I am writing a paper to be submitted to the upcoming Japanese TRIZ Symposium. The topic is one that I find very interesting. In short, how do technical advances in computational linguistics change the landscape of innovation practice?
This weekend I sent a draft of an extended abstract to my colleague in Japan to get some feedback on the topic. I was pleased that he liked the topic and the outline for the paper. He also asked for some clarification on two phrases used in the abstract: “information fund” and “accrued global knowledge”. Of course, language differences being what they are, it was no surprise that some questions would arise, but these questions got me to wonder about how many people don’t know about the concept of the Information Fund.
Sometimes referred to as the TRIZ Information Fund, this is a very important concept for all designers, engineers, scientists, and innovators. The idea is really very simple.
In the mid 1940s, an engineer named Genrikh Altshuller had an idea that inventiveness and creativity could be learned. He set out to look for the foundations of creative problem solving by studying the legacy of scientific and engineering invention documented in Russian patents. Through this study, he developed a theory of how problems can be systematically approached and solved inventively. This theory is what is called TRIZ. (Pronounced treez, it is an acronym for the Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch which is roughly translated as the theory of inventive problem solving.)
However, as Altshuller worked on his theory, he recognized that having a disciplined approach to innovation was not sufficient to solving problems, nor was having tools such as the inventive principles. He understood that problem solvers needed knowledge of facts -- facts like Bernoulli’s principle or that Sun move from east to west. It is the notion that there exists a body of global knowledge, that scientific and engineering knowledge that is currently known, which is referred to as the information fund.
Of course, Altshuller wasn’t the first person to recognize the importance of learning from those who have gone before us. In a 1676 letter to Robert Hooke, it was Sir Isaac Newton who wrote, “If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” This is the reality of every great innovation.
This is why the Information Fund is so important. In the past, the notion of tapping into accrued global knowledge was impractical. Individuals had to rely on their personal resources to collect information that they could use. Time and technology have changed all that. We live in the information age, and the notion of amassing such a vast collection of leveragable knowledge is not only conceivable, it is a practical reality.
When considering how to construct the architecture your organization’s innovation infrastructure, particular attention should be given to how you have equipped knowledge workers to leverage the information fund. If you are not looking at this seriously, you will be operating at a severe disadvantage compared to leading organizations that are already putting this knowledge into action.
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