Last Updated:  May 16, 2012             http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/
	Editor:  Toru Nakagawa    (Professor Emeritus, Osaka Gakuin Univ.)   Last Updated:  May 16, 2012       http://www.osaka-gu.ac.jp/php/nakagawa/TRIZ/eTRIZ/

This home page serves as an open forum of information exchange for better understanding and usage of TRIZ ("Theory of Inventive Problem Solving"), especially based in Japan.  Readers' contributions are very welcome, including introductory articles, papers, technical reports, case studies, news and topics, questions, comments, etc.  (Established on November 1, 1998. )

Pages under this directory are the English versions.  Click the hyper-linked keywords or the  buttons.

visits since Nov. 1, 2005

Pages written in Japanese are accessible by clicking the  buttons.   Best efforts are tried for two-way translation between English and Japanese, but some pages appear only in either of the languages.  

Guide to General Index   General Index    Disaster

General index

New Information

Introduction to TRIZ

TRIZ References

TRIZ Links

TRIZ News & Activities

TRIZ Software Tools

TRIZ Papers and Tech Reports

TRIZ Lectures

TRIZ Forum

General index

New Information    [Articles posted/updated within these 6 months.  marks within 3 months.]

-- TRIZ/USIT Paper: TRIZ in Japan (Toru Nakagawa (OGU))    (Mar. 31, 2012)

Keynote Lecture presented at PSST 2012 held at Tehran, Iran, on Feb. 22-23, 2012.
The Keynote was requested to describe "How TRIZ entered to Japan, What has happened in the story of your country with TRIZ, and What are predicted for future". Thus I tried to present the history of introducing and penetrating TRIZ in Japan, from a public standpoint with my own view by using 16 slides.  Besides the PDF file of the sides , I posted Abstract and annotated slides in HTML for your better understanding.  No translation into Japanese is planned.

--  TRIZ Forum: Messages from Readers: On One-year Anniversary of the 3.11 Japan Disaster and on the Occasion of Professor Nakagawa's Retirement from Osaka Gakuin University   (Mar. 23; Apr. 9, 2012)

S. Saleem Arshad (Australia), and many others, Jan.- Mar., 2012
(Added: Apr. 9, 2012)  many others. Mar.- Apr. 2012.
Last January and recently in March, I have received a number of messages from my readers and TRIZ colleagues.  I would like to post some of them here, either in the English page or in the Japanese page, with sincere thanks. 

--  TRIZ/USIT Paper: Creative Problem-Solving Methodologies TRIZ/USIT: Overview of My 14 Years in Research, Education, and Promotion (Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University))   (Mar. 13, 2012), (Mar. 23, 2012)

This article is an overview of my activities for the 14 years (from Apr. 1998 to Mar. 2012) while I have been working for Osaka Gakuin University.  On retiring the University by the end of March at the preset age (70) (+ 1 extra), I wrote it for a Bulletin of OGU, and am posting it here in Japanese and in English translation.  PDF  (32 pages, 795  KB).  Its  Abstract is:
"The core of my working activities has been the research on TRIZ and USIT. I have attended and presented at international conferences on TRIZ every year, and extended USIT (i.e. a unified and simplified TRIZ) further to find a new paradigm called 'Six-Box Scheme' for creative problem solving. In the field of education, besides several other classes on ordinary information science, I have been teaching on this theme in a lecture class and also in 3rd and 4th year seminars, where my students and I have made several successful case studies of solving familiar problems.
On the basis of these research and education, I have been working for the promotion of penetration of TRIZ and USIT. I established a public Web site "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" and have been operating it for these 13 years. Founding and joining the Japan TRIZ Society, we have held 'TRIZ Symposium in Japan' annually. With further development and wider penetration, the methodologies of creative problem solving will support the movement of technological innovation and will cultivate human resources having the capability of creative thinking, I hope."

