Chapter 4
Applying the Trends of Technical Evolution
The Trends of Technical Evolution are one of the most exciting and easy-to-use tools in TRIZ. Anyone who has to develop new products or services will find them both incredibly powerful and useful, as they help predict the future of technical systems.
The Trends are a broad tool, offering you directions and suggestions of routes forward; you need to use your domain knowledge, expertise, skill and creativity to turn the conceptual solutions of the Trends into practical new solutions, but they’re the most focused and successful method for helping you lift your head and look to the future.
The Trends of Technical Evolution are one of the TRIZ tools based on extensive research and patent analysis. As soon as the 40 Principles (outlined in Chapter 3) had been uncovered, the TRIZ community turned their attention to the development of systems. What they observed was that technical systems tend to evolve following the same certain patterns; that is, systems in very different applications and industries nonetheless follow similar stages of development. Like the 40 Principles, these patterns were uncovered, not invented, from across many different technologies and industries.
The Trends are analogous to the evolution of biological systems: after a system has been ‘born’ or invented and launched on the market, it must adapt according to ...
Get TRIZ For Dummies now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
