40 Inventive (Business) Principles With Examples

Introduction

Interest in the possible applicability of TRIZ tools and techniques to the world of management and organisational innovation issues continues to grow. The aim of this article is to place the 40 Inventive Principles of TRIZ in the context of this business environment. The format of the article is based closely on an earlier text (1) in which examples of technical deployment of the Principles were given.
The 40 Inventive Principles provide innovators with systematic and potent means of breaking out of current paradigms into often exciting and beneficial new ones (2). The article will attempt to demonstrate that the same psychological inertia busting benefits may also accrue when the Principles are applied in a business rather than a purely engineering context.
Set in a business context, the 40 Inventive Principles exhibit a number of similarities and differences relative to their use in technical problem solving applications. Probably the biggest difference is that, as yet at least, there is no ‘business’ version of the Contradiction Matrix to help filter the number of Principles which may be applicable in a given specific circumstance. The biggest similarity is that ‘serious’ TRIZ is hard work and this version of the 40 Principles, therefore, exists merely to stimulate creative thinking about business situations and is not meant to eliminate the need for detailed, in-depth analysis of a particular inventive situation.
To use these 40 Inventive Principles, formulate your problem using the same methods used for TRIZ for technical problems. It will be particularly helpful to formulate the ideal final result and the reasons that the ideal cannot be achieved. This will usually lead to contradictions. For example, in a customer service situation, the ideal final result is "The customer gets exactly what she needs exactly when she needs it." The analysis might follow this path:

"But, I can't give it to her because my employees don't have all the knowledge."
"Why not?"
"Because employee turnover is so fast that un-trained employees are used."
This analysis reveals several potential problems and families of solutions:
The customer gets what she needs without (direct) help of employees.
The employees have the knowledge without training
The trained employees don't leave the job.

Now use the 40 principles to look for solutions to each of these categories of problems, then select the one (or more) that has the highest probability of working in this situation. When applying the 40 inventive principles keep in mind the TRIZ concepts of removing the reason for the contradiction, and using the available resources.
It is a good idea to use the principles in random order (don't read the list from 1 to 40 each time!) to keep your thinking independent.
http://www.triz-journal.com/archives/1999/09/a/index.htm