TRIZ is acronym for Russian word "Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadach", which means Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. It started in Soviet Union but later spread to USA and other countries. TRIZ is one of the most profound inventions of 20th century, which is now used by thousands of organizations around the world for innovative problem solving.

TRIZ was originally developed by Genrich Altshuller, a Russian Patent scientist (later known as father of TRIZ). Genrich S. Altshuller was born in the former Soviet Union in 1926. He became a mechanical engineer, served in the Soviet Navy as a patent expert in the 1940s. While helping inventors to apply for patents he screened over 200,000 patents and found the secret of all inventions, TRIZ.

The TRIZ approach is what makes TRIZ different from other methods of problem solving. The fundamental of TRIZ is that "the problem we are facing now, has been faced by many people at different times at different places, and most likely been solved in different ways". The TRIZ approach is "find your solution from those solutions".

The most popular TRIZ tools are the following:

• Inventive Principles,
• Contradictions,
• Ideality,
• Standard solutions,
• Trends of Evolution.

The other tools used by TRIZ are Resources, Functional Analysis etc. Some TRIZ toolkits includes psychological tools, such as, Thinking in Time and Space, Smart Little People, Size-Time-Cost etc. [Please refer to our links to TRIZ tools and techniques and online tools section to know more on TRIZ tools and techniques.]

TRIZ can be used in a number of different ways. The TRIZ process enables users to systematically define and then solve any given problem or opportunity situation. Some users will rigorously apply this process while others prefer extracting individual elements from the overall structure and using those. TRIZ process and techniques are applicable to problems- whether technical or non-technical, simple or complex, whether focused on products, processes or services. TRIZ effectively strips away all boundaries between different scientific, engineering and creative discipline and its effectiveness has been proved across a broad spectrum of fields and problem types.

TRIZ is applied to solve inventive problems in various fields of engineering, chemical, space, management, technology, biochemistry, medical science, Information Technology, Information systems and many more. During Last few years, various organizations, companies and business organizations shown their acceptance to TRIZ and TRIZ based solutions. For more examples on applied TRIZ please click the links on TRIZ resource and the articles section.