circle, Media are placed at the top.  For each of these activities one by one, the Author describes their own problems and their solutions they applied.

 

The Author wrote in his previous article  about his story how he left the ordinary way of trying to promote TRIZ in individual companies and started to use mass media for wider penetration. He wanted to make TRIZ widely known in newspapers. The slide (right) shows the problem and its ideal solution.  He found the editor in science section of a popular newspaper was his former colleague at IIIE. In 2004 with the support by the editor, the Author worked on a weekly column on TRIZ and creativity.  The contents of the newspaper articles are summarized in the slide (below-left).  The slide (below-right) shows two examples of such articles in the newspaper.  Later he also wrote TRIZ articles regularly in a weekly magazine.  He received a lot of responses from the readers of these newspapers and magazines.  

 

Then IIITS made 5 volume TV series on "Introduction to TRIZ" and broadcast them on TV in 2007.  [**Karimi: To be honest, it was a teamwork project. Sara Salimi, Mr. Mehdi Niroumanesh and Mr. Mohammad Hosein Parvin spent lot of time on it, as well as attention and consideration of late Prof. Salimi. I appeared on this TV series as the main character.]  He further went on to live talk shows on TV!!  The slide (right) demonstrates four snap shots of Morning Talk Show on TV Channel 2.  At the top-left, the Author Mahmoud Karimi was introducing the "Father and Son" TRIZ summer work carried out by Katsuya and Taichiro Miyanishi .  The work "Why Water Striders can stand and slide on the Water?" has become popular in Iran, the Author says.  At the top-right, he talks about TRIZ activities in Japan by showing Nakagawa's photo which I sent him for PSST2006.  At the bottom-right, Valeri Souchkov from the Netherlands is talking on TRIZ with his active gesture.

As you notice the Author says he already made this sort of 30-minutes TV shows more than 160 times!  [**Karimi: As I have mentioned before all of these 160 were not for TRIZ directly. But for around 20 times, with a partner in this talk show we talked about some innovative products or procedure and analyze it on the basis of TRIZ rules and concepts.] It means one or two live TV programs every week.  [**Karimi: This is right that normally I have done this talk show 2 days a week on Sundays and Tuesdays.]

Next slide (right) is another snap shot where Nikolai Khomenko and the Author talking together with the Talk Show moderator. 

It must be very difficult to arrange such a talk show, especially in live broadcasting.  The two slides shown below reveal their key experiences in the radio interviews and also in TV shows.  Talented people and university faculty are invited to radio/TV studio for interview.  The Author, with the background of TRIZ, talk to them by asking questions on the guests' specialties.  The guests, facing with new creative questions based on TRIZ, ask the Author "where did you learn to ask such a question?"  Thus they start talking about TRIZ together and learn/find TRIZ concepts in their specialty fields. 

[*** I recall my experiences in mid 1980s where I visited (as an researcher leading the in-company SW-QC movement) several software development teams for interviewing about their SW-QC activities.  After an interview for about 2 hours, the team leader thanked me saying that he never had chances of talking his own approach in such a full and systematic way.  Asking good questions is always the key to the start of intimate communications.]  

    

The Author and IIITS have carried out various other activities, e.g. publishing TRIZ textbooks, presenting in conferences, giving tutorials, seminars, workshops,etc.  The two slides shown below are examples of such workshops, one for senior mangers of Teheran Municipality and the other for leaders of 'Tehran Teenagers Culture and Art Center'.  It is remarkable in these cases that TRIZ is mainly addressed to society leaders rather than industry engineers.   With the guidance by Nikolai Khomenko they have recently started the promotion of creativity education for kids and parents.

 

With the background of these activities, Sara Salimi, President of IIITS, was recently assigned to be the creativity and innovation advisor of minister in Ministry of Education.  Thus the scope of the Keynote Lecture extends to a 'nationwide paradigm' of TRIZ promotion and application.  [This is a much bigger extension than the current targets of TRIZ communities in other countries, e.g., USA, EU countries, Japan, Korea, etc.] 

The slide (right) shows the key problem in the Author's mind for this direction.  It is to make a unity of all the individual actions directed/encouraged by the National Science & Technology Map. 

