From the Editor:


On Receiving the Honor of TRIZ Champion Award from MATRIZ

Editor: Toru Nakagawa (Professor Emeritus, Osaka Gakuin University; Project Leader of the WTSP Project),
Sept. 14, 2021

Posted on Sept. 16, 2021
buttons guide you to the pages written in Japanese.

 

Message (Toru Nakagawa, Sept. 14, 2021)

On Aug. 27 morning I was much surprised with an email, saying that MATRIZ Board voted to offer its TRIZ Champion Award to me .   The Award intends to honor the individuals who significantly contributed to TRIZ deployment worldwide especially with "Think outside of the box" .

On Sept. 1 I replied to accept the offer with my great pleasure of being honored .  In the reply I described my thoughts and activities for these 24+ years in my own way of "Out of the box", partly implying "Out of the box (of traditional TRIZ)" .  I very much appreciate the open-mindedness of MATRIZ in recognizing my activities.  I am also very grateful for many people who guided, collaborated, supported, and learned together with me in Japan and in the world during these years.  I wish to keep my activities going on as long as my health allows.

This page records the email from MATRIZ and my reply (inserting hyperlinks to relevant pages), and the photo of TRIZ Champion Award .

Top of this page

Letter from MATRIZ

TRIZ Champion

My Reply

My activites

Award

Introduction to "TRIZ Home Page in Japan"

 

Japanese page

 


 

  Email from MATRIZ to Nakagawa (Aug. 27, 2021)

Subject:  TRIZ Champions            BCC:  Toru Nakagawa

Dear colleagues,
Congratulations, MATRIZ Board voted to recognize you as TRIZ Champions.

You may familiarize  yourself with the conditions of this distinction at: https://matriz.org/triz-champion/

Once you became familiar with the conditions and the process, please let me know if you are willing to accept this award.
Please reply to this email by September 1, 2021.

Thank you!  Very best,
Dr. Mark G. Barkan, TRIZ Master.  MATRIZ Executive Director


  TRIZ Champion (in MATRIZ HP)   

Development, application and deployment of every methodology or an approach require different talents. And especially TRIZ, that is one of the most creative methodologies of all. We need creative thinkers in the form of scientists, engineers, technology innovators, business entrepreneurs, artists, writers and illustrators, designers, inventors, educators…Those with the ability to "think outside of the box" will lead the future and make special things happen.

While proficiency in development and usage of the TRIZ methodology is recognized by MATRIZ in its certification system, the title of TRIZ Champion is intended to honor the individuals who significantly contributed to TRIZ deployment worldwide by their educational, organizational and promotional efforts.

 


 

  Nakagawa's Reply to MATRIZ  with Thanks (Sept. 1, 2021)

 

Dear Dr. Mark G. Barkan,  Executive Director of MATRIZ

                           Sept. 1, 2021   Toru Nakagawa
                                                     (Osaka Gakuin University, Professor Emeritus)

Thank you very much for your email message of Aug. 28.  I received it with much surprise.

I learned about the "TRIZ Champion" in your MATRIZ HP.  It writes:

...  We need creative thinkers ... Those with the ability to "think outside of the box" ....
...  the title of TRIZ Champion is intended to honor the individuals who significantly contributed to TRIZ deployment worldwide by their educational, organizational and promotional efforts.

I feel very much honored with the MATRIZ' offer to me with the TRIZ Champion Award having such a meaning.  Since 1997 I have been studying TRIZ and teaching, applying, developing and promoting TRIZ (in a slightly wider sense) in Japan and in the world together with many colleagues.  It is my great pleasure that MATRIZ Board recognizes my activities worthy of the TRIZ Champion Award.

I sincerely accept your offer of the TRIZ Champion Award.


 

Please allow me here to briefly describe my thoughts and my activities for these 24+ years, in a way rather "out of the box (of traditional TRIZ)".

