WTSP Mails and Letters (B3-News2019) 
Objectives of WTSP and Practical Approaches for Us:
In Reply to Michael Orloff
Toru Nakagawa (WTSP Project Leader) ,
May 31, 2019
| WTSP Mails and Letters (B3-News2019) |
|
Objectives of WTSP and Practical Approaches for Us: |
|
|
|
| Posted: Jun. 2, 2019 |
For going to Japanese pages, press 
buttons.
Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa, May 31, 2019)
This article is written as a reply to Michael Orloff, one of Global Co-editors of WTSP, on his email to me on May 26, 2019.
His email is a reaction to my two recent WTSP articles:
Preliminary Internet Searches (3) of TRIZ-related Sites in wider scopes in the world (Toru Nakagawa)(May 18,2019)
Proposal of the WTSP Database System for the World TRIZ-related Sites Project (WTSP) (Toru Nakagawa)He wrote:
Michael Orloff (Germany) ==> Toru Nakagawa May 26, 2019 Friendly request for understandable work!Dear Toru, thank you for your inviting me to support the WTSP.
Together with this I am not able to embrace both a mission and practical needs of this project. Till now I do not understand, sorry, an objective of the WTSP: what this project gives to you of/and to participants. In this case, maybe, we can do something together to make this project more pragmatic and useful for you and the participants. This is your competence of the leader. Only you are able to explain us what could we do for the project, to attract (involve, invite) us for concrete practical work.
To be effective I would like to ask you about reasonable apportionment (assignment) for me some practical area of my activity to support this project.
I believe that you understand that I have to struggle for progress of my company and also for the development of TRIZ as science and methodology. It requires all my power. But I like an idea of WTSP in whole (without inquiring into details). So I hope that I could do some practical actions for the WTSP if I see clearly my task and possible investment of my time and efforts.
So, like a commander, give me a task :)) And if I can I follow this command, I tell you about my way :))
Best to you, Michael
After thinking for 4 days I wrote a manuscript of reply in the form of an article to be read by many TRIZ colleagues.
Probably, my articles on Internet surveys and Database System proposal give impression to M. Orloff and many TRIZ colleagues that the WTSP project is expanding too big to follow. This misunderstanding might have come from the difference between my work for thinking about the final publication of WTSP Catalogs at the global level and the work expected for WTSP members to visit and describe individual sites at the country level. I am waiting for the bottom-up activities in every country by many WTSP Members and TRIZ colleagues, and at the same time in order to support such activities I am working with a top-down approach for surveying sites in the global scale and in wider scope and for planning the final editing/publishing process at the global level.
Thus in this article, using the 8 slides we presented at ETRIA TFC2018, I am explaining that the aims, plans, processes, organization plans, etc. are the same as before and we are facing with difficulties essentially the same as before. I add notes and comments about the present situations and our recent experiences to suggest the causes of problems and practical ways for us to proceed further.
At the bottom of this article
, I am discussing about the practical ways of bottom-up approach for achieving our final goals. Building Country WTSP Catalogs in each country is our initial and most important step. We can do this step by step in practical ways. Then we integrate those Country Catalogs into World WTSP Catalogs. The process is also explained as practical manual process without assuming the WTSP Database System now at the proposal stage. In the discussion I find the critical issue for the success of WTSP is the formation of WTSP Teams in every country and especially getting Country Editors as the coordinators of the Teams.
We wish you, many TRIZ colleagues in the world, to volunteer to work to build WTSP Catalogs of TRIZ-related sites in the world. Let's work Together ! Connected !!
Please feed back any of your questions, comments, and suggestions.
|
|
Japanese site |
Reply
Objectives of WTSP and Practical Approaches for Us
Toru Nakagawa ==> Michael Orloff (Germany) May 31, 2019
Dear Michael Orloff,
Thank you very much for your frank comments and questions.
Since I received your email on May 26
We, professionals and serious users of TRIZ, do believe that TRIZ has genuine capability of creative problem solving and contributing to innovations in various fields. So we expect TRIZ should be proliferated much widely in the world at the present and future ages when innovations are needed everywhere. In reality, however, TRIZ appears to be losing its ground in some influential regions in the world, despite growing in some countries in Asia. We want to recognize the real situations and activities in TRIZ in the world and to contribute for TRIZ to be used more widely and productively.
WTSP Slides and Notes/Comments
I now choose to show my 8 slides, i.e., the short version of our presentation at ETRIA TFC2018
The fundamental objectives, policies, approaches, etc. of the WTSP project and also the rather difficult situations we are facing to solve are essentially the same as shown in these slides.
Beside the slides I add some comments at the present stage , and at the end of this letter I am discussing what we should do from now on.
This is the presentation given by the 6 Global Co-editors of WTSP. These TRIZ leaders have joined the WTSP project to serve at the global level, voluntarily in response to Nakagawa’s invitation.
[Note: We want to have a few more Global Co-editors, if possible.]
This slide shows the background around TRIZ. We know that TRIZ has achieved a lot, to the extent that we can’t see its overview easily. Yet the interests in TRIZ in the world (especially in influential regions) are slowly decreasing, at the era when many people say Innovations are needed.
There are many Web sites in the field of TRIZ, but they are working separately and competing. Internet searches give messy and noisy outputs, hiding good and useful Web sites.
This slide shows the Aims of our WTSP project in a concrete manner, along the process.
Our Main Aim is to build ‘Catalogs of TRIZ-related sites’. Such Catalogs should be built in each country first, for the people in the country (thus in their own language) and then for the people in the whole world (thus in English). Then such Catalogs should be integrated (after some selection) into World Catalogs for all the people in the world (thus in English) and then for the people in each country (thus in the language of each language).In the Catalogs, individual sites should be introduced briefly but closely. Of course, we should select useful and important sites after evaluation.
The Catalogs should be useful for different people, e.g., people unfamiliar, beginners, users, and even experts in TRIZ.
We should not restrict our scope to TRIZ alone but open our scope to various relevant methodologies. And the Catalogs should cover theories, applications, activities, etc. and should be reliable sources of information.[Note: At first we thought of two volumes of World WTSP Catalogs; the first is the integration of Country WTSP Catalogs, mostly arranged in the order of countries, and the second is the one categorized and arranged with the methods (even though not well defined initially). But we now assume several types of WTSP World Catalogs where individual sites are classified and arranged from different aspects.
Recently I use the word ‘WTSP Database of TRIZ-related sites’. Such a Database means the accumulated information of all the individual sites, which form the source information of the WTSP Catalogs.The format of describing individual sites is also important to choose. At first (Dec. 2017) I selected a standard format in Excel. Soon after (Feb. 2018), I recommended informal free format in MS Word for listing up many sites in a practical manner. Recently (May 2019), I have proposed a new standard format in Excel for registering in the WTSP Database. So you might think that we should fill in the standard format for each site from the beginning. It is not my intention. We should use the free format in MS Word at the initial stage, and then go ahead to fill in the new standard format for highly evaluated sites.]
We are planning to keep the WTSP Catalogs up-to-date. Without such maintenance, the Catalogs will become obsolete and useless quickly. Revising every 2 years is expected to be a reasonable choice of balance of usefulness and costs. Note that Web sites often stay long by posting pages of new information.
[Note: ‘WTSP Database System’ can generate various WTSP Catalogs easily. So the WTSP Catalogs can be revised easily by updating the information of individual sites.]
This slide shows the experiences of a pilot project for making Japan WTSP Catalog.
The Catalog of 92 sites was built for Japanese people in Japanese, and translated into English, and then top 24 sites are currently shown.[Note: I am going to select slightly different sites to be included in the World WTSP Catalog from Japan.]
This slide shows the basic plan of building the WTSP Catalogs. When this slide was made just before ETRIA TFC2018, our project had about 30 members. By inviting actively at the conference we now have over 70 members.
[Note: The WTSP activities have not made much progress in the sense shown in this slide, unfortunately.
Team formation (Item 1., planned due is Dec. 2018) is not achieved in most countries.
Country Editors are the key persons: they are assigned only in 10 countries among the 31 countries.Drafts of Country Catalogs (Items 2. and 3., planned due is Mar. 2019) have not made yet. Actually no draft of Country TRIZ Sites Lists (i.e., without introduction) have submitted from any country (except the List of 26 sites in Russian made by Michael Orloff).
For supporting this situation, I have made Preliminary Internet Searches; the outputs (after some processing by hand) were sent to the relevant people and were posted in “TRIZ Home Page in Japan”: they are:
1st round: Preliminary Internet Searches of TRIZ-related Sites in Various (33+) Countries (Sept. 2018)
2nd round, Preliminary Internet Searches (2) of TRIZ-related Sites in the world (for major languages), (Mar. 2019)
3rd round, Preliminary Internet Searches (3) of TRIZ-related Sites in wider scopes in the world (May 2019)Preliminary Internet Searches output very noisy results, unfortunately, of about 100 sites including both nice and poor/irrelevant sites. Even though they are best possible Internet search in each case, such noisy results might have discouraged the WTSP members to visit and describe the individual sites one by one. In each country, we may have more practical approaches in surveying Web sites.
*** What should we do now? -- I will discuss about this point later
These two slides show the difficulties commented often by TRIZ colleagues who joined or were invited to join WTSP. The core problem “Many people support the aims of the WTSP project, but very few actually join to work together” and its various reasons shown here are always the same from the beginning.
Among the reasons, the first one and the last one may be most typical. TRIZ colleagues are very busy and hence can spend only little time for this voluntary project. Hence our solution is to divide the tasks into smaller ones which can be achieved by many people in parallel.
[Note: Division of tasks can be and actually have been done easily. But the coordination of the tasks is the problem. Somebody has to dispatch the tasks to some suitable members after evaluating the priority and explaining what should be done. And probably the same person has to collect the results of the tasks carried out by many people in parallel.
This coordination is felt even more difficult to see the messy results of Internet surveys containing many Web sites with much noises.Because WTSP is a voluntary group, coordination of members and dispatching/assigning tasks are very delicate to do.
*** I will discuss what to do in this situation, later .
This slide expresses our stance and hope. We, professionals and serious users of TRIZ, believe we can solve various difficulties and can achieve the goal of building WTSP World Catalogs to be useful for many people and for the purpose of further proliferation of TRIZ and related methodologies.
Now let’s discuss what we should do from now on in practice:
(1) To all the WTSP Members:
Please fill in and submit your WTSP Membership Application Form, if you have not done so yet.
Please post the following two WTSP articles by the 6 Global Co-editors in your own (or your involving) Web sites, for getting wider acquaintance in the TRIZ community.
(a) An Appeal for Building Catalogs of TRIZ-related Sites in the World (Jun. 25, 2018) PDF
(b) World TRIZ Sites Project (WTSP): for Building and Maintaining Catalogs of Global TRIZ Resources (Oct. 31, 2018) (8 slides) PDF(2) Form a WTSP Team of Members in every country:
Please send email communications or phone calls among the WTSP Members and some more TRIZ colleagues in your country to form a WTSP Team.
For doing this make a list of TRIZ colleagues in your country including the Members and those you recommend to invite for new Members, and pass the list to all the relevant people. (Note that anybody is welcome to WTSP.)Assign the Country Editor(s) among the WTSP Members.
Country Editor(s) do the most important work of coordinating the WTSP Team in the country.
He/she should dispatch various WTSP tasks to appropriate Members (or non-Members), after roughly evaluating the priority and size of the tasks.
He/she should ask and advise the Team Members how to carry out the tasks.
He/she should collect the results done by the Team Members and make manuscripts of Country WTSP Catalogs.Assign some Member(s) who carry out Internet Surveys of TRIZ-related sites in the country.
