WTSP New Strategy (B3-News2019)  

New Strategy of the WTSP Project:
To Show World WTSP Catalogs Quickly

Toru Nakagawa and Global Co-editors
Jul. 24, 2019
Part of Preprint of ETRIA TFC2019 Paper

Posted:  Jul. 25, 2019

For going to Japanese pages, press buttons. 

Editor's Note (Toru Nakagawa,  Jul. 25, 2019)

This is a part (Section 4) of the preprint of our paper, which has just been submitted as a final form to ETRIA TFC2019:
    "World TRIZ Sites Project (WTSP) (2): To Build Catalogs of TRIZ-related Web Sites in the World",
     by Toru Nakagawa, Darrell Mann, Michael Orloff, Simon Dewulf, Simon Litvin, and Valeri Souchkov
     IFIP-Springer Book Series, TRIZ Future Conference 2019, Editors: Rachid Bemoussa, Roland De Guio, Sebastian Koziolek, Paper #69
We thank IFIP, Springer, and TFC2019, for their allowing for us to show (a part of) the final manuscript of our paper as a preprint in our own Web site.

Since the beginning of June, the new strategy has been shown in several places already, including Practice Guide (Jun. 10; Jun. 14; Jul 7, 2019), Short Summary of Practice Guide (Jul. 7; Jul. 14), WTSP Communications in Jun (Jun. 25; Jul. 6; Jul. 7) and in July (Jul. 18).  The present manuscript is written in a fully-comprehensive form in its up-to-date content (on Jul. 24, 2019).  .  We wish to explain the readers, especially those who are working for and interested in the WTSP project, about our recent change in the basic strategy about the process of building the WTSP Catalogs.

In short:

Our original strategy: 
Bottom-up Approach:  Build Country WTSP Catalogs first with many Web sites after thorough survey.  Then we build World WTSP Catalgos with selected sites.
--  This puts much burden on WTSP members.  Hence, WTSP Teams have not started well in almost all countries.

Our new strategy: 
Try to show the World WTSP Catalogs quickly, relying on the "20 - 80 % Principle", i.e., "Do rough but essential 20 % efforts and get 80 % results". 
-- Looking at the image of our final goal in a concrete form, many people will understand the vision clearly and will join us.

 


Table of Contents

4. Practical Approaches for Completing the World WTSP Catalogs (since June 2019)

4.1  Reconsidering the difficulties

4.2   Structure of the World WTSP Catalogs, practical and useful

4.3 World WTSP Catalogs (Japan Part) instead of Japan WTSP Catalogs  

4.4 Practice Guide for preparing WTSP Catalogs in various countries

(1) To get people as voluntary WTSP Members and form WTSP Team with a coordinator
(2) List up candidate sites, by recommendations and by Internet surveys
(3) Describe individual sites, either by the site owners or by other surveyors
(4) Making 'Index Table of sites' as the manuscript of World WTSP Catalogs
(5) Build and check Your Part of World WTSP Catalog as a small Web site
(6) With your manuscripts the World WTSP Catalogs are now completed

4.5  Plans of Preliminary and Completed World WTSP Catalogs

Top of this page

Paper Top Difficulties Structure World WTSP Catalog (Japan Part) Practice Guide Plan  

Short Summary

Japanese page (Short Summary)

 


 

  New Strategy of WTSP Project: To Show World WTSP Catalogs Quickly

Excerpt of Section 4 of our ETRIA TFC2019 Paper:

"World TRIZ Sites Project (WTSP) (2): To Build Catalogs of TRIZ-related Web Sites in the World",
by Toru Nakagawa, Darrell Mann, Michael Orloff, Simon Dewulf, Simon Litvin, and Valeri Souchkov
IFIP-Springer Book Series, TRIZ Future Conference 2019, Editors: Rachid Bemoussa, Roland De Guio, Sebastian Koziolek, Paper #69

 

4.  Practical Approaches for Completing the World WTSP Catalogs (since June 2019) 

4.1  Reconsidering the difficulties

As described so far, the WTSP project have developed the visions, guidelines, project teams, processes, methods, etc. step by step for building the Country and World WTSP Catalogs.  However, our project is much behind the time schedule for completing the World WTSP Catalogs before TFC2019, to be held on Oct. 9-11, 2019.  The weak point of our project is the fact that in many countries the WTSP Teams are not formed well and not working actively. 

The problem situation is "Many people support the aims of the WTSP project, but very few actually join to work together".  And the main reason for it is "Talented, active persons in TRIZ are always too busy", as known from the beginning.   Considering the reasons further, we have found the following points.

(a) The WTSP Database System is a proposal of an 'Ideal form', which is not feasible in a few months.  We need to find some structure of the WTSP Catalogs, which is clear, practical, easy to build and update, and allowing integration of parallel works by many Teams of various countries.

(b) We need a prototype of World WTSP Catalogs.  Japan WTSP Catalog [7] is for people in Japan and not appealing to people in the world.  We need "World WTSP Catalog (Japan Part)" containing sites selected for the people in the world.

(c) Trying to make Country WTSP Catalogs with thorough survey is a heavy task in each country.  At the stage of June 2019, we should change our basic strategy to focus our efforts on the World WTSP Catalogs, containing selected, smaller number of sites from various countries. 

(d) We have not seen actual image of the World WSP Catalogs yet.  What kinds of sites are actually arranged in the ◎ and ○ levels.  People want to see them, even in a rough draft.  Thus, we should better apply the "20-80 Principle", i.e., "Do the rough but essential 20 % efforts and get the 80% results".

(e) On the basis of (a) to (d), we need to have a Practice Guide for the WTSP Teams in various countries to contribute actively to achieve the World WTSP Catalogs together.   It should have step by step instructions to prepare for the manuscripts of their own parts of the World WTSP Catalogs.

(f) We should have two-step plan.  A preliminary version of World WTSP Catalogs we should make first as a draft containing smaller number but important sites.  Then we will make revised and enhanced versions of World WTSP Catalogs.

(g) Many TRZ colleagues, when they look at these visions and strategies, will be able to see their own tasks and feasibilities to achieve the WTSP goals meaningful for themselves as well as for the world.

All these new tasks and strategies have been pursued since June 2019, as described in the following sections.

 

4.2   Structure of the World WTSP Catalogs, practical and useful

Considering to make the 'ideal' WTSP System (Fig. 3) more practical and feasible without assuming a new automating system, we reached the structure shown in Fig. 4 [14]

Fig. 4  Structure of the World WTSP Catalogs [14]

The right part of Fig. 4 is a simple collection of files of 'Descriptions of sites' submitted by various Teams.  Each Team makes a Word file, where various sites may be written in the standardized tabular form or in more relaxed ways, and convert it into an HTML file.

The left part of Fig. 4 is the Index of the WTSP Catalog, which corresponds essentially to the 'Index Table of all the sites' in Fig. 3.  Individual WTSP Teams submit 'Index Table of sites' in Excel, and all the tables are merged into one Index Table.  Then the Table is sorted and rearranged manually in Excel in various hierarchical ways, and is converted into an HTML page. 

Each Team, before submission, should set hyperlinks from individual site in the 'Index Table' to actual description of sites in the 'Descriptions of sites' file.  Hyperlinks have a big advantage that their links are flexibly connected even though the sites are rearranged in any manner in the Index Table (or the Index) or the site descriptions are rearranged in the 'Descriptions of sites' files.   This structure also allows to revise and add site descriptions afterwards and to make multiple Catalog Indexes by rearranging the sites in the Index Table in different ways.

The completed World WTSP Catalogs may be posted as a small Web site (and even delivered easily in a folder) containing one (or multiple) Index page(s) and many pages of site descriptions.  Users may read the Index page of many sites arranged in some systematic manner, and may click any site to read some more details of the site.  Users may also read the 'Descriptions of sites' pages, where sites are arranged in a manner the Team of a country or the editor of a top-down survey supposed best.    

 

4.3  World WTSP Catalogs (Japan Part) instead of Japan WTSP Catalogs

All the 92 sites in Japan WTSP Catalog (i.e., WTSP Catalogs of TRIZ-related sites in Japan for the people in Japan) have been re-evaluated in the criteria of World WTSP Catalogs.  The results [15] are summarized in Table 4.

Table 4  Sites to be included in World WTSP Catalog (Japan Part)

Sites in TRIZ

Sites around TRIZ

◎ TRIZ Home Page in Japan
          (Toru Nakagawa)

○ Japan TRIZ Society (NPO)

○ IDEA Co. (Mamoru Zenko)

○ MOST LLC
          (Kazuya Yamaguchi)

○ Ideation Japan Ltd.
       (Teruyuki Kamimura)

○ TRIZ Study
          (Shinsuke Kurosawa)

○ Monodukuri.com
          (Osamu Kumasaka)

□  (Former) Japan TRIZ CB

□  Cybernet System Co. Ltd.

□  Pro-Engineers
          (Shigeru Kasuya)

□  Idea Plant (Rikie Ishii)

□* MEMODAS
          (Kimihiko Hasegawa)

○* Idea Marathon Institute  (Takeo Higuchi)

□  J-STAGE (JST)

□ Daiichi Kousha (Akihiro Katahira)

□* Netman (Ken-ichi Nagaya)

□* JST (Japan Science & Technology Agency)

□* NEDO (New Energy and Industrial
   Technology Development Organization)

□* Japan Creativity Society

□* JUSE (Union of Japanese Scientists &
         Engineers)

□* JSQC (Japanese Society for Quality Control)

□* SJVE (Society of Japan Value Engineering)

□* JIII (Japan Institute of Invention and
         Innovation)

□* JAIST (Japan Advanced Institute of Science
         & Technology)

□* i.school, The University of Tokyo

□* Keio SDM, Keio University Graduate School

 

The sites in the left column are more or less specialized in TRIZ.  They include 1 ◎ site, 6 ○ sites, and 5 □.  They are mostly TRIZ promotors and consultants.   The sites in the right column are related to the methodologies around TRIZ, in the sense that they share nearly the same interests and goals with TRIZ.  Most of them are national governmental organizations, academic or professional associations of methodologies close to TRIZ, and universities with special research/teaching activities in the field of creative thinking. 

The * marks mean that they are not selected in the 24 sites in the Japan WTSP Catalogs.  Among the 24 selected sites in the Japan WTSP Catalog, 11 sites will not be shown in the World WTSP Catalogs.  Many of them were active in '90s and '00s but not much in '10s.  And 3 knowledge-sharing sites. i.e., Wikipedia, YouTube, and Slides Share, are also dropped because they are certainly shown as ◎ sites in the World WTSP Catalogs principally based in USA. 

 

4.4  Practice Guide for preparing WTSP Catalogs in various countries

The new Practice Guide was first written in early June and revised little by little until mid-July [14].  It describes how to form WTSP Teams and how to prepare the manuscripts of the World WTSP Catalogs.  The basic points are described below along the process.

(1) To get people as voluntary WTSP Members and form WTSP Team with a coordinator

This is the initial step of our process.  Even though we meet much difficulty at this step in many countries, we need to keep trying various activities, as discussed so far.  They include:

You are invited to understand the aims, visions, significance, importance, etc. of the WTSP project, by referring to our Appeal [5] and Summary slides [3] .

You may look at the prototype examples of WTSP Catalogs, such as World WTSP Catalog (Japan Part) [15] and some others coming soon, and compare them with some simple lists of TRIZ links and also with messy/noisy outputs of internet surveys.   You may learn many interesting examples of sites in the WTSP Catalogs which were not known much so far.  Then you might realize the importance of introducing good TRIZ-related sites in your own country to the people in the world.

You may study the structure of WTSP Catalogs and the basic process for listing up the sites and describing the site introductions [14] .  Then you might understand that the tasks for you (and your TRIZ colleagues in your country) is to make the manuscripts of your Country Part of World WTSP Catalogs and that such tasks can be achieved in cooperation with your TRIZ colleagues in your country without so much burdens.   

Then you would eventually find that the merits and significance of contributing to the World WTSP Catalogs by making manuscripts of your Country Part is certainly greater than the efforts and time you need to spend for making the manuscripts.   At such a stage you are welcome to join WTSP together with your colleagues and form a WTSP Team for your country.

You would naturally agree that a group of several people need a coordinator for   working effectively in cooperation.   In WTSP, Country Editor plays the role of a coordinator.  The coordinator must understand the vison, tasks, processes, etc., and coordinate the members in their work, i.e., dispatch various tasks to the members and integrate the results by the members, etc.   Since WTSP is operated entirely on a volunteer basis, getting a Country Editor is most important for the activities in each country.

(2) List up candidate sites, by recommendations and by Internet surveys

An easy and best way to list up candidate sites is getting recommendations from many TRIZ colleagues in your country.  Using a template in our Practice Guide [14] , list up a number of candidate sites by the Team members and send the list to other keypersons as widely as possible, asking them to list up some more.  This process is usually good enough for listing up candidate sites to be included in the World WTSP Catalogs.

If you want to find useful TRIZ-related sites thoroughly, e.g., to make a complete Country WTSP Catalogs, you need to make Internet surveys.  When you make a survey, using the keyword TRIZ for example, you will find that the search engines produce a flood of information, which is messy and noisy and hiding useful information.  A lot of experiences and obtained knowhow are described in Nakagawa's reports [8-11] .  Because of so much noise in the Internet searches, WTSP members in many countries were discouraged so much and quitted/postponed their WTSP activities.  This is the biggest reason for our failure in the initial Bottom-up Approaches, i.e., to make thorough Country Catalogs and then go to (Country part of) World Catalog with selected sites.  Thus we recently shifted our strategy to make efforts for building the World WTSP Catalogs first, with the manuscripts from countries containing the sites recommended highly as explained above.    