Note (TN, Sept. 14):  The buttons are added here to refer to the webpages in the "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" for the sake of clarity.

In 1997 I encountered TRIZ and studied it through seminars by TRIZ Masters (e.g., Sergey Ikovenko, Boris Zlotin), software tool TechOptimizer , textbook by Yuri Salamatov (with Q&A with Valeri Souchkov) , etc. , together with industrial users in Japan organized by Mitsubishi Research Institute.  I also made a trip to Russia and Belarus in 1999 for two weeks to interview with many TRIZ leaders (e.g., Valentina Zhuravlyova, Volyuslav Mitrofanov, Michael Rubin ).

In 1999 I met Ed Sickafus in USA and learned his USIT (Unified Structured Inventive Thinking).  USIT adopted Israeli SIT (Systematic Inventive Thinking) and has a clear process of creative problem solving.  Since USIT was easy to learn and effective to apply, I taught mostly USIT to industrial users in Japan .

I attended TRIZCONs and ETRIA TFCs every year to give presentations of our TRIZ/USIT approaches in Japan and to study TRIZ development in the world.  I learned various forms of modernizing TRIZ through these conferences (and articles in The TRIZ Journal).   Darrell Mann and Simon Dewulf's work, of analyzing patent DBs intensively to renew the TRIZ Knowledge Bases , was most impressive for me.  I published the Japanese editions of Darrell Mann's "Hands-On Systematic Innovation" and "Matrix 2003" .  (I think it is a case of wrong traditionalism that many TRIZ Masters belonging to MATRIZ still use the Altshuller's original Contradiction Matrix built in 1970s without computers.)

In Japan, we have re-organized all the idea generation methods in TRIZ (e.g., 40 Inventive principles, 76 Inventive standards, Trends of evolution of technical systems, Separation principles, etc.) into much simpler 5 main methods in USIT .  On the basis of the framework of Objects-Attributes-Functions (and Space and Time), USIT now has a well-structured operator system of 5 main operators with 32 sub-operators .  Thus USIT in Japan is not a 'simplified TRIZ' as many literatures mention about USIT but a 'compactly unified TRIZ', easy to understand and effective to apply.

We organized Japan TRIZ Society (NPO) and held Japan TRIZ Symposium every year, for which I served as the Program Chairman from 2005 to 2012.  The Symposia were active in inviting various keynote speakers from abroad (e.g., Darrell Mann, Ed Sickafus, Hans J. Linde, Larry Ball, Boris Zlotin, Nikolay Khomenko, Simon Litvin, Denis Cavallucci, etc.), giving many presentations from industries and universities in Japan, and accepting many speakers and attendants from abroad

My understanding of USIT has proceeded further.  By representing the USIT procedure in a data-flow diagram, the concept of the "Six-box Scheme" was obtained .  In the 'Real World', we (1) recognize the Problem and  (2) define the Problem.  Then in the 'Thinking World', we get (3) the understanding of the present system and of the ideal system, and then get (4) Ideas for new system(s), and construct (5) Conceptual solutions.  Then coming back to the 'Real World', we work to implement Conceptual solutions into (6) Actual products/services etc. in the market.  The process from (2) to (5) is more meaningful than ordinary 'Four-box Scheme of abstraction' in science and technology in general, and is much simpler and effective than ARIZ-85C in classical TRIZ. 
Furthermore, the "Six-box Scheme" (i.e. from (1) through (6)) is now realized to be the 'New Paradigm of Creative Problem Solving'  in general .  It is the framework to be able to represent and unify various approaches of 'Creativity methods' or 'Creative problem solving methods', including TRIZ and various related methodologies.  In this manner, TRIZ and USIT have paved the roads to the general understanding (or 'Science') of Creative Problem Solving methodologies.

I was a Professor at Osaka Gakuin University in 1998-2012, and taught undergraduate students at Faculty of Informatics.  With my students I made several case studies of applying TRIZ/USIT on various themes familiar with them .