I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the people who have been supporting me for these years.
Even after my formal retirement, Osaka Gakuin University will kindly continue to support me operating this "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" and using my email address at OGU just as before.  I wish to keep my activities going on as long as my health allows me. 

-- TRIZ/USIT Talk Slides:  Overview of My 14 Years in Research, Education, and Promotion (Toru Nakagawa (OGU)) (Mar. 31, 2012)

The 38 slides of my talk on Mar. 17 to my colleagues of Faculty of Informatics, OGU, for one hour. The talk is a summary of the full paper posted above. I put slightly more weights on introducing TRIZ/USIT than on reporting education and promotion activities.  HTML pages   and PDF files

-- TRIZ News: TRIZ Conferences in the World: Reports and Plans (Mar. 6, 2012)

Iran: PSST 2012 was held on Feb. 22-23, 2012 in Tehran, Iran  (Mar. 6, 2012)

Korea: 3rd Global TRIZ Conference 2012 in Korea (KoreaTRIZCON2012) is to be held by KATA (Korea Academic TRIZ Association), jointly with ICSI2012 (3rd International Conference of Systematic Innovation) to be held by Systematic Innovation Society (based in Taiwan), on Jul. 10-12, 2012 in Seoul. (Nov. 18, 2011; Mar. 6, 2012)

MATRIZ (Russia):  The 8th International Research Conference "TRIZfest 2012" will be held on Aug. 2-4, 2012 in Finland. (Mar. 6, 2012)

Europe: ETRIA TFC 2012 will be held on Oct. 24-26, 2012 at Lisbon, Portugal   (Mar. 6, 2012)

-- Report: Evolution of Safety Technologies of Automobiles (Yuuki Yamada (2nd-year Student, Osaka Gakuin University)) (Mar. 6, 2012)

The Author is a student of Nakagawa's two classes; Seminar IIA on "A variety of Input devices and methods -- Learning the evolution of technologies" and Lecture class on "Methodologies for creative problem solving".  This article was submitted to the latter class.  He has chosen the report theme for himself and has written an excellent survey report.  He surveys the current status and near future of automobile safety technologies by referring to home pages of various makers, and interpret such technologies in terms of 40 Principles of TRIZ.  He also suggests a proposal of temporary floating behavior on water in case of some emergencies.  I am very happy to post it here in my Web site.

-- TRIZ/USIT Lecture Notes: Methodologies of Creative Problem Solving (A Series of 14 Lectures) (Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin Univ.)) (Jan. 22, 2012)

Lecture Notes of a series of 14 lectures given to the Sophomore Students of Faculty of Informatics, Osaka Gakuin University at the "Scientific Information Methodologies" Class, Oct. 2010 - Jan. 2011. Detailed texts of the 14 lectures are posted in PDF in the Japanese page.  Using TRIZ and USIT as the backbone, I am teaching methodologies of creative problem solving in a wider scope. Table of Contents is shown in English.  You may read in English some more detail of the class in my ETRIA TFC2007 paper .  

-- Announcements:  Publication Announcements of TRIZ Books: "TRIZ Practices and Benefits" Book Series, Etc., Involved by Toru Nakagawa (Jan. 22, 2012)

The TRIZ publications involved by Toru Nakagawa and published by Sozo Kaihatsu Initiatives (SKI) are summarized.  Here are 5 books in Japanese Editions translated by Nakagawa et al. :
[1] Darrell Mann: "Hands-On Systematic Innovation", Japanese Edition, Jun. 2004.
[2] Darrell Mann et al: "Matrix 2003", Japanese Edition, Apr. 2005.
[3] Larry Ball: "Hierarchical TRIZ Algorithms", Japanese Edition, Translated by Toshio Takahara & T. Nakagawa, Sept. 2007 (CD-R)
[4] Umakant Mishra: "TRIZ Principles for Information Technology", Japanese Edition, Jan. 2012 (CD-R)
[5] Darrell Mann: "Matrix 2010", Japanese Edition, Feb. 2012

-- TRIZ Books (Announcement of Publication): Japanese Edition of Darrell Mann: "Matrix 2010" -- Publication Announcement (Plan) (Jan. 22, 2012)

Translated by Toru Nakagawa (OGU), (to be) Published by Sozo Kaihatsu Initiative (SKI), Feb. 2012 (plan)
In 2000, Darrell Mann and Simon Dewulf (CREAX) initiated a big research project of analyzing all the US patents granted since 1985 for revising TRIZ knowledge bases.  One of their results was "Matrix 2003" which was an entire update of the Altshuller's Contradiction Matrix.  Darrell Mann (Systematic Innovation) has kept the project's activities and recently published an up-to-date edition "Matrix 2010", for maintaining higher-than-90% appropriateness of the Inventive Principles suggested by the Matrix.  He says they have analyzed more than 3 million patents so far.  The number of parameters has increased from 39 to 48 to 50, and the number of suggested principles in each cell is now up to 9 in comparison to max 4 in the original Matrix.  Once you understand the great vision of Contradiction Matrix by Altshuller, why don't you utilize its up-to-date edition "Matrix 2010".  

-- TRIZ Forum: Contributed article: From Encountering TRIZ to Deeper Understanding (My TRIZ Learning History): Towards a Unified Methodology of Problem Solving for Resolving Various Contradictions (Youichi Hasegawa) (Dec. 5, 2011)

Nowadays, especially after the disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant accident, we have many and complex contradictions in Japan in its social, economical, and political aspects.  For solving such contradictions, methodologies for problem solving should be penetrated and applied widely in some unified and simple-to-learn forms of techniques, Youichi Hasegawa says.  For a step toward such a unified methodology, Hasegawa has contributed to this Web site an article which introduces his personal history of learning TRIZ.  He encountered TRIZ and USIT in 2006 through his colleagues in his company and learned various TRIZ references, especially the ones posted and introduced in "TRIZ Home Page in Japan", for himself step by step.  Reading such references, he tried to understand them with digesting and examining and to incorporate them in his understanding of problem-solving methodologies.  He now has a hope of unifying currently-different methodologies, e.g., QFD, TRIZ/USIT, TOC, Hatamura's method, Breakthrough Thinking, etc., into a much simpler and universal one.  This article is an excellent case study of learning TRIZ/USIT step by step and obtaining a much wider vision of problem-solving methodology.  We thank Youichi Hasegawa for his contribution.  In Japanese, only.

-- TRIZ Forum: Interview: First-time Experience of Participating and Presenting in English at International Conference, ETRIA TFC 2011, Ireland (Ayano Sato (Shibaura Inst. Tech.); Interviewer: Toru Nakagawa) (Dec. 5, 2011)

Ms. Ayano Sato, 2nd year Graduate Student, attended at ETRIA TFC 2011 and gave a very nice presentation.  So Nakagawa interviewed her just after her presentation and also communicated with her via emails later.  She says:  She wanted (without being pushed) to give the presentation.  She used to be very shy and did not like studying English language, but at her 2nd year of high school her parents arranged her to go and study at an English language school in USA for 2 weeks.  During the stay she realized the necessity of communicating in English, and started to learn English for herself.  She met much difficulty to pass the review process of TFC.  The keyword 'Kando' in Japanese was especially difficult for her to present to the reviewer and to the audience.  ('Kando' is a very deep and strong impression which moves the person later even for years.)  When a number of audience said 'Nice talk!' to her, she felt much relieved and delighted.  She found people at TFC talked about TRIZ much positively and widely than she learned so far in Japan, and she was impressed by aggressive TRIZ activities in Korea. -- I wish that Ayano's young and fresh heart/mind gives 'Kando' to readers of this TRIZ site in Japan.  (Only in Japanese.)