The next slide (below) discusses a framework of national plan for the country.  For realizing [the contents of] the National Science & Technology Map, various innovations need to be achieved; such innovations must be supported by thinking principles, culture and civilization, science and experiences, etc. as shown in a bottom box.  Such innovations need to be facilitated by innovator organizations and to be achieved by individual innovators.  The innovator organizations should be facilitated by innovator government, the slide says. 

The slide (right) discusses the type of solutions for the Author's organization (IIITS) to contribute to such a framework vision at national level.  The Authors (M. Karimi and S. Salimi) write "We (IIITS) are non governmental and independent.  [And yet] We wish to affect on top level decisions and plans."  The current [tentative] solution is to "establish/shape a semi consortium joint". 

The next slide (below) shows such a model.  The upper half of the slide represents the conceptual national framework of auditing, advising, and accreditation of the three levels.  As shown in the bottom half of the slide, for the purpose of supporting such framework activities, the Authors envision a "consortium", as a new joint organization for non governmental and independent activities. 

After showing such a nation-wide vision and describing [in section 12 of the Keynote presentation] all the activities the Authors have carried out, the Authors discuss about the current results and how to make their own Innovation activities sustainable.  The slide (below-left) summarizes the current status of TRIZ in Iran in the form of feedbacks from organizations and from people.  The Authors have received requests from organizations to deploy TRIZ in the organization's master plan and strategic plan.  It is remarkable that such organizations include Iran Broadcasting System (IRIB), TV Channel, Police University, Ministry, etc.  These are not private industries but public organizations who are very influential on society.  They received a lot of feedbacks from ordinary and talented people.  The statistics by Google Trends reveals that Iran is the country who has made a largest number of Web search with the keyword of 'TRIZ'.  The slide (below-right) discussing how to make their activities sustainable is also very thoughtful.  We need to consider TRIZ laws of evolution in promoting TRIZ.  We need to have an Ideal system [for promoting/applying TRIZ in the whole country]; thus such a system must be 'self-service and dynamic'.  For making the system self-service, collaboration of talented interest people is the key.  And a Road Map for everyone and the whole system is helpful and necessary.   

 

*** Keynote Lecture was given vividly with many photos and some videos.  It is a real surprise for us all that in Iran TRIZ has already been made so popular among intellectual people by using newspapers, magazines, radios, TVs, etc.  [**Karimi: I would like to mention that all of our activities are done by a team and several people who attracts on TRIZ and touch its useful result tries to help for promotion. Especially in IIITS we work together; one acts as the leader in every field and other support him/her.]

The Author, Mahmoud Karimi, wrote his story  of starting to use the mass media after being bothered by replying always basic questions to industry managers. His initial solution was "So we discover the solution as a “column”. If we have a weekly column for TRIZ we can go closer to ideality."  I recall that Mr. Altshuller's solution around 1960 for penetrating his ideas of TRIZ was also a weekly column in a newspaper.  Writing an article in a newspaper every week must be a very stressful task for the author.  I am writing probably more than 10 pages every month (in an average) for this Web site, but the task gives me less stress because the writing is not a duty, not fixed in schedule, not so widely known, and not quite regular.  My choice is practical and easier for me, but consequently it is less influential on people in society.  I admire Mahmoud for his work of writing a weekly column in a newspaper, and of his going ahead to have regular weekly program on TV.  He has such a talent of writing on a variety of topics and of talking with different people, as the result of his serious study and vision and passion.  He is now trying to make all the activities sustainable; his strategy is to make them self-service and dynamic by the collaboration of interested people.  We can learn a lot from his approach.

This Keynote Lecture gave deep impressions on the participants.  This was a highlight of the Symposium.  We are very happy with, honored by, and proud of this Keynote Lecture.  Please read the original presentation slides in PDF  posted already in the Official Web site of Japan TRIZ Society.  The slides were translated into Japanese by Dr. Hiroshi Sakata (Hitachi) and posted there also in PDF [**Karimi: Referring to the feedback I received in the symposium about impression from video of Boy and Coin maybe the reader likes to hear about it too. This story generated with 4 more stories as the creative short stories for the 90 minutes Story-Documentary video in TV5.]

[Note: We have now posted the original presentation slides in the present Web site in English and in Japanese . (Sept. 17, 2011)]

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Last updated on Sept. 19, 2011.     Access point:  Editor: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp