Topic of the Month: Substitution
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There a host of ways of stimulating breakthrough thinking, depending upon what your approach to innovation might be. In TRIZ, one of the most powerful ways it to simply take something away and then figure out how to replace its "function", but not the thing itself. This forces a group to look around the system or organization and figure out how to use the resources that might exist elsewhere to accomplish the same end result. In the TRIZ world, we frequently call this technique "trimming".

In the real world, in examples we have pointed out previously in newsletters and workshops, we see the Black and Decker PaintStick(TM) and bank deposits without deposit slips as examples that everyone can identify with. It's not only the positive impact on the user that's important here, but the negative impact on the supplier (of paint trays, of printing paper) who thought there product was indispensable.

It has been interesting to see this kind of thinking play out in the real world in the past year as users of rare earth and other scarce (in terms of global availability) resources have begun to think about the potential impact of a shortage of supply of materials that are essential to certain manufacturing processes.

In last September's issue of Mechanical Engineering (www.asme.org), Stephen Duclos, Chief Scientist and Manager of Materials Sustainability at GE Global Research, along with Jeffrey Otto and Douglas Konitzer, authored an intriguing article on the materials risk factors to all of GE's businesses, impact on GE's revenue, GE's ability to substitute, and GE's ability to pass on cost increases in the event of scarcity.

Each of these categories was force ranked and then turned into a criticality diagram combining the combination of supply and price risk and impact on GE. A specific analysis of the use of rhenium in gas turbines was shown with the various potential approaches including "reverting", "recovering". "recycling", and "reducing". A very systematic and thorough approach to the problem and opportunity.

Why don't you do the same thing for ALL the materials that you use? Not just the ones whose supplies might be threatened! What if all the paper you used were suddenly unavailable? All of your key scientists disappeared? What would you do if one of the key products you buy from someone was outlawed by some new regulation? What would you do?

Go through the same exercise that GE did and fill out the table and create the graph. What new concepts and ideas now come to mind? What new research areas should be explored? With whom should you collaborate with that wasn't obvious before? How would you take advantage of the situation? How could you eliminate the use of the material or resource altogether?

Next public TRIZ class is in Las Vegas, September 26-28 for ASME and AIChE: www.asme.org
I promise no homework in Vegas...

Other travels over the next few months will take us to Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Denver, and Minneapolis--let me know if you want to connect and schedule a TRIZ workshop!