-- TRIZ Forum: From Readers: Participation Reports of ETRIA TRIZ Future Conference 2011 (by 6 Japanese Participants) (Koichi Makino, Heikan Izumi, Manabu Sawaguchi (Waseda Univ.), Ayano Sato, Hiroshi Hasegawa (Shibaura Inst. Tech.) and Toru Nakagawa (OGU) (Dec. 5, 2011)

The ETRIA TFC2011 was held on Nov 2-4, 2011 in Dublin, Ireland.  Six people from Japan attended at it and delivered 5 presentations.  Here are the reports written by all the members individually.  Four members who attended at TFC for the first time report their strong, positive impressions.  In Japanese.

-- TRIZ News: TRIZ Conferences in the World: Reports and Plans (Nov. 18, 2011)

USA:  Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies is going to hold TRIZCON2011 on Nov. 28-29, 2011 in Detroit, Michigan

Europe:  ETRIA TFC 2011 was held on Nov. 2-4, 2011 in Dublin, Ireland.  (about 120 participants)   .  Next: ETRIA TFC 2012 will be held in Nov., 2012 at Lisbon, Portugal. 

Korea: 3rd Global TRIZ Conference 2012 in Korea (KoreaTRIZCON2012) is to be held by KATA (Korea Academic TRIZ Association), jointly with ICSI2012 (3rd International Conference of Systematic Innovation) to be held by Systematic Innovation Society (based in Taiwan), on Jul. 10-12, 2012 in Seoul.

-- TRIZ Case Study: Problem Solving in Everyday Life: On Methods and Tools for Weeding (or Removing Weeds) (Takahisa Miyake, Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin Univ.)) (Nov. 18, 2011)

Presented at 7th TRIZ Symposium in Japan (Sept. 8-10, 2011, Yokohama), and also at ETRIA TRIZ Future Conference (Nov. 2-4, 2011, Dublin, Ireland).  Extended Abstract: , Presentation slides
'Removing weeds' has been a much labor work since ancient days.  It appears to be a simple problem at first sight, but actually is a complex problem containing a diversity of requirements.  Thus in the present study we have considered to reveal the problem in various aspects, such as purposes, goals of finishing, problem situations (e.g., ground, sorts of weeds, distributions of crops and weeds, etc.) and have thought of a variety of methods in the aspects of their intentions, tools, mechanisms, etc. and have evaluated the methods.  The paper stress that before trying to solve a specific problem, we need to understand the structure of the problem from such a variety of aspects, regardless of using TRIZ or not. 

-- Message and Article from China: "TRIZ Situations in China" ( Xian-yong Zhou (Southwest Jiaotong Univ., China)) and
A brief but valuable report from mainland China:  'TRIZ was introduced into China about 1998, but was known to only limited number of academic people for next 9 years.  In 2007, the TRIZ situation has greatly changed when the Ministry of Science and Technology recognized TRIZ as the Innovation Method and started its promotion actively.  Two provinces, Heilongjiang and Sichuan, became the 'Pilot Provinces' of innovation methods, and Innovation Method Society (IMS) was established under the Ministry for the purpose of research, development, and penetration of Innovation Method (i.e., TRIZ).  At least three conferences/seminars in China are operated for high level communications on TRIZ, though not yet international.'  PDF in English , in Chinese , and in Japanese translation .
Attached: “The Research and Popularization of TRIZ in Mainland China: the Situation and Problems” by Guang Chen (Southwest Jiaotong University, China), 2009. (in Chinese)
[Note: An earlier Chinese translation of Altshuller's book in 1987 is now noted. (Dec. 5, 2011)]

-- On the 13th Anniversary of  "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" (Toru Nakagawa (Osaka Gakuin University)) (Oct. 28, 2011)

