Topic of the Month: Kindle™ and Books: The TRIZ Lessons
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Once in a while a truly profound news article or business development grabs our attention and the recent announcement from Amazon is certainly of this nature. Last month, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Kindle(R) electronic books outsold its hardbound books by nearly 2 to 1. Part of this is explained by the decision to drop the price below $200, but this is still an amazing statistic. Given this trend, how would you like to be:
1. A paper supplier?
2. An ink supplier?
3. A supplier of polymer coatings to the paper industry?
4. A supplier of printing machine parts?
5. A maintenance service supplier to a book publisher?

On the other hand, how would you like to be:
1. A supplier of LCD's and their components?
2. Leather covers for an electronic book? Antenna supplier?
3. Inventor of a system that allows electronic books to be read at the beach with bright sunlight?
4. Supplier of satellite components and parts?
5. Knowledgeable about repairing dropped LCD displays?

How would you like to now be able to:
1. Distribute information to someone based on where they are? (The downloader knows!)
2. Suggest or find other books that are immediately downloadable written by the same author? ("and if you order in the next 10 minutes ...”)
3. Provide a discount coupon based on where the E-book is being read?
4. Provide the reader the ability to transmit something in the E-book to someone else on demand?
5. Immediately send an alert to a cell phone about an E-book left behind somewhere?

This invention (and its cousins from other book suppliers) illustrates many TRIZ principles:
1. The Ideal Final Result (IFR): The "book" performs its function and doesn't exist
2. Resource identification and use: The ability to transmit instantaneously, via satellite, downloadable reading material
3. 9-Box System Integration: The conventional book is absorbed into the system of mini-computers, a super-system of the book.
4. Field migration from mechanical and chemical (binding and printing) to electronic and electromagnetic
5. Another IFD concept: The customer receives only the book that they want when they want it and where they want it.

Don't let your business and products become hardbound books. Ask yourself:
1. What could replace me?
2. What's needed for this to happen?
3. Is it available?
4. Do I know anything about it?
5. What am I going to do to accelerate this transition to ride the wave and not be drowned by it? How can I take advantage of it?