In Nov. 1998, I started a website "TRIZ Home Page in Japan" both in Japanese and in English, and have been operating it actively for these nearly 23 years for myself .  It is a public website, in the sense that it posts many papers written by various TRIZ specialists in Japan and abroad besides the Editor himself.  It intends to serve for introducing up-to-date information of TRIZ-related methodologies bi-directionally between Japan and the world.  For instance, I wrote Personal Reports of about a dozen 31 conferences, including TRIZCONs, TFCs, and Japan TRIZ Symposia, introducing/reviewing all (or most) of their presentations .  Update announcements of the websites have been sent every time to readers of 200+ Japanese and 200+ in the world.  

In Dec. 2017, we started the 'World TRIZ-related Sites Project (WTSP)' for the purpose of 'Creating Catalogs of TRIZ-related Sites in the world'.  I initiated the proposal and became the Project Leader, getting  support of many TRIZ colleagues; especially Darrell Mann, Michael Orloff, Simon Dewulf, Simon Litvin, and Valery Souchkov joined the project as Global Co-editors .  Japan WTSP Catalog was made first as a pilot project, and then Preliminary Edition (Sept. 2019) and Beta Edition (Jun. 2020) of the WTSP Catalogs of TRIZ and Around-TRIZ Websites in the World were made and publicized , mostly by the survey and construction work by the Project Leader.
 WTSP is a volunteer-based not-for-profit project, expecting bottom-up team activities in individual countries.  It obtained about 80 members/supporters from 30 countries (in Oct. 2018), but very few of them actually work for WTSP.  Only 4 countries submitted the manuscripts of their country parts of the WTSP Catalogs.  This is the core problem for WTSP.  Many TRIZ leaders/colleagues have their reasons, of course, such as they are all too busy for their jobs, the vision of WTSP seems too big to accomplish, they do not see the usefulness of the WTSP Catalogs and do not find the merits of writing site introductions in the Catalogs, etc.
'World Catalogs of Websites' in a specific field is a new concept, hence we need a "Out of the box" thinking .  As the unit of reliable information sources for covering a diversity of work and activities related to TRIZ in the world, we find websites are more suitable than individual papers, webpages, patents, books, organizations, etc.  We are going to collect good websites widely, select them after evaluation, and show them in categories.  We are going to introduce the individual websites in a fair and truthful manner; site owners should write such introductions to their own sites. 
Our WTSP Catalogs have two pillars, Catalogs of TRIZ (including their derivatives) sites and Catalogs of Around-TRIZ (diversity of methodologies related to creative problem solving); both of them are already made in the Beta Edition .  World WTSP Catalogs will certainly become useful for all the people in the world who want to learn and apply good methodologies/practices for creative problem solving of a diversity of actual problems.  The WTSP project is a new type of movement for collaborative voluntary work of creating reliable information source for proliferating the ways of thinking for Creative Problem Solving.


 

This is an overview of my approaches.  

I am so much honored by and obliged to MATRIZ for offering me TRIZ Champion Award recognizing my approaches of "Out of the box" even including some "Out of the box (of traditional TRIZ)".

In particular, I wish the MATRIZ' offer would encourage many TRIZ leaders and experts in the world to voluntarily work for enhancing the WTSP Catalogs of TRIZ and Around-TRIZ Websites in the world. 

I am very glad to accept your offer.   Thank you so much, sincerely,

Best wishes,
Toru

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Toru Nakagawa,  Dr.,  Professor Emeritus, Osaka Gakuin University
E-mail: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp [Main email address.  For receiving.]


 

  TRIZ Champion Award from MATRIZ to Toru Nakagawa

 

 

 

Top of this page

Letter from MATRIZ

TRIZ Champion

My Reply

My activites

Award

Introduction to "TRIZ Home Page in Japan"

 

Japanese page

 

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Last updated on Sept. 16, 2021.     Access point:  Editor: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp