Systematic inventive problem solving — resolving technical contradictions to deliver non-obvious, patentable solutions at speed, not serendipity.
Brainstorming works acceptably on problems where the solution space is familiar and the constraint is imagination. It works poorly on hard engineering problems, where the constraint is a genuine conflict between requirements and where a team's suggestions cluster tightly around the psychological inertia of its own domain. Ten mechanical engineers in a room will generate ten mechanical answers to a problem whose solution is a phase change.
TRIZ addresses exactly that failure. It is a body of method derived from patterns in the patent record, and its practical claim is narrow and defensible: inventive problems recur in structure across industries, and the solution patterns that resolved them are transferable. It does not generate ideas. It directs attention to the part of the solution space where the answer is, and it does so by first forcing a precise statement of the conflict.
The practice works as a TRIZ consultant in India and with European engineering teams, applying the method to industrial problems in high-voltage equipment, cable and cable accessories, railway systems, battery energy storage, process plant and heavy engineering — in problem-solving engagements, in R&D roadmap development, and in building internal capability.
TRIZ carries more acronyms than it needs to. Three matter for how an engagement is run, and they answer different questions.
| Tool | Stands for | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| ARIZ | Algorithm of Inventive Problem Solving (Algoritm Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadach) | The long-form procedure for problems that resist the standard tools — typically because the contradiction has been mis-stated. Roughly forty steps that reformulate the problem before solving it. Reserved for genuinely hard cases; most problems never need it. |
| TESE | Trends of Engineering System Evolution | The observed patterns by which technical systems mature — increasing ideality, uneven development of components, transition to the super-system, increasing dynamisation and controllability. Used to build an R&D roadmap and to file ahead of where a system is going, not where it is. |
| DFP | Design for Patentability | Applying inventive principles with patentability as an explicit design constraint, so that a solution is engineered to be defensible before it is engineered to work. It also runs in reverse — as structured design-around, generating alternatives that fall outside a competitor's claims. |
The practice is MATRIZ-certified, and DFP in particular sits at the boundary this firm works across: inventive method on one side, claim construction on the other. Most engineering teams treat those as sequential — invent, then take it to a patent attorney. Running them together produces both a stronger solution and a broader claim.
The methodology is maintained by the Design for Patentability Institute.
Most engagements begin not with contradictions but with function analysis, because the problem as presented is usually a symptom and the contradiction as first stated is usually the wrong one.
Function analysis builds a component model of the engineering system together with its super-system, and maps every interaction as a function with a subject, an object and a performance level — useful or harmful, and where useful, normal, insufficient or excessive. Functions are ranked as basic, additional or auxiliary. The model is deliberately tedious to build, and it earns its cost by exposing components that exist only to compensate for problems introduced by other components. Those are the trimming candidates.
Cause-effect chain analysis then works backwards from the target disadvantage through intermediate causes to the key disadvantages — the causes that are both close to the physics and open to intervention. A CECA that terminates at a law of nature has been run correctly; that terminal node is precisely where a physical contradiction is going to be formulated.
Skipping these two steps is the most common failure mode among teams who have taken a short TRIZ course. They arrive at the contradiction matrix carrying a contradiction that describes a design compromise somebody already chose, rather than the conflict that made the compromise necessary.
A technical contradiction exists where improving one parameter of the system degrades another. It is formulated using the 39 engineering parameters, and the contradiction matrix returns the inventive principles that historically resolved that parameter pair.
A physical contradiction exists where a single element of the system must possess opposite states of the same property. It is the sharper formulation, and where the technical contradiction can be reduced to one it usually should be, because physical contradictions are resolved by four separation approaches rather than by principle selection: separation in space, separation in time, separation upon condition, and separation between system levels — the whole having one property while its parts have the opposite.
| Technical contradiction | Physical contradiction | |
|---|---|---|
| Form | Improving A degrades B | Element X must be P and not-P |
| Formulated with | 39 engineering parameters | A single property of a single element, in a defined operational zone and time |
| Resolved by | 40 inventive principles, indexed by the matrix | Separation in space, in time, upon condition, between system levels |
| Typical output | A set of solution directions | A tightly bounded requirement that often maps to a physical effect |
An illustrative case, of the kind that recurs in cable accessory work: the interface pressure between an elastomeric joint body and the cable insulation must be high, because dielectric performance at the interface depends on it and partial discharge initiates where it is insufficient. The same pressure must be low, because a jointer in a trench has to install the component by hand. Stated as a technical contradiction this is stress or pressure against ease of operation. Stated as a physical contradiction it is sharper: interface pressure must be high in service and low during installation. Separation in time then points directly at the family of solutions that store the elastic energy during manufacture and release it at installation — and to the associated new problem, which is stress relaxation of the elastomer over a thirty-year service life, itself a further contradiction worth carrying into the next cycle.
A second, from battery system architecture: cell-to-cell spacing must be large, to resist thermal runaway propagation, and small, for volumetric energy density. Separation upon condition reframes the requirement as a barrier whose thermal conductivity is high in normal operation and collapses above a trigger temperature — which converts an architectural argument into a materials search with a defined transition point.
A note on the matrix, because MATRIZ-certified readers will expect it: the contradiction matrix is an index, not the method. It is a fast entry point to the principles, its statistical basis is the patent record of a particular era, and it returns nothing useful for a substantial fraction of parameter pairs. Practitioners who work only from the matrix and the 40 principles are using perhaps a tenth of the available toolset.
Substance-Field analysis models an interaction as a minimal triad — a tool substance, an object substance, and the field that acts between them — and classifies what is wrong with it: the model is incomplete, the useful effect is insufficient, or a harmful effect is present alongside the useful one.
Each diagnosis routes to a defined part of the 76 Standard Inventive Solutions. Class 1 constructs and destructs Su-Field models, including the introduction of a third substance or a second field to neutralise a harmful interaction while preserving the useful one. Class 2 develops the model — chaining, dynamisation, structuring the field in space or time, matching rhythms. Class 3 handles transitions to the super-system and to the micro-level. Class 4 addresses detection and measurement, and its most useful move is the instruction to change the system so that measurement becomes unnecessary. Class 5 supplies the helper standards on introducing substances and fields without introducing them, using voids, resources and self-consuming additives.
The reason to model in Su-Field terms rather than reason directly is that it makes the field explicit. Engineers default to the field their discipline uses. Writing the triad down forces the question of whether a mechanical field is doing work that a thermal, electromagnetic, chemical or acoustic field would do more directly — which is where the Class 3 transition to micro-level and increased use of fields becomes practically productive.
Where a problem does not yield to standard tools — typically because the problem itself has been mis-stated, or because the conflict is buried under a design that has been iterated for years — ARIZ-85C provides the long-form path.
Its structure matters as much as its content. The early parts convert a vague situation into a mini-problem and a defined conflict, and isolate the operational zone and operational time in which the conflict actually exists — often a few cubic millimetres and a few milliseconds, which by itself dissolves a surprising number of problems. Substance-field resources are then inventoried within that zone and time: what is already present, free, and available to be used. The Ideal Final Result is formulated, followed by the physical contradiction at macro-level and then at micro-level, which is where the answer frequently appears. The later parts mobilise resources, apply the standards and physical effects databases, and require the practitioner to check whether the original problem was the right one to solve.
ARIZ is demanding, and is worth running on perhaps one problem in ten. It is the right instrument when a team has been circling a problem for a year and every proposal has been a redistribution of the same compromise.
Ideality — the ratio of useful functions to the sum of harmful functions and costs — is the criterion that keeps TRIZ from producing clever answers that add complexity. The Ideal Final Result asks what the system would look like if the useful function occurred with no component performing it, which sounds abstract and in practice is the fastest route to the class of solutions where a resource already in the system does the job.
Trimming operationalises it. Once function analysis is complete, each component is tested against the trimming rules: whether its function is still required at all, whether the object of the function can perform the function itself, whether another component in the system or the super-system can perform it, and whether a resource can be used instead. Each successful trim removes cost, removes failure modes and removes assembly operations at once.
Trimming is also, unavoidably, where TRIZ produces patentable subject matter, because a configuration that delivers the same function with a component removed is very often novel and non-obvious. The practice runs trimming exercises with that possibility explicitly in view, and the patent engineering side of the firm picks up what emerges.
The trends of engineering system evolution describe how technical systems develop over time — increasing ideality, S-curve maturation, non-uniform development of components producing the next contradiction, increasing dynamisation and controllability, transition to the super-system, mono-bi-poly progression followed by simplification through trimming, transition to micro-level and increased use of fields, matching and mismatching of parts, improved flow conductivity and rhythm coordination, and decreasing human involvement.
For roadmap work the trends are used in two ways. First, to place the current product and its principal sub-systems on their respective S-curves, which distinguishes a sub-system where further optimisation still pays from one that has saturated and where continued investment returns diminishing gains. Second, to generate the forward option set: for each sub-system, what the next trend step would look like physically, and what contradiction would have to be resolved to reach it.
The output is a roadmap organised around contradictions to be resolved rather than features to be added, with each item carrying an estimated inventive difficulty and a note on whether the required physical effect exists today. That is a materially different document from a conventional technology roadmap, and it is considerably harder for a competitor to reconstruct from your product releases.
The practice runs workshops on live client problems rather than on textbook cases, because the transfer of skill happens when a team applies a tool to something they own. A typical format runs three to five days: function analysis and CECA on the client's actual system, contradiction formulation, tool application across matrix, standards and effects, then screening of concepts against feasibility and against existing IP.
Workshops are designed to produce two outputs at once — a ranked set of concepts for the problem brought in, and a small group of engineers who can run the first half of the method without external support. Follow-on coaching on subsequent problems is generally more effective than a longer initial course.
Problem-solving engagements begin with a scoping conversation to establish whether the problem is genuinely inventive — that is, whether it contains a contradiction — or whether it is an optimisation problem better served by design of experiments or simulation. The practice will say which, and will decline TRIZ work where TRIZ is not the right instrument.
A standard engagement then runs analysis, contradiction formulation, concept generation and concept screening, with the client's engineers embedded throughout rather than receiving a report at the end. Concepts are screened on physical feasibility, on cost and manufacturability, and on IP position — both whether the concept is clear to practise and whether it is worth protecting.
NaraNova Tech LLP is based in Vadodara, Gujarat, and works with clients across India and Europe. The LLP was incorporated in May 2026; the practice behind it carries a record of 100+ patents delivered (including PCT filings) and 25+ simulation projects across nine industrial verticals. Registered under Startup India / DPIIT (DIPP271026) and Udyam (UDYAM-GJ-24-0239773), and GST registered.
This site uses only cookies that are strictly necessary for it to function. We set no analytics or marketing cookies unless you accept them. See our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.