(3) Describe individual sites, either by the site owners or by other surveyors

Now we should describe individual sites one by one as the manuscripts to be shown in the WTSP Catalogs.  We may use the template of Site Description posted in the Practice Guide [14]

It is best to get the site owner fill in the template.  The mandatory information is Site name, Site domain URL, Site location, Site language, Roles of site, Evaluation, and (most desirably) Description of introduction. Sometimes an organization/company operates their sites in multiple countries, in multiple languages, and hence with different URLs and different site names; in such cases we may show the representative one(s) as the site in the World WTSP Catalog, with information of subsidiary sites attached.  Roles of site should be expressed according to the codes specified in the 'Multiple sets of Indexing Schemes' shown in [13] .  Typical roles may be: (a1) Dedicated for information sending, (e1) Method developers, (e4) Consultants, (g3) Knowledge sharing, etc.  Description of introduction may be written in free format in about 3 to 10 lines.

In cases when we need to describe any site, it takes much time for us to visit the site to understand it and describe it concerning to the items in the standard format.  You may learn Nakagawa's experiences and know how [8-11, 14] .  Typically, we visit a page of the site (with the key of Internet search output), then go to the top pages, 'About us` pages, and a number of principal pages.  Carrying out a site search (i.e., Internet search of relevant pages inside a specified site) is useful.  Excerpts from top pages and 'About us' pages may be useful as a quick alternative of the site introduction.  Evaluation of the site is a delicate job, but necessary even as a tentative one for us to proceed to build WTSP Catalogs.  For only the sites with evaluation ◎○□, we should describe the site closely.

(4) Making 'Index Table of sites' as the manuscript of World WTSP Catalogs

You gather the descriptions of sites of high evaluation (◎○□) in a Word file.  And you make a 'Index Table of sites', using the template in Excel shown in [14]   Basic information of site in the standard format can be used to fill in.  Site code is a numbering given to the sites in some proper way for managing the sites, and a hyperlink is set with it for referring to the site description.  (Note that numbering itself is not so important because the sites are rearranged in the WTSP Catalogs in various ways by use of other items in the Index Table.)

(5) Build and check Your Part of World WTSP Catalog as a small Web site

You now convert your 'Index Table of sites' file and 'Descriptions of sites' file into HTML (i.e., Web pages).  Then at the beginning of each site description, set an anchor point having the ID of the Site code.  Put the two pages in a folder and test that every hyperlink in the Index Table (i.e., Index) page jumps to the proper description of sites.  In this manner, you now have a small Web site of Your Part of World WTSP Catalog.

(6) With your manuscripts the World WTSP Catalogs are now completed

You should submit your Index Table file in Excel and Descriptions of Sites file in HTML to the WTSP Project.  Integrating many such parts, World WTSP Catalogs can be built as shown in Fig. 4.  The results of top-down Internet surveys will also be important parts of the World WTSP Catalogs.  Handling duplications of sites in many manuscripts of parts may be a tedious issue.  It is possible to make multiple sets of Index of World WTSP Catalogs by simply using different sorting of sites in the Index Table. 

 

4.5  Plans of Preliminary and Completed World WTSP Catalogs

On the basis of our new strategy (especially based on the "20 - 80 % principle") described so far, we have just announced our concrete 2-step plans as follows:

(A) First Preliminary version of World WTSP Catalog:
          Containing sites evaluated as ◎○ only.
            Manuscripts due:  Jul. 28, 2019;    Completion/Posting: Aug. 4, 2019;

(B) Second (and last) Preliminary version of World WTSP Catalog:
          Containing sites evaluated as ◎○□.
            Manuscripts due:  Sept. 15, 2019;    Completion/Posting: Sept. 30, 2019

In the current situations of WTSP Teams in many countries, we expect not so high quality in (A), but after people see it they will contribute to make (B) much improved.

After the presentation and discussions at ETRIA TFC2019 and reviewing (B) closely, we should better complete the World WTSP Catalogs:

(C) First Edition of the World WTSP Catalogs (2019):
            Containing sites evaluated as ◎○□.
            Manuscripts due:  Nov. 15, 2019;    Completion/Posting: Dec. 10, 2019

 

 

Top of this page

Paper Top Difficulties Structure World WTSP Catalog (Japan Part) Practice Guide Plan  

Short Summary

Japanese page (Short Summary)

 

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Last updated on Apr. 2, 2020..     Access point:  Editor: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp