Inventive thinking – Part 1 (Overview)

There are many ways an invention can be done, we will discuss most important ones below.

Problem recognition (do you want to solve a problem?)

1. If you find some problem, if they have done it?

Examples:

1. Nursing Pillow (A mom invented for convenient support for baby nursing)
2. Soda can pull over opening (Stay on tab)

Other use cases (solution applied in other domain, find if a concept can be applied elsewhere)

1. Denver boot car lock device (failed originally but police dept used it and became success)

Accidental inventions (keep your eyes and ears open)

1. Sticky notes (3M wanted to develop a very sticky product but somehow it came out weak and idea born for sticky notes).

Trends (follow the trends)

1. Technological (may be possible today but not commercially viable) – In 1993, mp3 player was possible but not feasible because of low memory and high cost. Until 1998, when things became cheap, mp3s were not popular.

2. Social (social changes)
   1. Meal preparation kits
3. Legal (new law create products)
   1. Catalytic converters (patents on recycling, making, etc.)

**Some tools for structured steps to create new inventions.
**

TRIZ – a problem-solving, analysis and forecasting tool derived from the study of patterns of invention in the global patent literature (Wikipedia).

ASIT – Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking is a simplified derivative of TRIZ, developed by Roni Horowitz [1].

Idea Hexagon [2]

Books

A technique for producing ideas

Finding – Interesting ideas

Intersection of interests, skills, demand

References

[1] http://systemicthinking.com/origins/asit.html

[2] http://www.slideshare.net/cameraculture/raskar-ideahexagonapr2010

We will cover more details in the coming up posts in next few weeks as the topic on an invention is too interesting and too broad.