"Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ)" has been developed and systematized since 1946 in ex-USSR and has become known to the western countries after the end of the Cold War as a new methodology for technological innovation. It is based on the philosophy: "Improvements, innovations, and evolutions of technologies share some common aspects across their fields and their eras. Thus, by extracting such shared essences out of a large number of excellent cases, and by making them easy to retrieve after classification, we may reuse them for facilitating new development of technologies. Especially, excellent cases of technology innovation can be understood in a number of patterns of breaking through the contradictions in the problem; such patterns provide us hints for our own creative innovation."

This paper was originally published in "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" in Feb 1999. Reposted in trizsite.com under the permission by Dr. Nakagawa, Editor, TRIZ Home Page in Japan. For original contents please refer /eintroduction980517.html at author’s site.

The author believes that for introducing TRIZ into Japanese industries we should master and apply USIT first because of its easiness to learn and apply. The present paper describes about the USIT methodology, in accordance to its problem solving steps by illustrating some application examples. ...

This paper was originally published in “TRIZ Home Page in Japan” in Apr 2000. Reposted in trizsite.com under the permission by Dr. Nakagawa, Editor, TRIZ Home Page in Japan. For original contents please refer /eUSITJSDE000424.html at author’s site.

TRIZ is a technological philosophy born in the former USSR and is a methodology for creative problem solving. TRIZ has extracted principles of invention from analysis of a huge body of patent bases, has revealed laws of evolution of technical systems, and has established general procedures for problem solving, especially for solving contradictions. The key to penetration of TRIZ into industries is its simplification. The present paper expresses the essence of TRIZ concisely, and introduces USIT as an easier procedure for creative problem solving containing such TRIZ' essence.

This paper was originally published in “TRIZ Home Page in Japan” in Jan 2002. Reposted in trizsite.com under the permission by Dr. Nakagawa, Editor, TRIZ Home Page in Japan. For original contents please refer /eintrojcs011104.html at author’s site.

As Solution Generation methods, TRIZ has provided a large number of techniques and principles: 40 Principles of Invention, 76 Standards of Inventive Solutions, Trends of Evolution of Technological Systems, Separation Principle, etc. This shows the richness in TRIZ, but also makes pitfalls of difficulty and confusion. In the present study all these TRIZ methods are reclassified in the framework of USIT (Unified Structured Inventive Thinking). USIT has only five Solution Generation Methods: i.e. Object Pluralization, Attribute Dimensionality, Function Distribution, Solution Combination, and Solution Generalization Methods. It is remarkable that the huge variety of TRIZ methods are smoothly mapped onto these five USIT methods. The USIT Solution Generation Methods are now enhanced much with TRIZ-origin methods and have clear guidelines. Thus the present work has reorganized TRIZ into a much simpler yet more effective process for problem solving: namely, USIT.

This paper was originally published in “TRIZ Home Page in Japan” in ”, Nov. 2002. Reposted in trizsite.com under the permission by Dr. Nakagawa, Editor, TRIZ Home Page in Japan. For original contents please refer /eetria02usit0209.html at author’s site.

The 'Four-Box Scheme' of problem solving has long been regarded as a standard in TRIZ and science and technologies in general. Now that a huge number of models and knowledge bases have been accumulated, the Scheme has been found lacking in the meaningful general description of the contents of the four boxes. The present author has proposed the 'Six-Box Scheme of Creative Problem Solving' on the basis of detailed description of the overall structure of the USIT methodology. The procedure for performing the Scheme is already well established in the form of USIT. Implications of the 'Six-Box Scheme' with USIT are discussed in comparison with the 'Four-Box Scheme' with traditional TRIZ.

This paper was originally published in “TRIZ Home Page in Japan” in Nov 2006. Reposted in trizsite.com under the permission by Dr. Nakagawa, Editor, TRIZ Home Page in Japan. For more details please refer /eNakaTRIZSymp-USIT061025.html at the author's site.