TRIZ away those sandals

You think you know someone after working with them for more than two years then they take your carefully nurtured image and stereotype it into a cartoon. I can accept the seventies haircut and beard but please, not sandals! I have never even tried on a pair.

From the March issue of Whatify, pages 62 -67 (downloadable for free in PDF form here) is the astounding story of Buckinghamshire’s Legal and Democratic Services and how they are turning around their funding model using Oxford Creativity and TRIZ.

Lilly Gadd of Oxford Creativity tells the story, cleverly illustrating how TRIZ can be used metaphorically to take predominantly engineering based concepts and trends and turn them into problem solving solutions in any business situation.

She explains with clear illustrations the three main TRIZ tools used, Ideality, Thinking in Time and Space and Functional analysis. She then explains how the council are not only cutting back but

aim to reduce expenditure in one of its services to zero, avoid cuts in the service and make a profit from its creative approach to the Comprehensive spending review

Now wouldn’t it be great if we could do this with all Council Services and functions?

One response to “TRIZ away those sandals”

Graham Rawlinson

March 16, 2011 at 12:14 am

Having known Karen Gadd and Oxford Creativity since their inception when we were both initial sellers of Invention Machine Software (which is based on TRIZ), I commend Lilly and her mum on challenging organisations with the ultimate goal. It often comes across as crazy, but nature itself is almost a zero sum game, overall, maybe a bit of sun light helps. A lot of real change is about attitude, and the Ideality Attitude is very successful in delivering change beyond people’s imagination.

Narrative Ecology – Blog of Ron Donaldson – fACILITATOR, TRAINER AND COACH