The management consultant Peter Drucker is famous for saying, "Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center."

In other words, for a company … and thus a national economy to grow … you have to create new products through innovation, and then sell them. For a country, you want to sell them overseas via exports. If you just sell them inside the country, you’re not attracting more money into the country but just redistributing money within the country, much as a casino does not create new wealth but just rearranges the ownership of it. But let’s leave aside the topic of exports for now.

How do you increase innovation at a firm? How do you teach people innovation?

One method I support is TRIZ -  Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. Part of my recommendations for  increasing innovation in a nation is making sure engineering students are intorduced to TRIZ.

What is it?

TRIZ was developed by the Russian engineer and researcher Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues starting in 1946. They believed that learning how to invent can be   reduced to a process that can be taught.

Think what that would do to the innovation pipeline of a country, and the effect on the economy! Think about it!

By examining a large database of patented inventions, Altshuller came to the conclusion that inventing is often the removal of a technical contradiction with the help of certain principles. He looked at hundeds of thousands of patents to come up with his principles for solving technical problems, or contradictions, and thereby formulating inventive engineering breakthroughs.

Whenever anyone looks at thousands, or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of anything to come up with basic principles, consistencies or conclusions, I pay attenton. To create a body of learning from this is to create a tremendous resource!

I’ve always felt that this was a key to rejuvenating the US engineering education, or at least making sure that US ingenuity keeps the country at the top of the economic heap since innovation is what’s holding the economy together right now while manufacturing declines. If innovation dies, the economy will soon die, too. So I was very disappointed recently to find out that the Carnegie Foundation rejected a grant to the TRIZ foundation to test the improvement of creativity and innovation in students after they have been exposed to some basic TRIZ knowledge. Very disappointed. When you look at an economy and all its complicated pieces, it’s easy to get lost without being able to identify some of the key joints upon which it swings, and the micro changes that can produce gargantuan changes. TRIZ falls into that category exactly.

I’m disappointed to no end, for our nation’s sake. It reminds me of ham radio popularization in Jordan … Wayne Green, founder of Byte and 73 magazine, helped introduce  ham radio into the country and because of the support of the King and his ministers, years later the country was awash with savvy, technically educated engineers all because of the wise sponsorship of a hobby. Foreign labor no longer needed to be imported and national security was enhanced all because they identified a little joint  upon which they could swing big doors, and oiled that tiny joint at virtually no cost to the country. As a statesmenen, that’s what you look for — low cost, zero cost changes with gigantic positive results. You can go  look up the story of amateur radio in Jordan at www.waynegreen.com.

As to marketing innovation, there are so many sources out there it’s ridiculous, but one Brainstorming video I like people to review is the one put out by Doug Hall’s Eureka Ranch. The process he uses to come up with new products, refined over the years, is exactly what’s need by large corporations who get too large and thereby lose their innovative juices because of all the bureaucracy that gets built in.

TRIZ … and brainstorming. Two things to learn for increased innovation. Improtant for a nation’s economy.

I believe in TRIZ so much that if I was a presidential candidate, I’d make sure this was introduced to schools and engineering colleages. You have to work on causes, not effects, and this is EXACTLY the way to proceed!