This Web site "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" celebrates on Nov. 1 its 13th Anniversary together with readers in Japan and over the world.  This site is to promote the understanding and real usage of TRIZ by openly publishing information and communications related to TRIZ on a not-for-profit basis.  Though I have been operating this site as a volunteer, this site is not a personal site but a public forum to be composed of the contributions by readers, as you see already.  Most pages are published in Japanese and in English in parallel for the purpose of mutual understanding and collaboration between Japanese and overseas TRIZ learners/practitioners.  After the March 11 Japan Disaster, many people overseas sent us kind messages of prayers and encouragements, which were posted here both in Japanese and in English pages , with thanks.  I envisage that Pubic Web Sites built in different TRIZ Communities will form A Global TRIZ Community with much reduced language barriers .  The number of visits since November 2005 is at moment 157,252 to the top page in Japanese and 26,319 to that in English.  Readers' contributions either in English or in Japanese are heartily welcome.

-- Forum: Conference Report (24): Personal Report of The Seventh TRIZ Symposium in Japan, 2011 (Held by the Japan TRIZ Society on Sept. 8-10, 2011, in Yokohama) (Toru Nakagawa (OGU)) (Oct. 28, 2011)

The Japan TRIZ Symposium 2011 was held with the participation of 115 people (including 11 from overseas countries) and 40 presentations.  The Symposium is reported here personally in English (and its brief summary in Japanese).  I am going to post my reports in about 10 categories step by step from now on to review all the presentations.  This Parent page reports the outline of the Symposium and its organizing policies.  I wish that my Personal Report convey you how TRIZ is understood, applied, and promoted in Japan and in the World.  I sincerely thank you, all the TRIZ people in the world, for your prayers, encouragements, and support especially after the March 11 Japan Disaster.

General Index    [Categorized table of all articles (in English/Japanese) accessible with a single click.] 

Category (Link to General Index (short form))	brief explanation of the contents	General index (short form)	Detailed index	Japanese pages (short form)
New Information	brief introduction to all the articles in the historical order, the latest at the top.
Introduction to TRIZ	What is TRIZ?  Introductory articles for new readers of TRIZ.
TRIZ References	TRIZ textbooks, WWW references, and bibliography
TRIZ Links	TRIZ sites in Japan and in the World; selected/extensive lists
TRIZ News and Activities	News and activities in Japan and in the World;  Japan TRIZ Society's Page, Japan TRIZ CB Official Page,  Nakagawa's activities
TRIZ Software Tools	TRIZ Software tools and their usage
TRIZ Papers and Technical Reports	Papers, Case-Study reports, Research/Technical reports, and Introductory articles. Translation/posting of important articles in the World, contributions from readers, and articles by Nakagawa
TRIZ Lectures and Course Materials; Articles in TRIZ Related Areas	Course materials and textbooks, Lecture notes in TRIZ, and articles in TRIZ related areas. Translation/posting of important articles in the World, contributions from readers, and articles by Nakagawa
TRIZ Forum	Conference/seminar reports, Book reviews, Communications, Discussions, Questions, Comments, etc.

"TRIZ Home Page by Students for Students" :  Established by Nakagawa's Seminar class at OGU.  (Mar. 18, 2006), Updated (Mar. 19, 2007)

General index	New Information	Introduction to TRIZ	TRIZ References	TRIZ Links	TRIZ News & Activities	TRIZ Software Tools	TRIZ Papers and Tech Reports	TRIZ Lectures	TRIZ Forum	General index
Home Page	New Information	Introduction to TRIZ	TRIZ References	TRIZ Links	TRIZ News & Activities	TRIZ Software Tools	TRIZ Papers and Tech Reports	TRIZ Lectures	TRIZ Forum	Home Page

  Questions, comments, submissions, etc. on this home page are welcome via e-mail to:
    Toru Nakagawa,  Dr.,  Professor Emeritus, Osaka Gakuin University
    E-mail: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp [The same as before retirement.   Email is the main communication channel.]
    (Home)   3-1-13 Eirakudai, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-0086, Japan.    Phone & FAX:  +81-4-7167-7403