Assign some Member(s) who take care of operating the WTSP platform on the Bitrix24 system, and who take care of operating the WTSP Database System in future.
The tasks of visiting individual sites and describing them should be carried out by all the WTSP Team Members in collaboration and by getting help of the site owners (see the following sections).
(3) Surveying and Listing up TRIZ-related Web sites:
Internet search is of course an important method, but I will write about it later.
Probably using background knowledge is the easiest way for listing up important TRIZ-related sites.
When you formed the WTSP Team, you have listed up many keypersons involved in TRIZ and related methodologies.
Make a tentative list of TRIZ-related Web sites in your country using your background knowledge.
Then send emails to all the keypersons, either WTSP Member or not, to ask them to enhance the list.
Such a list should contain the information: Site name, Site domain URL, Owner of the site,
Email access to the owner, (Roles of the site,) Single-line introduction to the site, etc.
If possible, list up the sites in the wider scope to include relevant methodologies around TRIZ.
The List should be enhanced whenever someone finds good sites.Internet searches are powerful means to find new sites.
Because the outputs can be noisy and messy, please learn experiences posted in “TRIZ Home Page in Japan”.
Keyword of ‘TRIZ’ (or ‘ТРИЗ’ in Russian) is the first choice.
For wider scope, successful Keywords are:
Creative Think Method
(Creative OR innovative OR Systematic) Problem Solve (Method OR Process OR Technique)Search results on a browser can be easily ‘Copy & Paste’ onto MS Word keeping the URL hyperlinks active.
The URL can be accessed by clicking the URL while pressing the CTRL key.The option (in Yahoo.Japan search engine) of listing only one representative page for a site and output the URL for internal site search is very useful. You can avoid multiple pages from a site.
Visiting the individual sites quickly, you can get the information of
Site name, Site domain URL, Email access to the site owner
Thus, you can make the List of Web sites, searched widely (but not thoroughly) but with noise information.Combining the background knowledge and the Intgernet searches is desirable.
(4) Visiting Individual sites to describe and evaluate the sites step by step
We are now at the stage of describing the individual sites.
Probably it is most practical to write emails to the site owners to describe their site by filling in the standard format.
We should prepare for a typical email for this request, together with instructions.
If the owner think his/her site important, he/she will respond us positively.In case of the Web sites detected by the Internet search, we should better evaluate them roughly whether they are worthy of describing in Country WTSP Catalog and in World WTSP Catalogs.
For this purpose, making the internal site search is useful.
The internal site search can be made by using new key words in the form of:
site:[URL of the site domain] [original (or any) Keyword]
Then you see many relevant pages of various titles/topics.
And the number of pages hit in the site and with the keywords is a useful information.
For the sites evaluated highly, you may go ahead to send the request emails to the site owners.In many cases we will need to describe individual sites for ourselves.
Some knowhow for such cases are:
Visit the site at any page and then go to the top page, to see the site title and the domain URL.
Carry out the internal site search, as mentioned above.
Taking a look at the titles of pages, we will get rough understanding of the scope and approaches of the sites.
Then go ahead to read the top page and ‘About us’ page to understand the intention of the site.
Taking glance of several more pages, you will be able to describe basic information of the site,
namely including: Site name, Domain URL, number of pages hit by the internal site search,
Site location, Site language, Role of the site, and (tentative) evaluation.For filling in further the information of Application phase, Application fields, and Methods, you will need some more close look at the site pages.
Description of individual site in 5-10 lines will need more understanding.
Excerpts from the top page or the ‘About us’ page may be good for tentative use.
All these items should be written before registering the site in the WTSP Database.(5) Making Manuscripts of Country WTSP Catalog and the Review Process
By integrating the descriptions of individual sites, we go ahead to make Country WTSP Catalog.
Manuscripts of Country WTSP Catalog may be written first in some informal format using MS Word and may be uploaded in the Bitrix24 platform.
There are various schemes to categorize and arrange the sites.
Categorizing with the Roles of the sites may be most useful.We should make the manuscripts of Country WTSP Catalog open for reviewing.
We should make them open to the Country WTSP Team Members and to the site owners.
Getting various comments and revision proposals, we should revise the manuscripts.The Country Editor and the WTSP Team should recommend highly evaluated sites with the ◎〇□ levels to be included in the World WTSP Catalogs.
The descriptions of individual sites especially at the ◎〇□ levels should be written in the standard format for registering in the WTSP Database System.(6) Integrating and Building the World WTSP Catalogs.
For the process of this stage, I am proposing to build and use the WTSP Database System
At moment, however, we will have to build the World WTSP Catalogs without the new system.
In such a case, I am going to work in the following manner using MS Word and Excel.The descriptions of individual sites (corresponding to ‘Registered data of individual sites’ in the proposed system) will be written in MS Word for each country (or some other groups, like inernet survey results).
Numbering (or coding) of the sites and updating the descriptions of each site may be a tedious process.‘Index Table of all the TRIZ-related sites’ will be made as Excel sheet(s).
The ‘Basic Information’ (i.e., Site number, Site name, Site domain URL, Link to the site description) will be copied from MS Word to Excel.
‘Answers to the multiple sets of indexing schemes’ of individual sites will also be copied from MS Word to Excel, in somewhat simplified way.
Location, Language, Role, and Evaluation will be copied to Excel, for the purpose of using in the categorization in the World WTSP Catalogs.Then the ‘Index Table’ in the Excel sheet(s) will be used to categorize and sort the sites, in order to output the World WTSP Index(es).
The manuscripts of World WTSP Indexes will be reviewed by all the WTSP Members.
The World WTSP Index will be copied into MS Word for enhancing it into the World WTSP Catalog.
There may be two final forms (Editions) of the World WTSP Catalogs:(a) Interactive Edition: The World WTSP Index in Word is made into a PDF file, and the descriptions of individual sites are also made into PDF files having the access point for each site.
Then clicking the hyperlink in the Index, the site description can be accessed in the PC.(b) Book Edition: In the World WTSP Index in Word, the descriptions of individual sites are inserted one after another (by hand) to form a complete World WTSP Catalog in a book format.
All these processes can be carried out by hand, but in a simplified format and probably only in one or two ways of categorization and arrangement.
(1) Classified and arranged the sites with Regions/Countries
(2) Classified and arranged the sites with Evaluation first, then with Roles --- This may be better (?).
(7) What is most critical for the success of WTSP?
As described so far, there are various practical ways to carry out our WTSP tasks smoothly on the technical sides.
The most critical issue for the success of WTSP is the Team formation in each country.
Dividing the whole WTSP tasks into smaller ones to carry out separately and in parallel can be done rather easily.
Coordinating the tasks, especially coordinating people, is most important and delicate.A flat organization with 100 persons scattering in the world can’t work smoothly.
WTSP Team in each country usually means several to ten members with one coordinator.
This is a reasonable size for good communication and collaboration when they have one coordinator.Thus getting Country Editor for each country is most crucial for the success of the WTSP project.
Since we are working on voluntary basis, we eagerly wish some Member would volunteer to play the role of Country Editor in each country.In two important countries, Russia and USA, the situations are more difficult because we need to have 20 to 30 WTSP Members each, corresponding to the size of the TRIZ-related activities.
So I have been asking TRIZ leaders in the two countries (or region) to have multiple Country Editors, who work jointly.
We are sure that the WTSP Catalogs of TRIZ-related Sites in the world serve many people inside and outside TRIZ and to proliferate TRIZ and related methodologies further.
Let’s work Together ! Connected !!
|
|
Japanese site |
| (A7) Current Working Manyscripts of WTSP Catalogs |
(A8) World WTSP Catalogs (Current Active Version) |
|||||||||
| (B3) WTSP News 2019 |
(B4) WTSP News 2020 |
Japanese page of WTSP Index page |
Last updated on Apr. 2, 2020.. Access point: Editor: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp
